Cloud Expo Asia 2017 and sister events declared a success

The shows were fairly well attended.

Cloud Expo Asia, Cloud & Cyber Security Expo and Data Centre World returned to Singapore on 11 and 12 October at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre. The 2017 edition introduced two new colocated events, Big Data World and Smart IoT Singapore, to make it a mega-event with five themes.

Organisers CloserStill Media said the events welcomed over 14,000 delegates from across the cloud, security and data centre ecosystems, and said over 300 international suppliers including CenturyLink, Cloudera, Datapipe, Datto, Digital Reality, Docker, Fujitsu, Google Cloud, Huawei, Intel, KDDI, Legrand, Nutanix, Oracle, Puppet, SAP, Sophos, Singtel and Telstra. 

"We have been delighted by the extraordinary response to the fifth anniversary edition! With a host of ground-breaking educational content, networking opportunities and invaluable support from the vendor community, it has been a hugely exciting few days.

A view of the HGST: a Western Digital brand's booth.

"New for 2017, we introduced Big Data World which delivered an astonishing audience of high-level Chief Data Officers (CDOs), data analysts and data scientists. The success of the new attraction is testament to the innovation and incredible developments taking place in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. It is clear that Singapore is certainly leading the charge in cloud-based adoption and maturity," Kiwanuka said in a post-event roundup.

The event was opened by IMDA Chief Digital Evangelist Khoong Hock Yun, IT advocate Charles Mok, and featured a global lineup of more than 300 expert speakers, including Bernie Trudel, Chairman of the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA), Joe Cunningham, Regional Risk Officer, Asia Pacific at VISA, and Harmail Chatha, Director of Global Data Center Operations at Groupon.

The conference also premiered DevOps Live which welcomed industry leaders such as Puppet, Docker and Chef to lead exclusive workshops on DevOps, containers and microservices.

DevOps speaker Vincent De Smet, DevOps Engineer at Honestbee said: "Businesses should be able to understand how best to manage and leverage DevOps, containers and global resource projects. I find that a lot of enterprise organisations don't really follow what is happening in the open source world, so this event is great for exposing the enterprise world to what start-ups are doing to disrupt established business models."

Simplercloud says you can get a working
server in 3 minutes.

Highlights from the second day of the event included a presentation delivered by Hock Lai Chia, President of the Singapore FinTech Association in the FinTech, Finance & Banking Technology Theatre. Chia spoke on the potential impact of Blockchain and disruptive technologies on traditional, established financial services.

The second day also included sessions in the Huawei Cloud Expo Asia Keynote Theatre. In one CIO panel discussion moderated by Barbara Dossetter, MD of CIO Connect, Steve Walker, CIO at DHL Supply Chain Asia Pacific and Ken Soh, CIO at BH Global Corporation spoke on the importance of engaging with customers to drive digital transformation initiatives. The panel also argued that instilling a new corporate culture is a critical step in a firm's journey to the cloud.

Said Adrian Seto, Technical Account Manager, Qualys, an exhibitor: "We have met many existing clients and even more new business contacts at Cloud & Cyber Security Expo. We are pleased that there are so many delegates with very specific technical questions which reflect their high level of knowledge. We are definitely returning next year!"

Watchguard had evil bears in cages at its booth, with the advice to protect businesses against ransomware.

Loud bangs could occasionally be heard from the Sophos booth. 

Nikunj Bora, Director, Qubole also had a good experience as an exhibitor. "The footfall at our stand has definitely been positive and we have gathered a lot of interest. We have spoken to lots of decision makers, as well as engineers who are very important to our business!" Bora said.

Claire Hsu, Marketing Manager of Lilee Systems, which provides industrial IoT connectivity solutions, commented, "Our sales team are very happy with the attendance turnout. Visitors are looking for solutions and they are great leads for us to expand our network and find out their needs. The engineers are very knowledgeable and they are highly influential in a purchase decision. The co-located events attract a range of IT professionals which broadens the audience and exhibitors are able to see a greater amount of traffic than at similar events in the region."

Delegates were also happy with the events. VIP delegate Desmond Foo, Senior Engineer at ST Electronics said, "It is my first time at Cloud Expo Asia and it has been very useful for keeping myself updated with developments in IoT solutions. My whole department is here with me! This is the only event in Singapore with such a strong IoT focus – there’s no other conference like this!" 

Eye-catching floor advertisement from Ixia. Ixia provides testing, visibility, security solutions, network testing tools and virtual network security solutions.

