Next week, several thousand people will converge on beautiful Dublin, Ireland not only for the sights and sounds of this historic city, but to take part in Management World 2011. Our flagship event will see people from around the world converge on one of Europe’s business hubs, in a brand new, state-of-the-art venue.
But beyond the stellar location of the convention facility and the beauty of Ireland’s capital city, Management World 2011 – which promises to be our biggest event to date – will be about so much more. I really think this year’s event effectively mirrors all of the interesting changes happening in the communications industry.
From year to year, I normally have the view that things have changed quite significantly over the past 12 months. But this time around I really feel the penny has dropped in the past year across the industry in terms of the need for change, the need for new business models and the need to look at the cloud as an enabler for the future of operators.
Interestingly, I think there’s been a big shift in mindset over the past four or five years, but we really got there in the past year. Areas like machine to machine as a potentially strong future business model, the emergence of the smart grid and other areas such as mobile money, e-health, automotive, security and more are contributing to this change in our industry.
This shifting view also fits into the idea of traditional service providers moving from being companies that had all the great ideas and that owns the customer to one that today has some of the great ideas and a portion of the customer mindshare. However, they are also enabling other companies to get to their customers in an effective ways.
As the traditional telcos evolve and change, so does the entire industry, which will be reflected at Management World 2011.
Our flagship event has a new city, a new venue and hopefully many new faces as our industry grows well beyond the traditional communications business and into other key areas such as defense, cloud and cable. Attendees will get an up-close look at this broadening reach during our keynote perspectives.