Demo Hails Practical Solutions

For the first time, most exhibitors and demonstrators at Demo—the one conference that continues to focus on practical innovation—focused on tactical solutions aimed at the enterprise.

• Groxis Inc., Opencola Ltd. and Meaningful Machines LLC proved once again that we have no idea where our data is. They also proved that while the technical answer to this problem is closer, its still out of reach. These companies have produced some compelling products, however.
• If any theme emerged from Demo, its that enabling organizations to make use of what theyve got should be the core of any new business plan. The best product in this group was Vieo Inc.s AAIM. Simply put, Vieo takes available CPUs and systems and virtualizes them with a hardware appliance. Sounds like what Sun Microsystems Inc., IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co. are doing with their on-demand computing initiatives, but the AAIM platform exists now.
• BigFix Inc. takes patch management to a new level. Using a technology called Fixlets, BigFix goes beyond the Windows Update feature and forces patches to be installed from an administrator console. BigFix could provide even more advantage over Update by partnering with PreCache, a company that provides a platform for discrete publish and subscribe communications.