The technological future was on display in many guises at this year’s CeBIT trade fair, though Irish participation in the flagship trade event was relatively light
DESPITE THE SAPPHIRE blue sky, it was a very cloudy week at CeBIT in Hanover. More than 4,000 exhibitors charged en masse to sell customers remote “cloud” access to their data and applications. Few spotted the irony of pushing for virtualisation in a trade-fair blizzard of business cards and old-fashioned face-time.
Berlin’s IFA is the world’s largest gadget show, but CeBIT is about business – with companies pushing everything from corporate computing to document management.
“This is the World Cup of business management software,” said Sean Fitzgerald, sales manager of Wicklow-based Herbst, which develops software packages for sectors from agriculture and mining. “If you want to go international, you have to be where the buyers are, and that’s CeBIT.”
Given our tech credentials, it was surprising that an Irish national presence was absent, leaving visitors to flock to the Chinese, Russian and even Polish stands. The few Irish exhibitors were happy to be there.
“We’re normally so engaged with delivering projects that it’s important to just go around, meet people, pre-schedule meetings and pick up fresh ideas,” said Fanuel Dewever of 83 Degrees South, an innovations consulting company based in Ballsbridge, with workers in Belgium and Slovakia. “If you just come to stand in your booth and not connect, it’s not worth it. A website is good but static; it’s much easier to adapt your message when you talk to potential customers and partners.”
A big draw were two pole-dancing robots, suggesting that androids have a lot more to dream of than just electric sheep. The robots, made from scrap, will perform their suggestive pelvic movements at your party for a mere €30,000.
The laptop star was Fujitsu’s snazzy new Lifebook, a Macbook Air wannabe that is marginally heavier in a sleek magnesium casing. At less than €1,000, the Lifebook is aimed squarely at the business customer, as is the impressive Stylistic tablet with a 10-inch display, launching next month.
On her walkabout, Chancellor Angela Merkel had tested the Stylistic’s waterproof casing by submerging it in a fish tank. For good measure, she also dropped it on the floor. It survived what she laughingly called a “double check”.
Opening the event, the German leader said cloud computing would succeed or fail based on the trust test. “The more automatic and self-evident [that] using the internet becomes,” said Mrs Merkel, “the more trust one has to be able to place in these products one uses.”
Proving at CeBIT that you can make an old tech turkey gobble again was the striking return to form of Microsoft. Attendees were given a full presentation of the Windows 8 post-icon era, involving Rubix Cube-style tiles through which users scroll horizontally – either with a mouse or by touchscreen. The fluid display impressed visitors and, for once, a tech corporate slogan – “The Power of Design” – was no exaggeration.
Upstaging Microsoft’s own Kinect – an Xbox platform where hand gestures control the action – was Belgian company SoftKinetic. Rather than Microsoft’s closed universe, the Belgians have a camera they are selling to third-party developers. At CeBIT, visitors waved their hands madly to control the Angry Birds, literally giving those egg-stealing pigs the finger.
Like Kinect, there are football and dance games requiring much dribbling and pose-striking. Expect to see the first televisions incorporating the Belgian technology by year-end.
The most fascinating hall was the CeBIT lab where, among half a dozen robots, Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, creator of the MP3 file, presented a new 800mb per second data transfer technology using regular LED office light.
German designers also presented an electric pod car, that can not only shrink by 50cm to get into tight spaces and which you can, via smartphone, order to come and pick you up. “The people who predicted intelligent robots, virtual reality and self-driving cars are right,” said Google chief executive Eric Schmidt. “These technological advances will redefine the way we live and the way we interact with each other.”
The technology future was definitely in Hanover this week, but where was Ireland?
