As the latest ILTA convention closes 1200 delegates will be leaving better informed, better educated and better connected.
It was impossible to take everything in and careful selection of sessions was required. On the whole the punter view was positive, particularly with the venue and organisation although some of the content was a little weak.
Two acquisitions, Autonomy by HP and Client Profiles by Aderant provided much of the ‘over a beer’ discussion with Aderant doing much better in terms of PR.
Any discussion with Autonomy representatives as to road map or any kind of ‘what’s next’ was consistently met with blank faces. The general conclusion is that things have happened so fast, no one really knows.
Silence inevitably leads to speculation and the prevailing thought currently is that HP want idol but not FileSite. HP have already said they want to ditch their low margin operations including PC’s laptops and tablets, and instead move into high margin services. With minimal return on new sales likely in an already saturated DM marketplace, Autonomy’s attraction has to be in IDOL and there recent cloud based archiving solutions that would ideally compliment HP high end storage.
There are very few good stories of large corporations buying legal specific products so will HP break the mould or is this simply great news for OpenText and Microsoft? The ‘Hummingbird all over again’ crowd are currently at full gloat and its hard to disagree, especially in the absence of a decent message from either HP or Autonomy – and they won’t get a better opportunity than ILTA.
Aderant’s acquisitions have made them the largest software provider in the legal vertical, and they did a much better job of explaining their strategy. In a well attended Aderant vendor update meeting, the senior management team generated much enthusiasm about how the products complimented each other, how we will see an integrated suite of solutions in the next year and even teased the audience with significant future product developments using HTML5 and Windows8. Yes, they are probably positioning themselves to be sold but they took full advantage of the PR opportunity that ILTA gave them.
Aside from acquistion talk, here’s my conference highlights:
Top Subjects – AFA, Office 2010
Top discussions/rumours - HP
Going Places – Aderant
Biggest disappointment - Autonomy’s lack of communication
Best vendor stand – Autonomy won in terms of style but fun value had to go to Travelling Coaches for their insane but entertaining rendition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Some of them appeared to enjoy that a little too much…
Best Party – Has to be Tikit – they avoided the usual hire a bar downtown and instead took their guests for a Jack Daniels tasting session on a Paddle Steamer trip down the river. (Extra points would have been given if TORIS had been invited)