Tony Rybczynski, director of strategic enterprise technologies at Nortel, delivered a keynote at ITEXPO yesterday stressing a converging world and a tectonic shift occurring in the market.   Tony began by suggesting the show change the meaning of the acronym ITEXPO to “In-transition Technology EXPO, to better reflect the current state of the shift currently happening in the IP communications industry.   As Rybczynski noted, “The industry is moving to software and we are in the midst of a fundamental transformation.”   Regarding most enterprise workers, “they will only buy one more phone. Your next phone is your last one,” Rybczynski said.   He spoke about the concept of “Hyperconectivity,” the idea that anything that can be connected and would benefit from being connected will be connected.   He cited examples of various types of connectivity (person to person; person to machine; machine to machine) and in support of the last type, he said that 98% of CPUs are going into things other than PCs. To illustrate that point Rybczynski pointed out certain examples such as rodent raps that can send a signal when they’ve caught a mouse, wireless beacons on children’s backpacks for safety, and RFID tags that contain additional consumer information.   Rybczynski addressed the challenges and opportunities that hyperconnectivity brings:   Challenge Opportunity Decreased personal and group productivity Rich collaboration across devices, networks, and modes of operations Human delays in business processes Accelerated business processes Poor asset utilization Energy efficiencies; Real time asset tracking; Enhanced security and compliance 10–100x more endpoints and more real time applications Simplified networking with real time reliability and performance   Perhaps the key takeaway from the keynote was this: There is a need to simplify and scale networks, while increasing reliability in order to accommodate more connected users and devices more rich media traffic and more real time demands.   “Worlds are converging,” Rybczynski said. “Synergy matters.”