CeBIT confident more data centre players will come in
By Goh Thean Eu March 31, 2015
- Data centre exhibitors up 50% thanks to partnership with DatacentreDynamics
- Room for improvement, the two companies looking at enriching conference
DEUTSCHE Messe AG, the organiser of the popular annual CeBIT tradeshow, believes it has what it takes to attract more data centre companies next year, mainly thanks to its partnership with DatacentreDynamics.
The two are working together to get data centre services providers to exhibit their products and technology in the CeBIT exhibition, as well as to get relevant speakers so that the related conference can attract the right crowd for these exhibitors.
The partnership has been yielding positive results, senior executives from both companies told Digital News Asia (DNA).
In 2014, before the collaboration, Deutsche Messe managed to sign up about 100 exhibitors from the data centre industry. This year, that number jumped to 150.
For Philipp Wilhelm, Deutsche Messe’s project director for CeBIT, this success was not a major surprise because the conference managed to attract many quality speakers.
“The idea is basically to have an event whereby the participants can gain knowledge from the conference, and then with the knowledge they gained during the conference, they can easily find partners here in the exhibition area to [explore new data centre trends],” he said.
“This is why people are exhibiting here. We have got the right audience for data centre companies. They get to meet the right people, to meet their potential customers, here,” he declared.
In 2014, the CeBIT conference was held on a much smaller scale – it was for only one day, compared with this year’s three-day conference.
DatacenterDynamics Asia Pacific chief executive officer Dedric Lam was also not surprised by this year’s success, saying that the data centre industry is a growing industry, and it is only natural to see increasing interest.
“A small part of that growth comes from companies wanting to build their own data centres, while the bigger portion of the growth comes from services and communications providers as more organisations start adopting cloud infrastructure,” said Lam.
DatacentreDynamics, a subsidiary of the DCD Group (a global business-to-business media and publishing company), has four core businesses, including conferences and research on the data centre industry.
Win-win partnership
The partnership between Deutsche Messe and DatacentreDynamics benefits both. Deutsche Messe, for its part, can make CeBIT relevant to more people. It also opens up the opportunity for it to conduct a more targeted marketing programme to attract exhibitors and visitors.
For DatacentreDynamics, the show will potentially give its clients more exposure. From a survey Deutsche Messe conducted prior to the opening of CeBIT 2015, about 46,000 visitors said that they were only interested in visiting the data centre hall (Hall 12).
In contrast, DatacentreDynamics’s largest independent show, DatacentreDynamics Converged which was held in London last November, attracted some 2,500 people.
“Participating in CeBIT means that we are taking part in the largest IT show in the world,” said Lam.
Although the data centre portion of CeBIT 2015 managed to attract 50% more exhibitors, Wilhelm believes that there is still room for improvement for next year’s event.
“We are thinking of redesigning the whole conference approach, so that people get more knowledge here on a day-to-day basis.
“For example, we may have one day where people talk about IT networks, and another day for topics like critical environments,” he said.
While these ideas are still under evaluation, one thing is certain: CeBIT 2016 will see the partnership between Deutsche Messe and DatacentreDynamics continue.
Goh Thean Eu reports from Hannover, Germany, at the invitation of CeBIT organiser Deutsche Messe AG. All editorials are independent.
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