IT-SA 2018
Having some business meetings in Bavaria, we stopped by the IT-SA exhibition to see whether it might bring some opportunities for Cryptoucan™. Read on to see what we found out – it has been a really surprising visit for us.
Approaching the exhibition[1] has shown promising signs of modern event – including trendy means of transportation as seen in Pictures 1 and futuristic entrance shown in Picture 2 below.
Picture 1: Approaching the entrance.
Picture 2: The entrance
We stopped by a few stands and chatted with representatives of some of the exhibiting companies. Some of them – like the guys at NeuVector[2] – were really keen on discussing the technical, licensing and pricing aspects of their products. Others, like stemmer[3], confirmed our suspicion that the whole event is a huge disorganized mess – yet they were able to tell us their Cisco portfolio and give us lebkuchen!
Figuring out where to go was an impossible task for any sane person. Finding a café or restaurant where they would actually give you something to drink and eat in exchange for your money – well, it took us only two hours to get at least some meal. And then after the lunch, the really bizarre part has only started.
Picture 3: Secure lawn?
Seeing an IT security related stand which looked like a mowed lawn in front of suburban house, in Picture 3, did not make much sense. Nor the medieval presentation of Hornet security[4] in Picture 4, which provides spam and virus filtering (and archiving) on top of Microsoft[5] Office 365[6] – which provides … well, spam and virus filtering and archiving.
Picture 4: Hornet security.
And the hackerone[7] presentation in Picture 5 looked like from different time. I honestly can only hope, nobody takes ventures like this seriously.
Picture 5: Hackerone stand – like 50 years ago… or more?
The OWASP project[8][9] had a nice stand but nobody was standing there as you can see in Picture 6. And presenting OwnCloud[10] legacy looked slightly over the top in Picture 7.
Picture 6: empty OWASP stand.
Picture 7: OwnCloud
All in all, we were really happy we have just stopped by for a few hours and we did not invest into presenting any of our products there. The organizers have to go a long route before they make this a truly relevant exhibition. Right now – and I know, that if you look at the right numbers, it is the biggest European IT security exhibition – it is just a local German exhibition with no further reach and with little to no value for the visitors.
That is terrible, as the potential is really there. But for now – do not save the date, but rather save the day and do not go to IT SA (as in Picture 8).
Picture 8: Do not save the date, save the day and do not go to IT SA…
So thank you for staying with us – even though we do not present Cryptoucan™ on events like this. We have more interesting things to do and show. See you next week with more of them!
References
3. https://www.bt-stemmer.de/startseite.html
4. https://www.hornetsecurity.com/en/
5. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/