From VON to the trinity/quad-play of events

Once upon a time, there was VON. It was all things to all people under the large purple umbrella. Then it went away, leaving a vacuum in its wake. So where's everyone going in 2009?

VON's two key problems were that it tried to be all things to all people and had the millstone of "VoIP = VON" so that it was primarily seen as a VoIP show rather than an IP communications show. 

Back in the day, you had a lot of service providers and Tier 1 vendors (IBM, Microsoft, Cisco) going to VON because it was The Place to meet people and find out what was going on in the industry. You also had thought leaders talking about the latest trends in technology and policy. Finally, you had enterprises attending because they wanted to be in on the latest and greatest.  VARs and channel types would also be there, but ITEXPO was more their cup of tea.

Service providers and Tier 1 vendors have pretty much returned to the fold of SuperComm over the past few years for carrier issues, but that's been no big secret.

For enterprise issues, they are going where the enterprise guys are - VoiceCon. I'll be down in Orlando at the end of March, and I'll be looking to see if the event has a slight bump in attendance compared to last year. If you take a look at VoiceCon's exhibitors, many of the Tier 1 exhibitors are the guys who spent beaucoup bucks at VON a couple of years ago.

Thought leadership may be taken up by eComm. There's a lot of promise in the event, but we also see some rough edges that we expect will be smoothed out over time; after all, the first VON event in the Puck Building had its moments as well.

To recap: VON gone. Replace with ITEXPO (channel partners/VARs and the people who love them), VoiceCon (Enterprise sales), SuperComm (Carriers/Service providers) and maybe eComm (thought leadership).

- Doug