The afternoon session at DemoFall (more) features "enablers and sea changers." Looks like a group of highly useful technologies, if not exactly sexy. Here are my quick takes on the presentations:
- Jasper Wireless is a single cellular network that devices can connect to inexpensively from several different countries. There's a Web dashboard so the machines' human masters can get visibility into what they're doing and where they are. The platform can also "provision" (turn on) consumer wireless devices easily and cost-effectively.
- Talari Networks speeds up enterprise wide-area networking for cheap. "Demo" is the CEO talking on stage. To his credit, he's only got one slide and no cheesy video. It's about as exciting a presentation as this writeup is. If you manage a large network, check it out and let us know here if it's worthwhile. I can't tell.
- Propel Software is launching "Personal Bandwidth Managment," or QOS (quality of service) for your personal computer. This is something you might need if you suffer from poor-quality VoIP or gaming experiences. I thought this was something you handled in the router, so you could manage all the bandwidth hogs on your network at once as opposed to just on your own local PC, but it should certainly be much easier to manage bandwidth use locally.
- Fusion-io makes "performance-based storage." Keeps the "server fed" from disks. I think it's a RAM cache and controller for disk arrays.
- Qumranet is launching the Solid Ice desktop virtualization product. In other words, it lets one machine run desktops on remote or central machines.
- Phreesia replaces the clipboard and forms you fill out when you go to the doctor's office with a tablet-based, touch-screen, wireless computer. Looks like it makes data entry easier for patient, more reliable for physicians, and way better for medical record integrity. The challenge, of course: selling to doctors and hospitals. But wait! "We provide Phreesia at no cost to participating practices." How can they do that? It's a PC. It has a screen. So after (or during?) the patient sign-in process, they get ads. Clever. Useful.
- LogMeIn, the remote desktop software I swear by, can now support smart phones. Very useful for support people who need to troubleshoot users who get into trouble with Treos, etc. But no iPhone version, as far as I know.
The next session is "Rise of the Creative Class." We've covered all the companies in that block already (PeopleJam, CornerWorld, LiveMocha, Graspr) save one, SceneCaster, which we'll have for you soon.
I'm at the Office 2.0 conference (more) listening to the organizer, Ismael Ghalimi, discuss his pure Web 2.0 philosophy for setting up the conference: No local software, no files stored on PCs, no paper at all. At this conference, Ismael is even hoping that a special iPhone-friendly Web site set up for attendees will obviate the need for business card exchange (this is so not going to happen, but it's a good experiment).
Supporting the 600 attendees, nearly all of whom are spending time heads-down in either a Wi-Fi laptop or their conference-provided iPhones, there's a serious network infrastructure. I counted 20 Swisscom-provided pole-mounted Wi-Fi repeaters in the main ballroom alone. Kind of frightening. And it reminds us that Office 2.0 isn't free or easy. Just because a PC may not be storing data or processing its own applications, the infrastructure has got to run somewhere. Remember this if you're thinking about moving your business over to Web 2.0.
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