The event takes place at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg on 15 and 16 August 2012.
CSSA president Adrian Schofield says IP EXPO has won its support because of the choice of technologies under discussion, the chance for industry professionals to learn more about them, and the valuable opportunity to network with industry peers.
"We are very picky about which events we support because we jealously guard our role as a custodian of standards and professional ethics in the industry, so when we support an event we make sure it fits into those criteria. The areas under discussion at IP EXPO are very significant and many people still need to learn a great deal more about them to see how they fit into the technology world going forward," Schofield says.
The inaugural show attracted more than 1 100 visitors and 18 exhibitors, and industry experts staged presentations and workshops in three separate theatres. This year it will be bigger and better, with four theatres running simultaneously to analyse all six content streams - IP infrastructure, unified communications, virtualisation, cloud computing, big data and security. Keynote speakers will include independent IT innovator Stafford Masie, who proved a popular presenter at last year's show, and Dr. Azar Jammine, director and chief economist of Econometrix.
That mixture of seminars plus exhibitors demonstrating the latest technologies gives visitors a fresh insight into these growing trends, says Michelle Meldau, IP EXPO manager from Montgomery Africa. South Africa's bandwidth boom is finally allowing cloud computing and virtualisation to gain traction, forcing companies to evaluate how and when to introduce them into their operations. "We will continue to focus on IP infrastructure, virtualisation and cloud computing, but introducing three new streams focusing on big data, security and unified communications means visitors will have access to more than 80 seminars over the two-day period."
