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milja_gillespie
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The past month commemorated what I affectionately like to call "tradeshow season". It's that time of year when (if you are home to see it) the leaves turn color and fall from the trees. When tradeshow season starts the days are still warm and the nights are cooler, and when it ends it is downright cold and the trees are bare. During this time I leave home when pumpkin pie is still on the table (for Canadians anyway) and come back just in time to enjoy Halloween candy.

   

The fun part of tradeshow season is being part of the excitement of product announcements, industry news, great keynotes and more. This season, I had the pleasure of spending four weeks at four great events. I'll share my top 5 hilights from CTIA MobileCON, Gartner IT Symposium, SAP TechEd and the SAP Enterprise Mobility conferences all held in October.

    

1) At the Gartner IT Symposium, keynote speakers discussed the top technology trends, and how changes in IT over the next five years will dwarf those of the previous 20. The speed at which business changing is really amazing - and much is being driven by mobile technologies. Gartner's "Top 10 Trends" report  hilights how mobile permeates many core areas - in fact mobile is core to the top 5 trends. When looking at media tablets, mobile applications and interfaces, contextual apps, the Internet of things, and app stores, it is exciting to see how these technology really are driving business forward.

2) MDM lives on... One session that was great to see was the Mobile Device Management Magic Quadrant session delivered by Phil Redman of Gartner. The SAP booth was right besides the theatre where this session was being held, so I was witness to the overflow of this session. It was actually the only such session that spilled over into the hallway and down the aisles. The popularity of the session was testimony to how MDM is still a hot topic in mobile. I've worked on MDM for the past 7 years, and I am continually surprised that every company hasn't adopted it yet. As a "must-do" before going mobile, I think that companies are now realizing that they want to adopt applications and need better security in place before they can take the next step to deploying apps.

3) Another great hilight this month was having SAP's president of mobility, Sanjay Poonen, deliver a keynote address at CTIA MobileCON. Having worked in the mobile space for so long, I find it exciting to work for such an inspiring leader. Sanjay's keynote sets the stage for what the future of mobile will be, and how SAP plans to drive it forward. If you haven't seen Sanjay speak then you should definitely take a few minutes to watch this keynote video.

4) Now on to SAP TechEd. During this conference, I was pleased to be running our Afaria and SAP Mobile Platform product advisory board meetings. This is always one of my favorite events every year as I get to bring together our biggest customers to help drive the product direction forward. After having run these meetings for the past 6 or 7 years, I was very excited about the energy and mobile innovations that our customers are working on. We often talk about "if mobile was a baseball game, what inning are we in". I am happy to see many customers who are well past spring training, past batting practice, past the first pitching and into the first few innings to the game. The innovation that our customers are sharing as they transform their businesses are really remarkable. Another fun, though unrelated activity from TechEd was a great Video of Oliver Bussmann and Sanjay Poonen. Check it out!

    

5) I'll finish my list off with a tidbit from the SAP Enterprise Mobility conference in Las Vegas. This is our second time running this targeted conference focused on mobile for SAP customers. One of the hilights for me was the extensive list of great educational sessions. I wish some if these could have been recorded  and shared with everyone. One such session was an outstanding overview educating attendees of iOS6 for enterprise use. I was led by two experts (Angela Robert and Matt Carrier) who are passionate about iOS and were able to share their great knowledge about the OS for developers and IT. The other sessions were a compilation of my favorite topics: Building a Mobility Center of Excellence and Defining Your Mobile Strategy (JP Finnell), Driving Right Time Experiences (Vishy Gopalakrishnan and Maribel Lopez). Luckily all of these sessions have also been delivered as recent webcasts so you can watch them anytime on Mobile Sense.

Overall each of the events I attended this October were excellent in their own way. One thing that seemed to be missing was any huge industry news. I am continually expecting acquisitions to be announced, companies to release new products and cool new devices. Due to the rather quiet fall, I expect this will be the big news in the spring of 2013. For now I'll settle down to enjoy the last of the fall weather before the snow falls. And I'll prepare for the next two events in  November. If you'll be at M3 in San Diego or IDC mNext Forum in Santa Clara look me up!