Interop expo comes to India

Interop, the leading global business technology event series, will be held for the first time in India, 4-6 February 2009, at the Bandra-Kurla Complex, Mumbai.
Interop Mumbai will kick off the Interop event series for 2009, to be followed by shows in Las Vegas, Tokyo, Sao Paolo and New York later in the year.

Technology vendors are keenly interested in tapping the growing Indian domestic IT market, even as the global economic scenario remains uncertain, and recessionary fears continue to spook organizations into stinting on all but the most essential expenditure.
Against this backdrop, Interop Mumbai intends to focus on the realities of the Indian IT marketplace, providing a platform for all stakeholders to interact in a stimulating environment that combines an educational conference with a solution-rich exhibition floor and live technology demonstrations from leading vendors.

Elaborating on preparations for the conference, Interop Mumbai Conference Chair Val Souza said, “The underlying theme of the Mumbai leg of Interop is to highlight ways in which IT can be a help rather than a hindrance in times of economic strife, and this is already resonating well with the target audience. Carved into several parallel tracks, the conference will have a compelling mix of insightful keynotes and panel discussions, in-depth technology presentations and case studies.”

Technology Tracks
The technology tracks at Interop Mumbai will cover Security, Infrastructure/Deployment, Mobility & Communications, and Emerging Technology & Trends.
The traditional concept of businesses being cozily cocooned within a clearly-defined perimeter is largely defunct, rendering perimeter security approaches woefully inadequate in securing the enterprise. New technologies come with their fair share of new threats, and as Web 2.0, virtualization and mobile business applications become all-pervasive, Information Security technology too has adapted and evolved to tackle these new challenges. The Security track at Interop Mumbai will showcase the state of the security art, with a range of technology presentations and case studies of best practices at leading Indian enterprises.

The bread-and-butter function of every IT department is to set up the organization’s networking infrastructure in the most cost-effective and efficient manner and keep it running smoothly always. Taking care of the routine needs of users of every ilk may not be glamorous, but it sure is obligatory. Significant advances have been made in this area of information systems, and the Infrastructure/Deployment track of Interop Mumbai aims to update delegates on recent developments and their applicability to the Indian enterprise environment.

Businesses in India are just about beginning to exploit the potential of a wirelessly connected country, but many challenges still remain. The Mobility and Communications track at Interop Mumbai will showcase best practices and technology options for enterprises interested in tapping the vast opportunity being thrown up by the rapidly increasing cellular subscriber base, broadband expansion and wireless connectivity across the country.

The one thing that’s constant with IT is change. Change at such a rapid pace, that it overwhelms all but the most versatile and adaptable of minds. Interop Mumbai will equip delegates with all the inputs they need to stay ahead of the game and understand the implications of emerging technologies for their organizations and for their own careers. The Emerging Technology & Trends track will cover Green IT, Cloud Computing, Enterprise 2.0, Open Source and Collaboration.

Panel Discussions
Keeping in mind the extant market realities, Interop Mumbai will feature several relevant panel discussions wherein technology experts and analysts will deliberate how enterprises can smartly use IT to help them tide over the downturn.

The first of the panels looks at the issues and challenges of outsourcing in the Indian context. While the Indian software services industry has had its sights set on the exports market due to better billing rates and yields, the current economic scenario, coupled with increasing competition, has ensured that domestic clients are now an important target too. Service providers have complained that taking on outsourced IT projects in India is a nightmare because local companies are too haphazard in their processes and planning, and not sufficiently disciplined. On the other hand Indian CIOs complain that service providers pay them scant attention and saddle them with substandard project teams. For the first time ever, Interop Mumbai will bring together leading CIOs and senior representatives of software service providers to thrash out the issues and challenges they both face when it comes to domestic outsourcing of IT projects.

The IT department of today has to operate under tightly controlled budgets. IT Heads contend that they are expected to do twice as much with budgets that remain flat or are being mercilessly slashed. In times of plenty, no one bothered too much about evaluating alternatives. But in recessionary conditions, Open Source Software provides that ray of hope that it’s possible to nonchalantly saunter across the economic tightrope. But there are issues—support and security, for starters. Interop Mumbai has lined up well-known OSS evangelists and proprietary proponents for a no-holds-barred slug-fest.

If there’s one thing that recessions, slowdowns, downturns and meltdowns haven’t had much effect on, it’s the rapidly growing mobile phone subscriber base in India. Over 200 new subscribers were added every minute for the month of September 2008, taking the overall base past the 300 million mark, and there are no signs of the frenetic pace abating any time soon. Businesses are just about beginning to exploit the potential of a wirelessly connected India, but huge gaps still remain. At Interop Mumbai, telecom service providers, mobile business entrepreneurs and IT heads will deliberate on a wish list that will help us attain wireless nirvana in the enterprise that much quicker.

Finally, there have been murmurs that had IT delivered on its promise, the global financial crisis could have been averted (or at least mitigated). When one remembers all one has read about risk assessment, compliance, predictive analytics, business intelligence and such like, one might be tempted to agree with this premise. But is it a fair allegation, really? At Interop Mumbai, we’ll leave it to the experts to decide—brainy economists and leading bankers will lock horns with tech whizzes, in what promises to be a real humdinger of a discussion, titled: The Global Financial Crisis: Did IT Fail Us All?