Jackie Taranto, managing director of event organiser Hannover Fairs Australia, called upon the Australian ICT sector to unite in its efforts to promote the strengths of the industry - a call supported by Senator Coonan.

"We are fractured and our message in unclear. We simply need to be better organised," Taranto said.

"We need to find a new model - this should be our absolute priority, to create a single industry voice."

Now in its sixth year at Darling Harbour, CeBIT Australia creates $130-$150 million investment in Australia every year. The event has expanded to include forums, workshops and information sessions. Along with the exhibitions on the trade show floor, the schedule also includes one-day seminars on e-marketing, e-finance and e-government as well as VoIP and IP Communications.

Guest speakers include Google Enterprise vice president and general manager Dave Girouard, IBM's Linux program executive (Public Sector) Mary Ann Fisher, Sun Microsystems's chief open source officer Simon Phipps and Mozilla Corporation chief executive Mitchell Baker.

Organisers have also introduced BloggerZone, space and resources dedicated to the blogger community.{moscomment}