Wirefresh braved the rain and headed out to West London today to take a look at the delights of IP Expo 2009.
Traditionally a meeting point for business high flyers looking to plot out a ubiqitous ‘road map’, today was no exception.
If there’s one thing we walked away with it was the knowledge that the cloud is here and here to stay.
Virtualisation is also being pushed hard for the desktop.
We managed to cram ourselves into a couple of presentations. Simone Brunozzi gave a whirlwind tour of Amazon Web Services security features.
It’s interesting to note that Amazon don’t pitch themselves as a retailer. Every presentation they give they make it clear at the start that they are a technology company. If you don’t know AWS, then it’s a fantastic suite of infrastructure products, giving any business a great excuse to get rid of their datacentre.
We also saw VMWare pitch their new desktop delivery product View.
Key to their platform is the concept that the user experience is not compromised in the virtual world, meaning 3d and graphic designers can expect the same performance that they receive now, on a traditional desktop.
Always one to champion the underdog though, we went and had a chat with the guys at Parallels about their competing product.
Their Virtuozzo platform has always outperformed VMWare in terms of density and TCO.
Now they too are pushing to deliver to the desktop.
Looking around the venue today though, they sure have their work cut out for them, VMWare sponsored and branded 1 quarter of the whole event.
With all this talk of SaaS, and now PaaS (Platform as a Service), we could only wonder when this technology is utilised by all software companies, hardware vendors and ISPs as they merge to deliver you home desktop (complete with managed, hosted applications, games and music) on a pay as you go service is an effort to maximise revenue.
Drifting out of the hall, feeling overwhelmingly undergizmoed, we discovered the computer of the future. This tiny NetVoyager felt barely bigger than a couple of paperback books.
