Market Research Media » Market Intelligence

Virtual Event Market Skyrockets

admin — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 06:02:36 +0000

Economists debate about whether the recession is over but the corporate marketing budgets are still tight and conference attendance is on the decline. Virtual conferences and virtual trade shows are on rise for a very sound reason – virtual tradeshows typically cost much less than traditional trade shows.

To keep finger on pulse of the virtual conference market we asked a few questions to Joerg Rathenberg, Senior Director of Marketing of Unisfair, the leading provider of virtual events and business environments:

How has the recession impacted the adoption of virtual events?
Clearly, the need to cut costs has driven more people to us as they look for more cost effect ways to generate demand and nurture prospects or train customers, partners and employees. We reduce production cost as well as increase attendance by making it accessible to more people without the need for travel. Today however, marketing leaders understand that working with Unisfair is not just about bringing people together in a more cost effective manner, it is about virtual engagement – building lasting, more profitable relationships with their customers. As a result, virtual events have evolved from the early adopter status to becoming widely used. In particular, marketers are seeing virtual engagement as a successful and proven component of the digital marketing mix.

How has Unisfair’s technology changed and evolved?
We have evolved along with the market, and are focusing not just on events, but on virtual engagement solutions that enable our customers to embrace virtual environments for everything from thought leadership to lead generation and community building to training and recruiting.

Earlier this year, we announced V9, a game-changing new release that helps move the industry from episodic virtual events to always-on virtual engagement. Customers, prospects, partners and employees can learn, explore and connect with vendors, peers and industry experts from the comfort of their desktop, whenever they want.

In addition, our Webcasting Studio enables our customers to produce and broadcast their own webcasts by plugging high-end professional video and audio gear directly into their computers and broadcast right from their offices – they can even use the built-in laptop cameras. This has a huge effect on bringing down the costs of virtual events, rather than using external production service.

What’s more, with the new Venue Builder, customers can create their own virtual environment with just point and click, which is essentially as easy as customizing their Yahoo environment. Unisfair offers the only three-tier organizational model, where customers can use their Virtual Engagement Center to set up any number of Venues, in which they can host any number of events. Their attendees keep their identity across all of these, so that just like in Disneyworld, with one pass they can visit all the venues and events the organizer will allow.

What do you attribute you strong growth to?
With Unisfair’s strong self service capabilities, we are able to expand more rapidly than our competitors, who are inhibited by a services intensive model for setting up and running their individual events. In the competitive model, each event requires the services team weeks and months to set up and manage. Changes will have to be done by the platform provider’s staff before the “code freeze day” – often weeks before the live event day, where you can’t change anything in the environment. On the contrary, Unisfair customers can make their own changes and customizations anytime, even while the event is going on – e.g. swap out a partner logo, add a room, booth, venue etc.

What’s your growth rate?
We are seeing 60 percent YOY growth.

How will you create new streams of revenue / continue to grow?
We’ll continue to focus on our core market of Fortune 2000 companies in High Tech and Life Sciences, and grow relationships with our key customers. In addition, we’re growing our channel program (e.g. Cramer, Carlson Marketing, Simpson Healthcare, Careerbuilder.com). Lastly, we’ll replicate the success and momentum we’ve seen in our core business with new offerings targeted at the SMB and training markets.

Who are some of your biggest customers?
Marquee customers include Ariba, CA, IBM, Intel, Intuit, KPMG, Medco, Oracle, Quest Software, Novartis and many others.

Information provided by Unisfair coincides well with predictions made by Market Research Media Ltd, a leading market and technology research company, in its recent research report “Virtual Conference & Trade Show Market Forecast 2010-2015“. According to this market study the worldwide virtual conference market is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 56% between the period of 2010 and 2015 and to generate $18.6 Billion revenues over the period 2010 – 2015.

Deep Packet Inspection Market Bolstered by US-CERT Einstein Programs

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:39:41 +0000

The U.S. Government Deep Packet Inspection market has been bolstered in the recent years by deployment of Einstein, an intrusion detection system that monitors the network gateways of government departments and agencies in the United States for unauthorized traffic. According to a new market study “Deep Packet Inspection (DPI): U.S. Government Market Forecast 2010-2015“, the DPI technology is in a very favorable position to emerge as a major line of cyber defense for years to come as the only technology that can deliver the goods. The U.S. Government Deep Packet Inspection market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 36% from 2010 to around US$ 1.8 Billion by 2015.

Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and the Cybersecurity Coordinator, has unveiled previously classified details of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), a program called to unify agencies’ fragmented approach to cyber security within the federal government. Two initiatives within CNCI, Einstein 2 and Einstein 3, imply wide implementation of Deep Packet Inspection technology to protect federal networks:

“Deploy an intrusion detection system of sensors across the Federal enterprise. Intrusion Detection Systems using passive sensors form a vital part of U.S. Government network defenses by identifying when unauthorized users attempt to gain access to those networks. DHS is deploying, as part of its EINSTEIN 2 activities, signature-based sensors capable of inspecting Internet traffic entering Federal systems for unauthorized accesses and malicious content. The EINSTEIN 2 capability enables analysis of network flow information to identify potential malicious activity while conducting automatic full packet inspection of traffic entering or exiting U.S. Government networks for malicious activity using signature-based intrusion detection technology.”

“The goal of EINSTEIN 3 is to identify and characterize malicious network traffic to enhance cybersecurity analysis, situational awareness and security response. It will have the ability to automatically detect and respond appropriately to cyber threats before harm is done, providing an intrusion prevention system supporting dynamic defense.”

It was an open secret that the U.S. Government is bolstering a program to detect and respond to cyber attacks on government systems and DPI technology was rather obvious choice. A flurry of activity around DPI technology vendors is in the air. A few weeks ago Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)
announced the acquisition of CloudShield Technologies Inc, a cybersecurity and DPI technology provider. CloudShield’s deep packet inspection (DPI) capabilities are expected to enhance SAIC’s cybersecurity offering in the US Federal Government and commercial markets. Small DPI technology vendors may find it difficult to enter the world of federal contracts other than through established federal IT security contractors.

The Deep Packet Inspection market is undergoing a strong revival – it will see explosive growth, more mergers and acquisitions, more fighting with privacy advocates and a whole lot of new applications in cyber defense, signal intelligence, IP traffic monitoring and management.

How Do Virtual Event Software Vendors Fare Online?

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:45:59 +0000

It is interesting to see how the hot virtual event software vendors stack up in terms of online traffic. For this purpose we have selected four virtual event software vendors – 6Connex, Inxpo, On24 and Unisfair. All four companies are full virtual event suite providers. To measure traffic to the vendors’ websites we turned to Compete, a web analytics company. Since traffic data tends be highly inaccurate, we have also turned to Alexa, Amazon-owned traffic analytics website. Both Compete and Alexa rely on user-centric techniques of measuring traffic. Here are the test results:

Virtual Event Service Provider	Compete, Unique Monthly Visitors	Alexa, Traffic Rank
On24	294,790	9,504
Inxpo	44,532	114,502
Unisfair	38,615	140,892
6connex	2,462	539,303

The results of both metrics are pretty consistent. On24 has the largest monthly traffic and best Alexa ranking (the lower, the better), Unisfair and Inxpo are locked in a close race and 6connex trudges far behind. These results are better visualized in the Compete’s Graph (6connex did not make it into the graph due to low traffic).

While these results are hardly indicative to judge performance of the virtual event service providers in terms of revenue and market share, they still say something about their online reach. Our recent study “Virtual Conference & Trade Show Market Forecast 2010-2015” shows that everything can change in the dynamic and emerging virtual event marketplace.

Virtual Event Market: Trends to Watch

admin — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:43:22 +0000

The virtual event market is poised for a big leap – from nowhere to $18.6 Billion over the period 2010 – 2015, according to a new report from Market Research Media. The market is currently driven by corporate events but organizers of the traditional conferences and trade shows will not be able to ignore the virtual event technology evolution for too long.

Market Research Media has identified several exciting tends and developments in this new emerging market:

Conference and trade shows will drive market growth in the years to come, with corporate event market share slipping away.
Virtual event technology will end European domination of conference and trade show market, shifting the balance in favor of U.S. firms.
New virtual conference technology will boost niche events, otherwise doomed due to low attendence rates.

These and other market data and trends are presented in “Virtual Conference & Trade Show Market Forecast 2010-2015” by Market Research Media.

COTS Is the Name of the Game for Defense HPC Market

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:30:11 +0000

COTS, commercial off-the-shelf, and Application Specific Software are the magic words to open today’s tight military budgets for hundreds IT companies seeking to supply High Performance Computing (HPC) technology solutions for defense market. Military computing requirements are growing exponentially while budgets lag behind. As an example let us consider dynamics of the data overflow from military drones in Iraq and Afghanistan:

The number of hours flown by drones in Iraq and Afghanistan has sharply increased in the last few years – from 50,000 in 2006 to more than 200,000 in 2009
The Predators and Reapers are already transmitting 16,000 hours of video each month, to be processed and analyzed on the ground.
Instead of carrying just one camera, the new UAVs, will soon be able to record video in 10 directions at once. By 2011, that will increase to 30 directions with plans for as many as 65 after that. Camera resolution, frame rate and bit depth are growing as well.
The Air Force’s top intelligence official, Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, described the situation as “swimming in sensors and drowning in data”.

