After being absent for 3 years to Systems in Munich I arrived to the old Riem Airport now known as Messe Stadt (Fair City). My first steps where to register myself and to seek some interesting news in the Press Releases room. I met Hermann there, a friend of mine at Open Systems Publishing. From his greetings I knew somethings was amiss. Herman said that he is going to "look around" in the Munich Downtown, as the Systems show is only 5 halls big, unlike the other times when it was 14 halls full of vendors proudly displaying their wares.
Indeed Herman was right as always. This time the show has shrank to only 2 Software and 3 hardware buildings. One Entrance in the East was closed for good.
The show has also changed its profile from an International showcase, into at most regional show gathering mostly Bavarian offices, with Sales and Marketing teams at the German or German Speaking scope. Visible were only a half a dozen American enterprises, the Swiss came to only several companies, and more Austrian ones as again, because Austrians have closer to Munich than Germans from Hamburg.
This year in the head lines was Bulgaria, but the writers impression was that more Romanian companies showed up. Perhaps it was a wrong impression.
Several Russian companies especially from the Security areas, notably S.N- Safe&Software (www.safensoft.com) promoter of a antivirus and root kit prevention software. It is a pity that Diamond systems was busy at other shows (www.diamondsystems.ch) like IPEX in Brno in Czech Rep.
Another security company was Dr. Web (www.drweb.com.ua) springing into German markets and possibly to other markets in EMEA as well.
One of a kind company was a young startup from Slovenia (www.creatoor.com) whose CEO and a Visionary Tomaz Korelc was presenting his outfit in Munich.
An Egyptian Pavilion was this time full of surprises. Mr. Magdy Sharaway was showing a sleek random password generator (www.softlock.net).
Incom Storage GmbH was seen at at least 2 locations, however its CEO Mr. Brustkern was elusive to reach for most of the time, but I was told he was at the show for two days (www.incom.de).
In general there was lots of talking about Advertising Dollar going South from paper and going North for the On-line Advertising. The trend is there, that is for sure, but so much cash was spent on Paper Adds, only to measure by the amount of papers available at distribution bins.
The writer was made privy to the most lucrative booth deals, and the price per sq. m. came down and a sweet number of €200 was mentioned.
On the show some slogans were new to the writer, like "Client Mnagement" on the stall of Symantec. When inquired, the CEO of present on stand answered: this is not a CRM, it is Clent Management which I can doi for you and with you for €20k paid to me in cash. Mr. Dirk K Martin (www.helpline.de) was not joking, he was serious. Such arogance towards a client whishing to be "managed" is worth substantially lesss. And Mr Martin may not have many clients for his CRM company sooner or later.
Written in Munich
S. Baginski
www.imugroup.eu
s.baginski@bluewin.ch
