• silicon.com
• Technology
• Networks

By Sally Watson, 28 June 1999 00:15

NEWS The UK's largest IT trade show, Networks Telecom '99, opens in the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, tomorrow. With the organisers claiming some 25,000 people will attend over the exhibition's three days, Silicon.com asked some of its guests what the 600 exhibitors could expect to gain. According to David Neil, vice president of research at the GartnerGroup, most trade shows are a waste of time for both the vendor and the customer. "The type of people they [vendors] have at these trade shows don't know anything about the product. If you ask more than you would find in a glossy magazine they can't answer," he said. But Paul Stewart, managing director of Cable & Wireless Omnes, disagreed: "Our experience with trade shows is they are a good vehicle to establish a lot of industry and customer contacts and be exposed to the different technologies that are out in the marketplace today." Harald Raetzsch, president of software company, CSE Systems, warned that the Internet is having a massive effect on the way businesses contact their customers. A lot of what has been communicated at trade shows is now being communicated over the Web, he claimed, so vendors and customers need to adjust. Rob McLeod, UK managing director of Level 3 Communications, took a more balanced view of what trade shows can offer vendors: "I think trade shows are good if you're launching a company or launching a product. I'm not so sure if it's just normal business whether a trade show provides anything."