One point which came up repeatedly in my meetings is the micromanaging of budgets by CEOs – not just in small companies but some really big ones. It seems CXOs are scrutinizing new spending like at no time I have ever seen. Even if equipment has a rapid ROI – CEOs seem quite gun-shy and are holding off.
We are in a unique environment where there is more optimism in tech than I have seen since 2000 but spending seems slow – glacially slow in many cases because CEOs and other execs are being extremely cautious. One analyst experiencing this issue firsthand mentioned this is not a good sign because CEOs shouldn’t be managing nickels and dimes. Another person I spoke with working in the networking equipment market told me they have a new division focused exclusively on getting buy-in from CEOs because people at this level have been killing many deals.
Hopefully the situation changes soon because like the analyst above inferred – CEOs must have more important things to do like formulating strategy and ensuring the company stays competitive.
After the show I stopped by the Avaya Innovation Hospitality Lounge & Lab where I say a new web.alive immersive 3D demo on a kiosk which has improved a tremendous amount in resolution. Avatar driven communications is certainly not where I would have hoped (yet) but the demo the company showed of a virtual Coach store was quite impressive.
I also saw a VDI demo of an Avaya A175 Android-based tablet supporting a Remote Desktop session for communications control with media streaming directly to a device. In this manner, video and audio is streamed without the typical double-hop through the server needed. The company will soon have a software update which allows DVI output from the tablet – and there is also keyboard support BTW. I saw a similar demo on a thin client PC made by Wyse. Here is a photo of the display area.
There is so much more to share but I’ve gotta sign off and get some sleep – I have an early morning meeting to go over my presentation on online community building and social networking at a breakfast tomorrow, May 11th, 2011 at 8:00 am.