Edmund Tan, MD, The Clarity! Works, liked the content. "There is a good selection of companies to source solutions from. My IT manager is also attending to speak with exhibitors about technical queries while I look out for new industry happenings at the conference," he said.

Amit Puri, Authorised Officer, UBS, recommended the event for startups and tech professionals looking for new opportunities to boost their own strategies. "This is a really good event with plenty of knowledge to share," he said. "It’s particularly great for I attend a lot of events, but this is the most comprehensive with so much information in one place." 

Son Nguyen, Director of Digital Product, Microsoft Azure MVP, FPT Asia Pacific said a lot of emerging technologies were available, including IoT and big data solutions. "I have been able to catch up with friends and make new contacts too. I will be back next year and would definitely recommend to my friends and colleagues!" he said.

Some highlights on the combined showfloor included:

The 'quest' is fast becoming a staple at enterprise technology shows. Visitors can pick up a 'passport' which has to be stamped by visiting the booths of various sponsors. In this case completed passports could be entered in a lucky draw to win an iPad.

Feeling like relaxing at the beach after using StorageCraft's business continuity solutions.

At the HGST: a Western Digital brand booth, a model of a 96-layer 3D NAND storage. Western Digital's BiCS4 technology is the world’s first 3D NAND technology with 96 layers of vertical storage capability, providing better capacity, density, performance and reliability.

Security and data protection firm Barracuda Networks won the incentive game hands-down with selfies printed on iced chocolate drinks. It also offered a chance to win a Carl Zeiss VR One Plus virtual reality (VR) headset.

Take a selfie, and Barracuda Networks would give you a beverage with your selfie printed on it. The catch was that visitors only qualified if they were one of the first 25 to attend a tutorial session. The drink appeared to be topped with ice cream which would have provided a somewhat stable printing substrate.

Oracle played on the theme of memory with traditional snacks. Gem biscuits in the background and haw flakes (pink and yellow packaging) and White Rabbit sweets (blue and white packaging) in the foreground.

Free dragon's breath meringues at Smart Hub from StarHub. Smart Hub offers "insights-driven intelligence".

Sophos offered a strongman game. Watch the Instavideo of someone trying it out. 

At the Centurylink booth, visitors could try to move a ball through a maze by tilting the surface. Every pitfall had to do with cyberthreats or cyberattacks.

Hitachi Asia offered a wheel of fortune method to getting a small gift.

Another wheel of fortune style incentive, from Datapipe, which offers managed cloud, hosting and data centre services. 

Walkthrough a Digital Realty data centre virtually. Digital Realty offers data centre, colocation and interconnection services.

Halloween was the theme for Trainocate, a business and IT training provider. 

Trainocate also had a Halloween themed shooting game at its booth.

Visitors to the Singtel booth could try their skills at darts.

Kaminario, an all-flash enterprise storage provider, offered a chance to win a DJI drone.

SAP built a booth where visitors could pose as Innovation Heroes.

Seagate promised one new Seagate partner the chance to walk away with a 12TB hard disk. 

Delegates stood a chance to win an Amazon Echo after attending a demo at the HPE booth.

A number of brands used wearables and consumer electronics appliances as incentives for engagement. Apple Watches were particularly popular. Cybersecurity firm Datto was one such company, offering an Apple Watch as the top incentive in return for providing contact details. Sharing a selfie or a picture of the Datto stand with the #Datto hashtag earned more chances to win the watch.

CheckPoint's lucky draw prize was a Jabra Halo wireless headset.

Proofpoint, a cybersecurity firm, had an Apple Watch as an incentive.

ViewQwest, the Internet service provider, also offered a chance to win an Apple Watch.

OfficeKeeper - which has an endpoint protection solution - offered a chance to win a Bluetooth speaker in return for a review of their software.

All visitors to the Nutanix booth received a prize.

Sophos at #SophosCEA2017 also offered a unique Sophos drone.

Curvature, which provides new and pre-owned network solutions for the data centre, also had an Apple Watch poster prominently displayed at its stand. 

Silver Peak, a  software-defined (SD) WAN and hybrid WAN broadband solution provider, had the Linksys Velop home Wi-Fi router and Klipsch Bluetooth headphones at its booth.

The event stack will return to the Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre on October 10 and 11 2018.

Hashtags: #CEASG17, #CSESG17, #BDWSG17, #SmartIoTSG17, #DCWSG17