David Heath
Friday, 23 October 2009 18:16
IT Industry -
Strategy
Page 3 of 3
Clearly, there is also plenty of support from Novell's partners.
Quoted in a local Salt Lake City
publication,
Richard Bliss, vice president of marketing at GWAVA, a Canadian company with an office in Provo that is the largest outside vendor of Novell collaboration software products, applauded the decision.
He thinks the year off has provided time to refocus the conference and benefit the company, whose largest office is in Provo, where about 1,100 of its 3,900 employees work.
"The recession gave them an opportunity for stepping back and resetting the direction of the company. BrainShare was built on [the network operating system software] Netware, and Novell hasn't been about Netware for years. Now BrainShare can be built around its new directions."
Bliss said GWAVA's customers in Berlin, where he just finished up a conference, told him they valued BrainShare because of the "geek-speak" factor - the opportunity to talk to Novell engineers.
"That's really what Novell's BrainShare has always been about," he said.
Dragoon was also quoted as saying that a survey of customers and partners showed that they overwhelming wanted to see the conference return. "I believe it’s important for Novell ... to play offense, frankly. So we're going to bring it back and we're not only going to bring it back to Salt Lake where it's been for 20 odd years in a row, we're bringing it back to Europe, as well."
Dragoon was also quick to point out that the event was budgeting to expect around 4,000 delegates, down from a typical 5,000 over recent years.
Perhaps that conservative number will be exceeded.