The Interop Experience
By Val Souza
 At about this time last year, we were hard at work preparing to bring Interop, the leading global business technology event, to India for the first time, slated for February 2009. We were all pretty eager and keyed up, confident that we would be able to deliver a blockbuster show despite the fact that the financial storm had already broken in the US, with the Lehman Brothers collapse being the first of a series of body blows that would knock the stuffing out of financial markets globally.
Our confidence stemmed from the fact that we were already sitting pretty, with most of the expo space booked and confirmed by global IT majors keen to showcase their enterprise-IT wares to corporate India. After all, a broad-based enterprise-IT event on this scale hadn’t been organized in India for quite a while; apart from an inconsistent Bangalore IT.com, the only show of any significance was MAIT’s IT Asia in Delhi—and it had been more than 10 years since IT Asia wound up.
And then the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai happened. Our parent company’s flagship pharma-industry event CPhI, scheduled to commence the next morning, had to be called off. Moreover, by early December 2008, it was pretty evident that India would not be exempt from the effects of the global recession, and a downturn was very much upon us now. This double whammy meant that despite our best efforts, the first-ever Interop in India could not possibly be all we wanted it to be. Reluctantly, we took the tough decision to postpone the show to October 2009, watching helplessly as all our hard work melted down the drain.
We started rebuilding the blocks early in 2009, and, painstakingly, everything began to fall into place once more. We were even more determined now to make Interop Mumbai a spectacular event and truly world-class in every respect—expo, conference, keynotes, speakers, delegates, visitors, look-and-feel, everything. By mid-September the stage was set. The exhibit space was sold out; the speaker roster, impressive by any standards, would definitely attract a large audience; the on-ground logistics were being planned to the most minute detail, factoring in every conceivable contingency.
But we couldn’t possibly have factored in the unseasonal deep depression in the Bay of Bengal. Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka were flooded in the depression’s wake, and the subsequent fallout was heavy rains in Mumbai the weekend before Interop. Were our efforts going to be washed away once again, this time down the clogged storm water drains of Mumbai city?
No way! Perhaps someone “up there” is assigned the task of rewarding perseverance and sincerity. Wednesday, October 7 dawned bright and sunny. Interop Mumbai was inaugurated in style, and for the next three days the fair weather held out. We had something like 120 speakers from all over the world for the conference and over 70 leading IT vendors demonstrating the latest in enterprise-IT technology right there on the adjoining exhibits floor.
Of course we realized that we could not match the scale of Interop Las Vegas (yet!), but feedback from the multitude of delegates, visitors and participants indicated that Interop Mumbai was everything that everyone has come to expect from the world’s leading enterprise-IT show.
One of the highlights of the event was the awards evening, at which we celebrated the best IT implementations in the country by recognizing Network Computing’s EDGE winners in the Diamond and Silver categories, and also honoring the 10 CIOs from India who made it to InformationWeek’s first-ever Global CIO 50 list. Unlike some other IT awards in the country, where one has to merely fill up a form—or in some cases just show up—to be declared a winner, both EDGE and the Global CIO 50 have stringent qualification and evaluation criteria, and I am certain that both will soon become the most sought-after and coveted awards in the industry.
Many of you probably were part of Interop Mumbai in some way—either as partners or speakers or exhibitors or delegates or visitors—and certainly contributed significantly to the success of the event. To the rest who couldn’t make it, all I can say is that you sure missed the chance to witness history in the making. Next year, Interop Mumbai is scheduled for 28 to 30 September 2010 at the Bombay Exhibition Center. Do make sure you’re there for the amazing Interop experience!
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