Market Research Media Ltd forecasts computational requirements of the global Defense HPC community to triple every year to reach 1,000,000 Habu by 2015 (For more information, please see Worldwide Defense High Performance Computing (HPC) Market Forecast 2010-2015). Habu is a measure of computational performance used by DoD. In 2002, a 1,024-processor IBM system located at the Naval Oceanographic Office MSRC named Habu, was designated the baseline system. Since then computational performance measures are all in “Habu” equivalent units.

As a matter of fact the future computational requirements tend to be grossly underestimated, for example, here is a forecast made in 2005:

“The Department of Defense computational science community will need over 875 HABU equivalents of computing capacity by 2010.” Source: Cray’s press release

The use of COTS have fueled and will fuel growth in Defense HPC Market far beyond expectations. Recently the US Department of Defense, announced that it will upgrade its supercomputer cluster with 2200 Sony’s PlayStation 3 video game console. Here is an excerpt from the order justification form:

With respect to cell processors, a single 1U server configured with two 3.2GHz cell processors can cost up to $8K while two Sony PS3s cost approximately $600. Though a single 3.2 GHz cell processor can deliver over 200 GFLOPS, whereas the Sony PS3 configuration delivers approximately 150 GFLOPS, the approximately tenfold cost difference per GFLOP makes the Sony PS3 the only viable technology for HPC applications. Sony is the only firm capable of manufacturing the brand of required hardware without the Government experiencing substantial duplication of cost that would not be recoverable through competition among providers of alternative technology. Using cell processor technology besides the Sony PS3 would cost the Government the equivalent of several years of professional research and engineering effort, in addition to the initial investment of $118,000 made by ARFL/RIT in 2008. Moreover, moving to an alternative technology hardware would also cause duplication of costs associated with redeveloping the software, military systems, and applications already based on the existing Sony PS3 cluster. This will become increasingly relevant as the magnitude of applications and supporting hardware infrastructure likely will increase over time.

Commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) HPC software or hardware are often used as alternatives to in-house developments or one-off government-funded developments. The use of COTS HPC solutions in combination with Application Specific Software is being mandated across many government agencies, as such products may offer significant savings in procurement and maintenance, reduction of overall system development and costs, and that’s where opportunities lie.

U.S. Government Launches Cloud Computing Mall

admin — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:37:55 +0000

U.S. Federal Cloud Computing Market Forecast 2010 – 2015 provides agency-by-agency detailed forecasts for both defense and civilian sectors and cloud computing market segmentation by investment type.

The White House has launched Apps.gov, the first cloud computing mall for government agencies. Vivek Kundra, the U.S. Chief Information Officer, described Apps.gov as following:

Apps.gov is an online storefront for federal agencies to quickly browse and purchase cloud-based IT services, for productivity, collaboration, and efficiency. Cloud computing is the next generation of IT in which data and applications will be housed centrally and accessible anywhere and anytime by a various devices (this is opposed to the current model where applications and most data is housed on individual devices). By consolidating available services, Apps.gov is a one-stop source for cloud services – an innovation that not only can change how IT operates, but also save taxpayer dollars in the process.

Currently Apps.gov offers four tiers of cloud computing services – business applications, productivity applications, cloud IT services and social media applications.

The government website Apps.gov offers cloud computing services just like a regular online service provider – flash your government issued purchase card and get a service. Business and Productivity applications (various cloud software as a service) and Cloud IT Infrastructure as a Service (cloud storage, hosting, and virtual machines) are offered as a monthly or even hourly use service.

The first government-wide cloud computing experiment has an ultimate goal to overhaul an inefficient system in which each government agency assembles its own system of underused hardware and assembles together unmanageable mosaic of software that is expensive to maintain and upgrade. The unprecedented embrace of the cloud computing concept by the U.S. Government will be presenting business opportunities in both the public and private sector.

