As the Cebit will defy the crisis.

Economic crisis or not - on 3 March will the Cebit in Hanover, and the organizers want to know nothing bad mood. The main themes of the fair: The Internet and "Cloud Computing". Even some refugees are Cebit this again.

 

Frankfurt am Main, Germany - The Cebit despite the crisis. Although of 3 to 8 March some exhibitors no longer be there in the last year the exhibition halls in Hanover filled. But others just want the crisis in their offers in the weaker economic environment will present. So this time companies like Dell, Intershop and Nokia Siemens Networks represented in 2008 were not among the 5845 exhibitors included.

Cebit "Webciety" hall (drawing): Facets of a future Internet society

"We want new ways to get our customers to meet," said Dell spokesman Michael Rufer. Previously focused PC manufacturers on special exhibitions. Now he shows at the Cebit Intel as a partner in his entire hardware portfolio.

For the second time is the cell phone manufacturer HTC from Taiwan, even though two weeks before the Mobile World in Barcelona the most important industry event. "The CeBIT has a great potential, because many dealers and buyers are well informed and make deals," said Germany's CEO, Lars-Christian Weiss cheek. "We are happy in Hanover, to the consumer of our products." It also includes a mobile phone, the symptom of an IT topic, which this year is very often called: The G1 is the first mobile phone with Google's Android operating system and connects its users with the "Cloud" (see box below) .

The departure in the Cloud is a matter of trust

For companies Cloud computing offers the possibility, previously self-organized work areas, such as their own mail servers to Internet service providers and externalise it to cut costs - the recession in a very important argument. A study by IT consultancy Avanade showed that 65 percent of the world's more than 500 firms surveyed by the Computing Cloud the promise of cost savings. However, there is no hope without fear: 72 percent of companies trust their internal systems more than the offerings in the cloud.

KEYWORD: CLOUD COMPUTING

The terminal is at the Cloud Computing just a window on an always current dataset. Who on the computer enters an appointment, sees him later when we look in the phone calendar, a contact mobile who enters, it can later retrieve at the PC - only online, of course. The same is true for address books, e-mails, online stored photos, documents and so on. Many providers try to present itself as a premier address for access to the data cloud to position. These include, for example, the search engine Google, the hardware manufacturer with Apple MobileMe and the mobile phone producer Nokia with its service Ovi. Vodafone also wants to focus on network services set.
For Cloud Computing companies has another meaning: You can compute or data intensive tasks to outsource data centers, in some computers - or in the cloud storage capacity as needed for certain tasks to rent. Amazon is a pioneer here, with its Web Services (AWS), such as the S3 storage service. There are also many other providers, such as the Force.com platform from Salesforce.

"Attention will discourage many managers, the challenges of Cloud Computing to accept," said Paul Huppertz, who at Avanade has intensely busy. In the long term but will the time and pressure to act to strengthen the company. "One of the predictable side effects of the Cloud computing will probably be that the purchase of server and storage systems and software licenses is increasingly frowned upon," the expert is expected.

The market researchers at Gartner expect that by 2012 it will last until the Cloud Computing will prevail. To walk into the business to bring advertise the Cebit exhibitors already for their offerings.

"With Cloud Computing or supplied by a network services and software allows customers up to 80 percent in area and 60 percent in power and cooling cost savings," IBM promises.

"Building a community of citizens"

Stefan Höchbauer, IBM Software chief in Germany for Cebit announces a "Showcase", in which the basis of a concrete example of it, "such as the intelligent use of IT resources in a virtualized environment IT processes and best possible support simultaneously optimizing the energy balance can be achieved. "

An application offered by IBM for the Cloud Computing is the cooperation in the network with Web-2.0-resources such as blogs and wikis.

Also for the authorities would develop a cross-agency collaboration is becoming increasingly important, says Höchbauer at the request of the AP news agency. Real citizens can use a blog or building a community of citizens not only preached but lived. " What constitutes a "Software as a Service (SaaS) for certain applications has begun, is now also on traditional hardware services such as data storage or processing power for complex calculations. Thus, as the U.S. company Iron Mountain at the Cebit his bid for "Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS). The concept includes the backup, archiving, restoration and use of distributed digital data on laptops, PCs and file servers. Also, T-Systems is exhibiting at CeBIT, as corporate memory and computing capacity in the network can use.

Increasingly everyday even for private users

The move to the Web is also used for private users increasingly a part of the digital life. Instead of buying software, corresponding on-line applications. Paid advertising is.

As a leader in online advertising, Google has not just word processing and spreadsheets as Internet programs, but also countless other Web applications.

Especially interesting are the geographic services such as Google Maps. The company made this year CeBIT Partner Country California provides the interface for free, so in the internet countless "Mashups" Find: Web applications in which these Google services with other functions combined.

Microsoft responds to the fall of 2008 presented in the Windows Azure platform. This allows, for example, Office applications in data centers run on a browser control. It can also have multiple people simultaneously working on a document.

"Here is the agenda of the IT industry written"

"The 'cloud' shifts the boundaries of a private entertainment consumption," explained the organizers of the CeBIT. One example is new "On Demand" services for music and movies. Under the motto "Webciety" (derived from "Society"), the Cebit exhibition in a dedicated area of all facets of future Internet society show.

IT managers like Höchbauer see their opportunities in the approach to overcoming the economic crisis: "We have the most modern technology at hand and a degree of networking reaches us the opportunity to access information and to be processed so that we solve problems and new business models and thus can generate growth opportunities. " That was the Cebit is still the incumbent of the leading high-tech industry - "Here is the agenda of the IT industry is written."