«It’s a Connected World – Connecting business & opportunities»
The 14th InfoCom World International ICT Conference took place at Divani Caravel hotel, on Tuesday, October 30th 2012, under the auspices of the ministry of Development, Competition, Infrastructures, Transportation and Networks, the EETT, EEKT, HAMAC, ΙΕΕΕ, e-TEE, EMiPEE and GSA. With the participation of more than 2500 delegates, confirmed once more that it is the most important event in SE Europe in the field of digital technology, picturing the rapid development brought by broadband and the ongoing convergence of telecommunications, IT and media.
During the conference sessions all halls were crowded with delegates since the 133 speakers made certain that the audience attention was kept at its peak with their presentations on: New Generation Networks, Cloud services, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Extroversion, Television, Digital Dividend, TETRA and Social Media.
This year’s event was titled «It’s a Connected World: Connecting business & opportunities» believing that that connecting all devices, anytime, anywhere, any device is not only a case of technological request, but a social one. More than ever before, Informatics and Telecommunications are positioned on the frontline of all the efforts for restructuring the country. Both because they are at the center of new entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as the fact that no kind of business can be set up, operated and established without their implementation. Under the same concept, the state has recognized the assistance that ICT can provide to the resonation of costs in the public sector and it is also more than evident that the ICT sector is the market field more feasible to recuperate from the crisis.
Apart from the voice which is now considered as a mere application, data –from the email to the most demanding live video streaming- is going to test the new wired and wireless communication paths, while cloud finds its place in the product portfolio.
The sessions forming the backbone of the event were:
1st session: Infrastructure: BYOD – Bring Your Own Data
Our future is digitally connected to the present through many various networks that all speak the same “language”. There are no winners or losers, primary or secondary roles. Everyone has its own part in this “game” of seamless distribution and communication of the information, through various networks based on different technologies: fixed, wireless, optical fiber to the home or to the office.
In our days, the road is steep and difficult. In most cases the decisions to be taken are based more often on economics, than on specifications or “exotic” technologies. Numbers are more implacable than ever before and there is no place left for visionaries, even if that means delaying the realistic plans for LTE deployment…
Solutions that provide high cost/performance ratio may at the end be the only ones to overcome the reservation barriers and turn business plans into great scale projects. What are these solutions? What are the needs they try to fulfill? What are the opportunities in store for us and what are the realistic limits that we must not dare cross? This session will try to find the proper answers to all these questions.
2nd session: All in the Cloud: Everything as a Service!
Smart Grids, M2M, NFC, e-Health, Fleet management, Smart Home, EaaS… Whatever may be expressed as data, it may as well become a service and whatever is a service, it may fetch money. Yet, if we want this broad spectrum of services to be activated, it needs first to be attractive and second, fulfill certain needs of the users.
The nature and special characteristics that make a service attractive will be explored in this session, regarding not only the consumer, but also the integrator behind it. Innovation, ease of use, Return on Investment, amortization of the primary investment and prospects of every project are just a few of the parameters that will be discussed here.
3rd session: Entrepreneurial environment – Innovation and extroversion
Every project, infrastructure, small or big plan –whatever its specific technical and economic characteristics- must conform to the country’s entrepreneurial, taxation and legislative framework, which is rather “unfriendly” towards the existing enterprises as well as reluctant to embrace new efforts.
The guests of this session will analyze –each one from its own point of view- all the major parameters, the restraining factors and the emerging opportunities that shape the entrepreneurial and investment climate in Greece. Special emphasis will be placed on extroversion, on the efforts by young entrepreneurs and the various forms of primary funding available for hi-tech enterprises. Investment funds’ representatives will take part in this session, where innovative case studies will also be presented.
CEOs Summit – Economy & telecoms: operating at the limit!
The CEOs of the most important Telecommunications companies in Greece will take part in the final and most interesting session of the Conference, in order to present their personal views about the future of the Telecommunications sector.
In spite of the generally unstable economic environment in this country and abroad, there is a much more stable base in many areas, two “pillars” of which are the new legislative framework about Telecommunications and the successful completion of the frequency spectrum auction.
The heads of the Telecommunications companies in Greece have to reposition themselves on fundamental issues, now, regarding their operation – for example, the continuing diminution of liquidity, the labor problems, the decrease of the termination (????) and roaming charges, the building of high-speed networks etc.
At the same time, they still need to handle the full integration of ICT services using Cloud technologies and take advantage of the various synergies, placed quite high in the list of priorities for all of them. Top-echelon representatives from the Government and the Regulator have also been invited to take part in this session, in the hope that the fruitful dialogue will help towards better understanding and finding solutions to the chronic problems in the market.