Wednesday, April 30, 2008

SofNet 2008 - The great BT love-in

Barring a fire on the last day, the Sofnet 2008 conference and exhibition has been a great success, just about every industry Journalist and Analyst I know, or know of, has beaten a path here to London's Olympia Conference centre.

So for an event that emphasizes the convergence of the global ' telecom networks with software, why the 10meter stands filled up with hardware vendors? Juniper, Alcatel-Lucent, Hauwei, Nokia all showing a presence (no Cisco). I guess the answer is the identity of the host sponsor, BT, and in the list of speakers and panel members, which is rather heavy on BT senior staffers.

People tend to be a bit dismissive of BT on a world stage, but here is why the great and the good turn out to fate BT: - A report from the department of innovation, universities and skills shows BT as the UKs largest investor in R&D and in fixed line infrastructure. So for the vendors it's great opportunity to share a platform and network with the golden geese that will see them through the credit crunch.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Without BT I dont think a single vendor from the list of usual suspects (Juniper, Nortel, Alcatel, Cisco) would bother having any significant presence in the UK. They arent hanging out in blighty for C&W, THUS, or any of the other altnets.