April 29 – May 1, 2008

My week at Interop was a productive and frustrating experience.  I chose to attend the Interop conference in Las Vegas this year simply because I wanted to find out about new technologies being introduced and how they were going to be able to help the SMB’s (Small-Medium Business).  The event was held at Mandalay Bay hotel and casino this year and for those of you that have been to Mandalay Bay you know what a beautiful hotel it is.  The exhibitors, over 500 of them, were located in the largest room and reminded me of the spring Home Show that is held annually in Americas Center and The Jones Dome.  One vendor after another with small to large booths setup with the purpose of influencing you to take a look at their product line.  This year the consistent theme was 10GB networking and Green Computing.

Most of the vendors were giving away the normal stuff like t-shirts, koozies, pens & bouncing balls, all with their logo of course, and some of them were giving away a chance at an ipod touch, a wii and a few Best Buy gift cards.  On Wednesday I found myself in the lead for a wii at the Citrix booth until late in the day when I was finally removed from the leader board by what turned out to be a whole bunch of people, and I came home empty handed,except for all the t-shirts, koozies, pens & bouncing balls and stacks of literature.

Doug Kropp racing mini cars at the Citrix
booth trying to win a Wii.

It was good event and all in all we learned enough to make the trip worth the effort.  Green Computing is a hot buzz word throughout the industry and we are working on ways to introduce the concept to our clients.  Here are pictures that we snapped of some more booths.

Netgear was one of the vendors that showcased a product line that
a small business could actually utilize.  Their smart switches are reasonably priced and perform a multitude of functions that give you more control over your
network environment.

Google was here promoting on of their products, I’m just not sure
which one.  Since it wasn’t Android I didn’t really care too much.

A wireless switch, interesting concept.

Microsoft talking about Interoperability.