CTO Demo 2002 road trip

I ADMIT IT — I went to last week’s Demo 2002 conference with low expectations of what I would find. What with our dour economy and frequent media stories about venture capitalists not loosening their purse strings for new investments, I was expecting some mildly interesting software infrastructure and wireless demos. But I was pleasantly surprised by what I found, not only by the new technologies demonstrated and new market segments being addressed, but by the upbeat mood of the demonstrators, media, and venture capitalists. Here’s a sampling of my favorites.

Have you noticed a proliferation of wireless devices in your organization? How can we efficiently manage these devices? What would you do if your vice president of sales’ wireless PDA were stolen while he or she was on the road? We now face a new challenge: How do we support and control these devices? mFormation Enterprise Manager from mFormation Technologies helps control and manage these assets, even temporarily or permanently locking these devices from a central administration station.

Another product developed to manage far-flung devices is BigFix Enterprise from BigFix. BigFix uses a patented inspector technology that continuously monitors a long list of hardware and software characteristics on each user’s PC and allows us to fix problems such as security patches and software updates remotely, automatically, in bulk mode. No more visiting each PC every time a new security patch is required.

I saw several products that merit a closer look from e-commerce companies, including State System, Improv, and Mobular Engines. State Software’s State System allows a stateful session to be established between a browser and a Web application with no download or applet required. This allows increased interactivity between the user and the server without requiring new page loads — a great way to reduce abandonment during checkout. Improv from Octave Software is the first of the next-generation content management solutions that I have seen, and liked. With it’s lower price and modular design, this system allows IT to get out of the business of content management and puts it back into the hands of the creative staff. Mobular Engines Builder ASP from Mobular Technologies should help increase click-through and conversion rates in outbound e-mail campaigns. With its compressed, self-extracting databases sent in an e-mail, a recipient doesn’t have to go to your Web site to browse your wares.

An item to review if you’re like me and love to use the whiteboard is Virtual Ink’s new Mimio. It’s small, wireless, and allows you to record as many as 10 hours of whiteboard notes, without a PC.

Traveling less than you used to? Many CTOs are. But how can we support remotely located teams? Check out TeamView from Reality Fusion, my choice as best in show. TeamView brings the power of face-to-face group meetings to your desktop, for much less than the price of a traditional video conference call. TeamView provides video, audio, application collaboration, instant messaging, and even integrates with Outlook.

Overall, the Demo conference showed that despite the economic downturn, innovative and enterprise-worthy products will hit the market this year.

Paul Onnen is formerly the CTO of Nordstrom.com and is now a consultant. Contact him at paul@onnen.com.