I needed to visit our newest Business Partner grit GmbH in Germany and so took the opportunity to meet them at the CeBIT show in Hanover this week.
I booked my tickets and pitched up at the venue to discover for the first time, a very large (I would even say massive) IT showcase with 20 halls containing every major systems integrator, software vendor, hardware vendor, government department and university of virtually every country. If that weren't enough the 'Governater' (Arnold Schwarzeneggar) was here in person in the California hall! Even though I was told that attendance was down by around 20%, the place was buzzing and full of customers.
I arranged to meet our partner Grit who were based in Hall 9 on the Fujitsu Siemens stand. I found it hard to get their attention, customers were coming thick and fast and interest was high. What was all the fuss about? Well to keep this story short, we were in the Federal State Government section for Germany "Landesvermessung" where there's a huge drive towards providing better information services to the public. Grit was showing how this could be achieved with spatial databases being accessed via WMS/WFS technology and their demonstrations looked very well received.
So what did I learn from my visit? Well from my time at the show and listening to Grit, opportunities in Europe around OGC services and GML in the enterprise are growing fast and Snowflake needs to make sure it keeps pace and provides the right solutions to its Partners. With guidance from Grit I'm certain there's going to be plenty of opportunities going forward.
I enjoyed my time with Grit and my first time at CeBIT, in fact, I would have liked to have stayed longer, but as the Governator said in his previous job ... "I'll be back".
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