Gartner IT Expo 2007

This time of year I look forward to attending the Gartner Symposium IT Expo in Orlando. This week they're taking us to the Animal Kingdom for our offsite event. They estimate 6,000 attendees this year and it appears there are more people than ever before. The exhibit areas were very busy and I expect the keynotes and general sessions to be well attended. There are six critical business imperatives this year related to everything from customer retention, agile organizations, business processes and workflows and being profitable and competitive. It's everything we want to do. The consumerization of IT is well underway.

Gartner even departed from the corporate looking black & red bags to baby blue.

There is quite a bit of discussion about Web 2.0 and definition of the next disruptive technologies and inflection points. The analysts are trying to come up with new "frameworks" and "architectures." I like to think of it as "market-tectures." The vendors have some of the best swag for this year and you have the usual trick or treaters and swag collectors. I actually had lunch with one of our customers who happened to be at my table.