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GCN Home > 06/18/07 web stories

Taking the virtual show on the road

By William Jackson, GCN Staff

CHICAGO—The big attraction of a trade show — aside from the tote bags, t-shirts, stress balls and other great toys — is the opportunity to see the latest technology up close and personal.

But much of the high-end, high-tech equipment being touted by exhibitors at the NXTcomm telecom industry trade show this week does not travel well to the show floor. Analysts, prospective customers and journalists are not allowed to play with sensitive network routing or storage equipment, and some products can be too expensive to cart out to satisfy the curiosity of the masses. That can make it difficult for a company to get its message out.

“The telecom market has seen a heightened competitiveness in the past few years,” said Gavin Finn, president of Kaon Interactive. “Companies are worrying that their products are becoming commodities. What they need is a platform to differentiate their products.”

Some companies are turning to high performance 3-D modeling technology to show off equipment that cannot be easily displayed on the show floor.

Not coincidentally, Kaon manufacturers just such a product, which allows companies to demonstrate complex equipment in a virtual environment. The company’s v-OSK display system has been available for about a year and is being used at this year’s NXTcomm show floor by Cisco, Ciena and ADVA Optical Networking. It is available as an appliance or in a software-only version for online displays or laptops and is customized for the venue and the customer’s product line.

V-OSK does not come cheap. It can cost from $5,000 to $25,000 to render a single product, depending on complexity, and with hardware the price can easily go to $100,000. But some users can save that much in a single show.

“It’s an expensive proposition to go to a trade show,” Finn said.

Storage Technology has spent as much as $12,000 just powering high-end equipment at a show. Shipping can cost up to $40,000 and drayage — the cost of having a union move the equipment on and off the floor — can run as high as $20,000. Then there are the costs of the equipment itself and the personnel to operate and maintain it on the road.

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