Cloud Computing Market Wrap-Up: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

admin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:41:14 +0000

A new report by Market Research Media “U.S. Federal Cloud Computing Market Forecast 2010-2015” suggested that the cloud computing technologies are expected to drive most revenue growth opportunities for government IT contractors over the next six years. The federal government has fully embraced concept of Software as a Service seeking out to reduce IT operating expenses while improving agencies’ productivity. Vivek Kundra, the country’s chief information officer, is an active proponent of the idea of using commercial cloud computing solutions in the government IT infrastructure. The adoption of cloud computing within the public sector can’t be considered without looking at the developments in private sector. Here’s the good, the bad, the ugly of the private sector cloud computing news.

Good News

Big names reach for a piece of the cloud computing pie. Microsoft prepares to roll out its services-based cloud platform Azure in the end of 2009. IBM launches a suite of corporate solutions as services – a pre-integrated blade server center called Cloud Burst and virtual desktop as a service. HP teams with other companies to offer cloud services to large and middle enterprises and SMBs.
Systems integrators like Unisys, Computer Sciences Corp. and Verizon Business are introducing Infrastructure as a Service offerings.
Virtualization giant VMware has launched a new product vSphere 4 positioned as the first cloud computing operating system combining under one roof a diverse set of dynamic virtualization management tools.
Google and Salesforce are aggressively targeting the enterprise market with application-building tools.
Amazon Web Services introduced a pack of entire new features addressing usability issues.
Cisco made the big splash with the WebEx Collaboration Cloud announcement, taking a key step towards positioning WebEx as an industry-wide SaaS platform.

Bad News

McKinsey & Co. put doubts on cost efficiency of cloud computing in its April report “Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing”. The report suggests that cloud computing is beneficial for small and medium-sized businesses but questions the cloud computing model sustainability for large corporations.

Ugly News
Cloud computing prospectives marred by outages and security concerns:

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks inflicted serious damage on UltraDNS and cloud provider
GoGrid.
Power knock out due to a lightning strike crippled Amazon’s EC2 infrastructure for hours.
Outages at Rackspace and Google caused swathes of customer applications to go down.

Whether or not the wrap-up of the cloud computing market presented in the article is perceived to biased or not, the concept of cloud computing is here to stay, with all of the major IT vendors competing competing for a piece of the cloud computing pie.

Influenza Vaccine Market Update: Governments Stockpiling Pre-pandemic Vaccine

admin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:27:53 +0000

Governments are stockpiling H1N1 Influenza Vaccine. Market update:

Global Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Market Forecast 2010-2015 provides a country-by-country forecast of national markets for vaccine, antivirals and adjuvants.

The U.K. Government will buy 60 million doses of the A (H1N1) adjuvanted influenza vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline PLC and 30 million from Baxter
The French Government will buy 50 million doses of the A (H1N1) influenza vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline PLC
The Government of Belgium will buy 12.6 million doses of the A (H1N1) influenza vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline PLC
The Government of Finland will buy 5.3 million doses of H1N1 antigen from GlaxoSmithKline PLC
Glaxo will provide 128 million doses of the A (H1N1) adjuvanted influenza vaccine to European countries. The European orders could contribute about $1 billlion to Glaxo sales in 2009.
The WHO estimates that the pharmaceutical industry can produce from 1 billion to 2 billion doses of H1N1 pandemic vaccine a year.
The Australian Government ordered 10-million doses of influenza vaccine from Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL).
HHS Sets Aside $1 Billion Toward Development of Vaccine for the Novel Influenza A (H1N1).
The U.S. Government will have 60 million vaccine doses by the end of October, 100 million more doses by the end of November and 80 million more doses each month thereafter through March 2010.

Success with adjuvanted vaccines could have implications for the use of resources devoted to development of the next generation of vaccines and for the mechanisms the government uses to accomplish its objectives. Specifically, if adjuvanted vaccines reduced the near-term risk posed by pandemic influenza because they stretched available and planned production capacity, more resources might be made available to support the development of next generation vaccines.

European countries and US took different approaches. European countries are entering into advance supply agreements with manufacturers to provide vaccines in the event of a pandemic; those governments agree to make advance payments to guarantee the supply of vaccine in the event of an influenza pandemic. The current U.S. approach is directly subsidizing vaccine development and additional production capacity.

DoD Contracts for Flu Vaccine

admin — Mon, 25 May 2009 04:54:03 +0000

MedImmune Vaccines Inc. and Sanofi Pasteur have been awarded contracts to supply influenza vaccine to the DoD and federal civilian agencies. The total value of contracts is $44 mln. The contracts were awarded by the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia.

Global Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Market Forecast 2010-2015 provides a country-by-country forecast of national markets for vaccine, antivirals and adjuvants.

