The IT & Business trade fair celebrated its premiere at the New Stuttgart Trade Fair Centre from 6 to 8 October 2009. 312 exhibitors from the IT industry presented their products and services at the new Stuttgart IT trade fair, i.e. around 20 per cent more than the organisers had envisaged. The overwhelming majority of the 6,587 trade visitors also approved the clearly focused concept of Messe Stuttgart and its partners during the three-day event and awarded the trade fair very good marks. “With more than 6,500 trade visitors, the qualitative demands of the exhibitors were exceeded and the quantitative targets of the organisers attained”, concluded Ulrich Kromer, Managing Director of Messe Stuttgart. “According to the exhibitors, we attracted the right visitors. It was pleasing to see that the second largest group of visitors came from Bavaria – which was probably due to the cancellation of Systems.” The VDMA Software Association, the promotional supporter of IT & Business, was also satisfied with the premiere of the trade fair: “IT & Business is aimed at decision-makers and turned out to be a genuine business-oriented contact event on its debut”, said Rainer Glatz, Managing Director of the VDMA Software Association. “We and our member companies are convinced that this trade fair will become firmly established and that the benefits for exhibitors and visitors will increase still further.” Smiles were also seen in Stuttgart on the faces of the partner BITKOM and the other supporters of IT & Business, i.e. the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA), MFG Medien und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg and IT Advantage. The clear concept to gear the trade fair towards commercial decision-makers and IT managers from companies, i.e. to focus on small and medium-sized companies from the industry, proved to be a great success during the premiere of the new IT trade fair.
Survey showed that decision-makers attended the premiere of IT & Business and awarded it top marks
The whole of southwest Germany was the main catchment area for the premiere of IT & Business. The vast majority of German trade visitors came from Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. However, visitors from neighbouring countries also came to the new industry meeting-point for IT decision-makers in Stuttgart. The majority of foreign visitors came from Austria and Switzerland, but the neighbouring countries of France, Czech Republic and Netherlands were also represented.
Since the event concept concentrated on decision-makers from the IT industry and small and medium-sized enterprises, representatives of these companies were also present at Europe’s most modern trade fair centre: Bosch, Daimler, Trumpf, Festo, Mahle, Stihl, Index, Metabo or Kärcher were some of the companies mentioned during registration. A large number of exhibitors confirmed that the trade visitors possessed a high level of expertise, a fact which was also reflected in the results of the visitor survey. 91 per cent of trade visitors were solely responsible, jointly responsible or acted in an advisory capacity regarding purchasing and procurement decisions. 46 per cent of respondents said that they were planning investments of up to €20,000 in their company while 37 per cent were intending to make investments ranging between €20,000 and €100,000. Just under 20 per cent of respondents were intending to invest a sum of more than €100,000 in IT in their company in the next few months.
In the general business solutions segment, trade visitors were primarily interested in ERP (39 per cent) and CRM (32 per cent). In the special business solutions segment, DMS (40 per cent) and configuration systems (19 per cent) were mentioned most frequently. A large number of visitors were also interested in business processes (31 per cent project management systems, 29 per cent BPM), system integration (30 per cent mobile applications, 28 per cent integration of company applications), IT infrastructure (29 per cent servers, 30 per cent virtualisation) and IT services (27 per cent implementation, 21 per cent data protection).
Comprehensive accompanying programme: technical exchanges at different levels
Global players such as IBM, Microsoft or SAP were present at the premiere of IT & Business. Numerous other leaders from the industry were also there. They included ABAS, proALPHA, Sage bäurer, oxaion, ALPHA Business Solutions, GFOS, MPDV, CP Corporate Planning, CSS and Raber + Märcker. In addition to the product innovations and trends which were presented on the stands of the over 300 exhibitors, the comprehensive accompanying programme of IT & Business provided trade visitors with additional opportunities to transfer knowledge. The PPS house exhibition of the German Engineering Federation (VDMA) was staged on all three days of the event and offered IT decision-makers application-related assistance through key production figures from ERP systems. The PPS Conference of the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation took place during IT & Business under the motto “Order centre as a field of tension – conflict potential and solution approaches”. Special attention was also paid to key topics in the “IT Security” and “Open Source” Pavilions, the “Business Software” and “IT Infrastructure” Technical Forums, the ECM applications on the VOI partner stand and the power presentations in the Business Area, which were directed at managing directors and commercial decision-makers.
The exhibitors’ positive assessment of the premiere of IT & Business was also supported by trade visitors. 93 per cent of visitors were very satisfied or satisfied with the information and contact opportunities on the exhibition stands. Visitors were looking to the future with optimism since 53 per cent of them predicted that IT & Business would become more important while 42 per cent believed that its importance would remain at the high level of its premiere. It was therefore not surprising that 92 per cent of respondents said they would recommend the trade fair to other people and that 94 per cent were intending to come back again in 2010.
For more information, press photos and press releases, visit: http://www.itandbusiness.de
Some comments by exhibitors regarding the premiere of IT & Business:
We were very satisfied with the premiere of IT & Business here in Stuttgart.
Uwe Brand, Managing Director, Raber + Märcker GmbH
In terms of the number of leads, the trade fair was very good on the first two days and matched the level of the former Systems. The concept is imaginative, which also means that IT & Business is the IT trade fair for our company in southern Germany.
Christoph Harzer, Marketing Manager, ABAS Software AG
IT & Business is a new platform which we primarily used to forge new contacts. The new trade fair focuses on IT as an enabler for business.
Jutta Jakobi, Manager Integrated Marketing Communication, IBM Deutschland GmbH
The excellent infrastructure, ideal transport links and the good service provided by the organisers went down very well with our business associates. We held some very good discussions here and also met international trade visitors on our exhibition stand.
Uwe Kutschenreiter, Director of Sales and Marketing, Oxaion AG
The commitment of exhibitors was clearly demonstrated to visitors here at IT & Business. We held a large number of first-class discussions. Although a few small content-related corrections could perhaps be made after this premiere, the clear focus proved its worth.
Dr. Christene Lötters, Head of Corporate Development, GFOS mbH
We came to Stuttgart with 11 systems partners and were satisfied with the number of the contacts and the discussions which we held. The general conditions such as infrastructure, transport links and service are very good here.
Karl Heinz Mosbach, CEO, ELO Digital Office GmbH
There were a very large number of exhibitors from the MES segment at the premiere of IT & Business. The debut event here in Stuttgart was successful.
Nadja Neubig, Marketing Manager, MPDV Microlab GmbH
The premiere of IT & Business turned out to be a success. Exhibitors were totally satisfied. The trade fair concept with its clear focus on commercial customers from manufacturing industry proved its worth.
Dr. Bernhard Rohleder, Managing Director of BITKOM.
IT & Business has livened up the German trade fair sector. In our opinion, the concept of a trade fair for infrastructure software and IT services in autumn is logical and forward-looking. It therefore does not compete against wider technology trade fairs, but instead complements the information available at public events such as CeBIT.
Philipp Rüdiger, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Deutschland GmbH
We were overwhelmed by the leads here in Stuttgart. We did not achieve this at Systems in the last two years. The trade fair programme could be slightly more rounded, but IT & Business is on the right course.
Oliver Schmidt, Head of Business Development,
PSIPENTA Software Systems AG