| By Linux News Desk |
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| June 24, 2004 12:00 AM EDT |
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Comdex
Bites the Vegas Dust
In a week already made memorable -
for tradeshow enthusiasts and haters alike - by the "postponement" of this
year's Comdex by its owners MediaLive International, there are rumbles in
the Bay Area that another giant techfest may be their next event to be
affected.
The new rumor in the Valley is that Sun
Microsystems (which owns JavaOne), may have
decided that this year's conference will be the last one to be
produced by MediaLive, making it two casualties in one week for the San
Francisco-based company.
JavaOne has been one of the four major events
and revenue sources in MediaLive's portfolio since the very first event in 1996.
The other three significant MediaLive (formerly Key3Media) shows are Comdex,
which it postponed yesterday, Network+Interop, and Seybold
conferences.
The management of MediaLive International Inc.
has been busily telling the press that they expect to reinvent Comdex in 2005 as
an event for corporate IT users, instead of going on as the showcase
for an unfocussed gallimaufry of technology products that the show had
become.
But what will become of JavaOne? And why has Sun Microsystems
decided - if these reports turn out to be accurate - to dump
MediaLive?
According to sources close to MediaLive and Sun, MediaLive may
have actually lost its bid this year to a different show producer whose
name has not yet been announced.
The new organizer of JavaOne may be a
company with close ties to IBM and was originally formed to produce IBM's trade
shows.
If this were the case, then - according to another source familiar with the
workings of the technology tradeshow industry - it may be that Sun is
perhaps using the biggest event of its annual calendar as a strategic tool to
help close the historical breach between itself and IBM, exhibited in such ways
as Sun's hesitations about joining Eclipse, the IBM-inspired organization that
just recently became a Foundation legally and nominally independent of Big
Blue.
Perhaps Sun has decided to mend fences, just as it did recently with
Microsoft, and is letting the management of JavaOne go from MediaLive to the
folks who put together IBM's considerable array of tech conferences for them?
That would certainly be one very effective behind-the-scenes way for $14 billion
market cap Sun to extend an olive branch to $152 billion market cap IBM,
its much bigger brother.
LinuxWorld.com has invited Sun, IBM, and
MediaLive for confirmation or rebuttal, but as of this evening
EST none of the three companies had yet offered to comment on the record.
To lose one trade show in a week is bad enough, but what are the chances
of losing two in the same week? If the rumor is true, the official announcement
should come as early as next Monday, the first day of JavaOne.
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