I just got back from attending Comdex. Here are a few interesting observations I developed there:
1. IP CONVERGENCE
- General - The conference further confirmed my strong belief that everything converges into IP standard networks. John Chamber's presentation and CSCO's booth were very impressive, and further enhanced my thoughts that CSCO should be the big winner in networking hardware for IP convergence.
- VoIP - IP phones were in a number of booths around the conference. I tried out everyone I could, and was consistently amazed by the dramatic improvements that have occurred in quality of reception. Looks like the best early market may be international calls since the disparity in price is so large there. CSCO has already sold about 500k IP phones. John Malone's Liberty Media group has recently acquired control of Net2Phone. I think the plan is to provide an integrated service of entertainment/internet/telephone via cable. Very interesting. Bottom line - I would be scared to death of any company primarily exposed to the existing voice circuit switching technology paradigm.
- PC IP teleconferencing - MSFT had a nice exhibit using Instant Messaging teleconferencing on WinXP based PC's. It was very simple to set up multimedia communication. The salesman I talked to said he uses this new technique for interoffice calls more than the telephone.
- Storage over IP - What I saw at the "Enterprise Storage Smackdown" keynote panel tells me that your posted article on the coming demise of Brocade is probably correct. Three major storage players - EMC, IBM and NetApp all responded yes when asked if SoIP would replace Fibre Channel as the dominate storage networking platform within five years. I did not think Brocade made a highly convincing argument that this will not happen, only that it may take some time.
2. WIRELESS MOBILITY
- 802.11 was everywhere! Tons of different and exciting applications. Looks like it will be a huge winner over the next few years. I talked to several large tech companies which have or are installing across their office complexes. The Wi-Fi hardware already appears to be commoditized. The best looking investment opportunity is Intersil because of the predominance of their chipset. Also, if the standard moves to 11g because it is faster than 11b and has greater range than 11a, Intersil would apparently the game.
- Integrated handheld PC - Next year should see a proliferation of IHPC's which converge a PDA, cell phone and wireless internet/email into a single unit that looks like an IPAQ with and stubby antennae. I got to try the new Samsung unit, which is the first one out that fully fits this description. I really liked the basic design. However, it uses the Palm O/S, so, I will wait for units to come out using MSFT Stinger design with Pocket PC O/S. Handspring attracted big crowds for demos of its coming Treo IHPC. However, it too has a Palm O/S and the screen is smaller than the Stinger design. Overall, I think this is a monster market because it could be a replacement for majority of current huge installed base of cell phones, Blackberrys and PDA's. On the PDA front, it looks like Pocket PC will continue to gain ground in enterprise space as another big notebook computer maker- Toshiba - showed off their impressive new unit. This is in addition to the well developed CPQ and HP units already on the market. MSFT Pocket PC/INTC processors/ARMHY StrongArm design, should win the enterprise PDA war because conceptually the need is for a sub-sub notebook PC, and the Win/x86 architecture has won every battle as the PC has evolved. A number of the makers also showed off new models with expandable storage card slot. Toshiba forecasted potential for a 2GB storage card in 2002. It wasn't that long ago that was the biggest size storage drive you could get in a full sized notebook computer! With this big memory, a faster processor and an integrated docking station (keyboard & mouse, audio and video cards, and a big monitor connection) the IHPC could suddenly become a notebook PC replacement item.
3. ENTERTAINMENT/IT/COMMUNICATION CONVERGENCE
- IP based electronics - Sony proposed that all major electronics have an IP address for networking. They showed an internet ready video camera that was pretty cool. They also demonstrated a new short range communication mechanism called "Feel" to link & sync their electronics.
- Video games - MSFT gave an impressive demo of the X Box in Gates keynote address and the X Box booth was really wild. The graphics are truly excellent for a game console. It appears that rabid gamers will have to buy one. However, I still wonder what happens after that initial surge of buying by the early adopters. I would think that most average gamers have already bought a PS2 and would be reluctant to buy a second advanced console in bad economic times. Also, X Box still lacks a large game software base like Sony has.
4. ENTERPRISE COMPUTING
- Standards based B2B - Chambers discussed it in his presentation. Gates made a big deal about XML based web services in his. MSFT gave 2 impressive demos of it - one which automatically compiled expenses over the web and completed an expense report, and the other automating an item request and purchase process.
- Storage database clustering - Ellison focused on the huge speed advantages 9i will have in a clustered environment.
- E-mail server - He also did a good job of promoting advantages of using of Outlook on top of 9i rather than MSFT Exchange Server.
- Virtual Organizations - some good discussions in the keynotes about advantages of networked ecosystems.
5. E-LEARNING
- Chambers called it the next killer app for the web. He made impressive examples of CSCO's effective use of the concept.
6. SECURITY
- Lots of discussion of fascinating security stuff like smart cards, biometrics, etc.
- VPN - looks like big growth area
7. ATTENDENCE
- Very light - some long time attendees said it was the worst in many years. This probably does not bode well for tech sales over the next few quarters.
Regards, Robert |
