IP Expo reveals industry-ready cloud technology

"Initiatives such as StartUp Britain are invaluable," comments Hugh Keeble, co-founder and director of organiser Imago Techmedia. "Businesses need to accelerate their growth and the smart use of technology can be an amazing enabler." Trawling through IT exhibitor news, Centrix Software, for example, used the event to announce its participation in the Microsoft Jumpstart program, which provides Microsoft partners with resources for accelerating Windows 7 migrations. Its contribution – Centrix WorkSpace iQ – will now feature as part of the programme, offering resellers computing environment analytics to assess the readiness of end-user computing environments for Windows 7 ahead of planning and production deployment. Elsewhere, virtualisation software specialist Datacore introduced its extended storage hypervisor architecture, aimed at helping IT professionals to optimise their on-site assets and take advantage pay as you go storage in the cloud. Its SANsymphony-V now integrates with the CloudArray cloud storage gateway from TwinStrata, enabling users to offload and augment on-premise storage environments, with space and power saving storage in the cloud. And for those contemplating more wholesale migration to the cloud, Fordway launched its cloud strategy assessment, which delivers a gap analysis on existing infrastructures. Fordway's assessment starts with a 70-point diagnostic questionnaire, which examines the state of your IT, in terms of its readiness for cloud computing – delivering a report detailing options and recommendations for potential migrations, with an outline business case. IP Expo is a fair size show and remains open today for IT directors and managers wanting to get into the detail.