Inform Bangs up a Crowd

May 15, 2007: The Sydney EMC Inform event wrapped up this afternoon with organisers reporting record crowds of over to 2000 attendees, a record EMC says reflects the rapidly expanding ‘digital universe.’

With EMC presenting an exhibition space for its partners and streamlined conference sessions for delegates, the Sydney event smashed the 2006 record of 1200 attendees. In Auckland, numbers were up to 350 attendees while 1000 registrations have already been processed for the Melbourne show later this week.

David Webster, EMC Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand said the record attendance reflected an ‘obvious shift in the industry’ now looking for answers to the challenges of digital growth.

Webster referred to the ‘expanding digital universe’ of information growth as being a driving concern of organisations and a challenge all businesses address. With the growth of information amounting to 600 tonnes of books per person per year, Webster believes this challenge is further complicated by the fact that much of this growth is unstructured data.

Already this growth is reflected in the 2.7 Exabyte’s if data stored in the Australia / New Zealand region alone, a figure IDC expects to grow by 12 times over by 2010.

“The challenge is not how we store it, but how we manage it, secure it and optimise it,” he said. “This level of information is starting to outstrip the capabilities of our organisations.

Webster also reported a record attendance from competitors. “If you’re a competitor please leave your resume with us,” he said. “If you’re just having the day off, then have a great day!”

Comment on this story.