MedImmune Vaccines Inc. of Gaithersburg, MD received a $32 million firm-fixed-price sole source contract. Sanofi Pasteur received a $12 million firm-fixed-price contract. Both Sanofi Pasteur and MedImmune will benefit from HHS funding of about $1 billion for clinical studies that will take place over the next few months and for commercial-scale production of two potential vaccine ingredients for the pre-pandemic influenza stockpile.

Sanofi Pasteur operates influenza vaccine production facilities in Swiftwater, Pa. and Val de Reuil, France. Production of the new A(H1N1) vaccine for HHS will initially occur in Sanofi Pasteur’s recently licensed influenza vaccine production facility in Swiftwater, Pa. Once ongoing seasonal influenza production concludes in the second facility in Swiftwater, A(H1N1) production can occur in both Swiftwater facilities.

In Swiftwater, Sanofi Pasteur has two licensed influenza production facilities. On May 6, 2009, the FDA licensed Sanofi Pasteur’s new influenza vaccine manufacturing facility in Swiftwater. When operating at full capacity, the new facility will have a capacity of approximately 100 million doses of seasonal influenza vaccine per year. An existing facility in Swiftwater is capable of producing 50 million doses per year and currently is producing vaccine for the 2009/2010 season. In total, the company will have a capacity equivalent to approximately 150 million doses of trivalent seasonal influenza vaccine per year in the United States when both facilities are operating at full capacity.

In Val De Reuil, Sanofi Pasteur is currently producing the trivalent seasonal influenza vaccine for the 2009/2010 season, with the capacity of 120 million doses per year. Sanofi Pasteur’s production facility in Val De Reuil is also capable of producing the new A(H1N1) vaccine.

MedImmune is producing the vaccine against the H1N1 influenza strain known as swine flu, using reverse genetics technology at its facility in the San Francisco area.

HHS Sets Aside $1 Billion Toward Development of Vaccine for the Novel Influenza A (H1N1)

admin — Sat, 23 May 2009 04:37:00 +0000

The U.S. government is setting aside $1 billion to launch development of an H1N1 swine flu vaccine to immunize 20 million people in key positions in health care, national security and emergency services.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced yesterday that the department will take important steps necessary to prepare for potential commercial-scale production of a candidate vaccine for the novel Influenza A (H1N1). The HHS announces funding of about $1 billion for clinical studies that will take place over the next few months and for commercial-scale production of two potential vaccine ingredients for the pre-pandemic influenza stockpile.

Global Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Market Forecast 2010-2015 provides a country-by-country forecast of national markets for vaccine, antivirals and adjuvants.

“Preparation and planning are critical to keep Americans safe in the face of a potential pandemic,” Secretary Sebelius said. “Our goal throughout this new H1N1 outbreak has been to stay one step ahead of the virus. An important part of this effort has been our work to develop a potential vaccine because vaccines can help prevent and control influenza virus outbreaks. The actions we are taking today will help us be prepared if a vaccine is needed.”

The following companies will receive funding to produce H1N1 vaccine ingredients:

Novartis AG – $289 million,
Sanofi Aventis SA – $191 million,
GlaxoSmithKline PLC – $181 million,
Another $150 million will be directed to produce pilot lots of vaccine and to fund the clinical studies.

HHS is also in negotiations with other manufacturers to find more capacity.

With these orders, the pharmaceutical manufacturers will produce a bulk supply of vaccine antigen and adjuvant. Antigen is the active ingredient in a vaccine that causes the human body’s immune system to develop antibodies that help fight an invading virus. Depending on the results of clinical studies, adjuvants could be added to a vaccine to improve the immune system’s response and potentially reduce the amount of antigen necessary for the body to recognize and fight a virus.

Having both antigen and adjuvant on hand provides maximum flexibility in a future immunization program, if a program is recommended. For example, if needed these ingredients could be used in vaccine to help protect health providers and other members of the critical workforce, as recommended by the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza.

With these funds the pharmaceutical manufacturers will also prepare pilot lots of potential vaccine for use in clinical studies to determine the proper dose for a vaccine, determine if adjuvants are appropriate and ensure a vaccine is safe and effective. The U.S. government will share as much information as possible from the results of these clinical studies with the World Health Organization and the global community so that other countries can benefit from the U.S. efforts to determine dosage, safety and effectiveness.

Update July12, 2009: “There’ll be another $1 billion worth of orders placed to get the bulk ingredients for an H1N1 vaccination.” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced on July 12.