#dse2010 – One Canuck Perspective
Attendance
DSE organizers recorded some 160+ individual Canadian registrations; accounting for the booth staffs of Canadian software companies Capital Networks, X2O Media, CognoVision, Intello, Harris and Scala’s Canadian contingent, the total Canuck ‘visitor’ traffic would have been close to 100 attendees.
Among those, there were a few end-user delegations including a brewing company and a 300+ store clothing retailer, coming there to get a better understanding of new products and options. Overall, Canadian integrator attendance was low.
Exhibitor and product relevance to Canadian Market
By and large, most of the products on the show floor could be sourced in Canada through some form of distribution or direct-from-vendor arrangement.
Most Tier 1 Display brands offered very similar line cards on both sides of the border. Notable exceptions were Samsung PROM, which is still not available in Canada, and a few new ViewSonic products still being introduced in the US before rolling over north of the border.
Most Tier 1 displays and hardware manufacturers even had adequate Canadian staffing at the booths making it easy to connect with the right contacts.
Broadline distributors active in the DS space offered a varied degree of support for Canadian visitors. Ingram Micro flew in a single representative, Synnex‘s Daren Esnard wasn’t spotted at the booth, but we could not confirm if he was actually at the show. Tech Data was not seen on the show floor.
Both Synnex and Ingram booths did their best to present an extremely wide net of products available from each distributor. Some choices were clearly driven by available vendor support, but still provided a relevant snapshot of the available product lines. Both booths were well staffed by manufacturer reps and division staff to help answer questions.
Show Floor Highlights
Apart from the obvious Canadian suspects (Capital, X2O, Harris and others), it was great to learn about Scala Canada’s new-found independence – with a Canadian price list and a separate P&L, the Canadian division is now able to properly support Canadian deployments.
Canadian resellers are no longer subject to uncertainty of exchange fluctuation and will soon get proper local inside sales support.
From the content camp, Jeremy Gavin of ScreenFeed hinted that its Canadian-specific news content feed is ready, just waiting for the first multi-screen client request to make it publicly available; no French-language feed yet.
GTA-based Rise Vision maintained its strategy of forgoing a dedicated booth on the show floor, buddying-up with other non-competing exhibitors.
Unfortunately with NEC’s introduction of VUKUNET, Rise lost its main booth-buddy and had to settle for less visible locations.
CognonVision, an audience measurement company from Toronto, also sans-booth, was prominently featured in NEC, Capital Networks and Intel booths – also on the Reflect Systems booth, Ed
I assume that will change as NEC continues to develop its facial recognition software. Mississauga-based TTUFF Technologies (known to IT veterans as TTX) showcased its version of the on board PC compatible with NEC’s M-series. The TTUFF PC is available at almost 1/2 price of the NEC comparable. Good news to NEC resellers.
For Canucks looking for wires-free solutions at the show, ‘complete’ solutions could be found from Mediatile and Intello.
- Montréal-based Intello Technologies‘ pitched wireless guest networks and digital signage specific to hotels and lodging. The iHotel solution, used by a number of national chains, combined secure wireless infrastructure and Digital Signage delivery via wireless.
- MediaTile, focusing on cellular technology, emphasized the official release of the Telus partnership. The deal, originally inked in the fall, enables Canadian telcom Telus to sell MediaTile’s ‘turnkey’ solution and MediaCast software.
General Reception (Wednesday Evening)
Bad timing. The official reception conflicted with the critical Canada-Russia Ice Hockey game causing attrition among the Canadian visitors. Those that diligently attended (Scala team) cried out en-masse upon hearing the news of the final score. Hope it was useful to those that showed up!
Overall, good show, informative, yet nothing ground-breaking.
It appeared that, this year, manufacturers’ focused on expanding their product lines, concentrating on marginal improvement from last year.
Most interesting things that stuck out to me were ‘big ideas’ coming out of well thought-out content, not the hardware used to display the message. Looks like our industry is slowly maturing.
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