It's the second day of ITEXPO - I am at StartUp Camp7 listening to startups pitch the audience and panel on why their applications are the best. The founder of ProtegGO is speaking right now - he seems to have the audience interested. The idea behind the app is tthat a few minutes can save lives in an emergency. the app alerts 15 people in the event of an emergency.

The Future of Cloud Computing panel was a big hit at ITEXPO Miami 2013 - lots of great information. Thanks to all who attended - here is a picture. I am at Telefonica press conference right now they have huge news about their new US-based channel partner program which will break at any moment. I am looking forward to hearing John Sculley speak here at the show later today and later - at 8:00 pm I'll be at the ITEXPO conference party at the Loews Hotel.

As a reminder, John Sculley is famous for inventing the Pepsi Challenge and also was the man who fired Steve Jobs and was later fired by him. We are honored to have him here.

Yesterday, at ITEXPO I met with some representatives from Bressner, a German-based company with some interesting add-ons for Microsoft Lync. Now targeting the U.S. (English website) their Lync add-ons add some powerful features to Microsoft Lync that help make Lync have feature-parity with PBXs, allowing enterprises to use Lync as a PBX replacement with no compromise.

Bressner's Dr. Klaus Zünkler, Principal Solutions Architect and Mitch Friend discussed three of their Lync products. The first was FonComfort, which is designed to fill the feature-gap in Microsoft Lync. One of those feature-gap fillers is "true busy" so the caller doesn't have to pay for the call if you're already on another call. I asked Klaus and Mitch why this was a popular feature since typically a call would drop to voicemail if you were on a call or unavailable and they said this "true busy" feature was more popular in Europe due to a cultural thing.

Here is a shot of the audience from the recent Telefonica keynote at ITEXPO Miami 2013. Standing-room only and lots of great info about broadband, telecom and cloud. Right now the future of cloud computing panel is taking place and then the exhibit hall opens. Its been a great day so far. Seems like there is lots of optimism about the future.

 

The collocated events at ITEXPO Miami 2013 are doing great - here are some shots from Super WiFi Summit and M2M Evolution. Hopefully the attendance at these events is indicative of the growth these markets will experience this year.

 

 

 

ITEXPO Miami 2013 is going great we had 11 simultaneous sessions which were packed - these two are from the Enterprise Track at ITEXPO. Super WiFi, Asterisk, M2M and LatinComm and many others were standing room only as well. Thanks for being part of the ITEXPO and TMCnet community everyone!

 

 

We have a number of charging stations here at ITEXPO Miami 2013 as we attempt to reduce the number of people forced to sit on the floor near any outlet they can find. We hope you find them useful. Thanks OpenText for sponsoring them.
 

It always pleasantly surprises me how well-attended the Asterisk 1-2-3 Workshops are at past ITEXPOs and now the current one, especially considering today is a "pre-conference" day with no exhibit hall open today. Tomorrow is when the "big" day is -- with lots of attendees showing up for both the conferences and the exhibits. But the Asterisk 1-2-3 Workshop is its own draw even without exhibits. Asterisk is certainly one of my favorite VoIP topics so I can see why the room was pretty packed. Here, see for yourself with a panoramic photo [click for larger view]: [Star Wars Stormtroopers make an appearance adding to geek nirvana!]

The set up of ITEXPO takes place today and tomorrow. Starting in the morning we welcome attendees to Asterisk 123 which takes place at 9:00 am. This will be a great opportunity to learn about open-source communications.

Its a huge day for M2M tomorrow as well - the ILS Technology Workshop also kicks off at 9:00 am and then at 2:00 pm its Battle of the M2M Platforms which was a huge hit the last time it ran.

I made it to sunny Miami and just in time. The dry heat of Connecticut started to make the back of my hands bleed. I am not typically a "lotion person" but had no choice as I was starting to look like I belonged in a horror flick. What am I doing now you ask?

Sitting by the pool working in a T-shirt and shorts and enjoying the ability to do so without being distracted by the sound of my teeth chattering.
This week will be amazing.

You may have seen my article in a multi-day USA Today insert recently where the topic was the Age of Acceleration. In it I detailed how the world is moving faster and technology is playing a crucial role in allowing us to keep up. Some in fact are ahead of the curve. Of course when you are in a race to arm your decision-makers with relevant information, minutes and sometimes seconds count.

Software-defined networking is considered by many to be one of the most important, and potentially disruptive, developments in networking since the rise of the Internet. To date, networks and connectivity have come first, and applications have followed. SDN turns this model on its head, approaching networking from an apps-first standpoint.

By now, you may be aware you have access to a software-defined networking workshop at ITEXPO (admission is included with ITEXPO registration) but you may not know space is filling up fast.

One of the most important trends in networking and communications is software defined networking or SDN. At your request we have put together an SDN preconference at ITEXPO in Miami which teaches you everything you need to know about this emerging topic. Come to the show and boost your career and company by staying on top of this hot trend which is transforming networking the way virtualization has transformed computing.

What you’ll learn at the show on January 29th:

• Detailed overview of SDN
• Examination of the technologies and components involved in SDN
• Summary of the use cases of SDN
• Comparison of the players involved in moving SDN forward
• Expert analysis on what SDN could mean for networking as we know it.

I hope to see you there.

ITEXPO in Miami, FL takes place in about two weeks and it is going to be awesome. I will be covering the show in this space and wanted to start off by saying how excited I am that John Sculley will be part of the show – keynoting StartupCamp7 – one of the most exciting events at the conference. You can learn more about the situation between Jobs and Sculley in Forbes and on Tom Keating’s blog.

It’s worth noting that there is controversy as to whether Jobs was fired or demoted but whatever specifically happened is not as important as the fact that the incident started a cascade of events which changed music, entertainment, computing and mobility forever.