History 2004: Forum Stockage Renamed Forum 3S

The 8th and now final edition of Forum Stockage held last month in Paris, France, was far from the best.

According to organizers, it welcomed 2,600 visitors, compared with 3,300 last year, and 65 exhibitors, compared with 72 in 2003.

This storage-dedicated event, the 1st of its kind in Europe, has experienced a severe decline, due largely to the absence this year of industry majors such as EMC, HDS, HP, Microsoft, NetApp, Sun and Veritas, but also perhaps to an exhibition cycle that has been seriously curtailed.

According to some of those exhibitors who stayed away this year, the investment is not really that worthwhile, or else they prefer to organize their own shows. Those who did show up were usually their resellers and integrators.

The proximity of SNW Europe in Frankfurt, Germany, 15 days earlier, which greeted some 1,000 visitors, although heavily (80%) German, and Storage Expo UK from Reed Exhibitions (127 exhibitors, nearly double the French figure), 3 weeks after, which the big players did show up for, couldn’t have helped matters either.

In any case, the French organizers have decided to try a new formula for next year, in order to try to breathe new life into the event. The dates have been moved up to Spring of 2005, from March 31 to April 1, still at Paris’ Parc d’Exposition at the southern edge of the capital, although only 15 days after CeBIT in Hanover.

Furthermore, Forum Stockage is changing its name to Forum 3S (Store Save Security}, not a terribly evocative name. Wouldn’t it have been a better idea, if they wanted to un-Frenchify the event, to transform it directly to Forum ILM & Storage 2005, to lure a maximum of visitors and exhibitors.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 201 on October 2004 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.