Trade shows are great places to get a number of things done. For the companies that exhibit, they are a great place to find new leads. For a buyer, they are great place to see solutions – competitive solutions – in action for contrast and comparison purposes. But they are also a great place to get a “feel” for where an industry is going.

“WebRTC, Super Wi-Fi and M2M would be the three hot areas,” observed Abramson to Tehrani. “And also some of the more inventive established players…guys like you and I are more into the software and the apps, because we’re always on the go, but it was great to see that there’s still imagination coming out of companies that have been staples here at ITEXPO (News - Alert) for as long as I’ve been coming. So it’s great to see that the older, established companies are not resting on their laurels and they’re bringing out new services…yes, they’re using the cloud. So in the old days some people used to build pizza boxes and put them in a rack server somewhere or do it on the prem. Everybody’s embraced the cloud and everybody’s clearly embracing mobile,” he said. At the recent ITEXPO East Event held in Miami in January, TMC (News - Alert) CEO Rich Tehrani addressed some of these issues during an interview with tech visionary Andy Abramson (News - Alert), founder and CEO communications firm Comunicano. The company, which is based in Del Mar, California, helps companies that know their products but don’t know how to communicate their products.

Abramson notes that his company has seen a shift in the way people are looking at the cloud. People today – the same people who looked at it as taboo just a few years ago – are realizing the true meaning of cloud is collapsing everything and using common software that allows things to work when they need to work.

He notes that another trend is a rethinking of the channel, particularly in light of the speed with which the tech market moves today.

“I think the channel is starting to become more and more a challenge for the company that has to sell as well as the buyer and you’re starting to see more and more direct buying and direct selling,” observed Abramson. “I think people are used to things happening faster and the channel tends to slow it down. Time is collapsing. What used to be 90 days is now 45. What was 45 is going to be 20 and what was 20 is going to be tomorrow.”

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