Fujitsu Forum 2012 bursts its banks in Munich

Some 12,000 attendees overfill sessions at vendor's only European forum

Hundreds of channel partners, customers and other delegates were forced to sit on stairs or stand in the lobby to hear the opening keynote at Fujitsu Forum at the International Congress Centre Munich (ICM) today, which can seat a maximum 6,000 people.

Two or three hundred of the estimated 12,000 attendees at the two-day event even queued by the upstairs doors for up to 30 minutes before the 11am kick-off talk began, in hope of getting a seat - only to be sent downstairs instead, and then turned away by security who told them the event was already full.

However, those interested were able to watch the pivotal session live on a screen in the lobby, either on the stairs, seated on the carpet, or standing for the 75 minutes.

Many if not all of the breakout sessions - on themes including datacentre architecture, whether the PC age was over, mobility, big data, SAP, and the cloud - were similarly oversubscribed. Some were closed to attendees virtually as the doors opened, while others had 20 people standing at the sides and back of the 150 to 200-seat rooms.

Fujitsu's corporate senior vice president and president of international business, Rod Vawdrey, said in a pre-event press briefing that the forum was expected to attract 10,000 delegates from 83 countries, who would have the opportunity to attend 103 break-out sessions.

The figure was revised upwards to 12,000 by Fujitsu during the event, and included 800 from emerging markets, including Russia, the CIS, and the Middle East.

"This is the only event for the rest of the world, in Europe. We have a larger event, in Tokyo; that took place on 15-18 May 2012," Vawdrey said.

One central theme for the event was that the vendor is completing its evolution to a services-led company - although it was not in any sense giving up on its hardware business, Vawdrey indicated.

The other key to its ongoing strategy is globalisation, he said - not just globalisation of markets, but globalisation of customers and their businesses. So the customer demographic is shifting, Vawdrey said.

"The underlying premise of our business is to focus around customers. Today we're operating in more than 100 countries around the world, and we're providing support for our customers more and more in a cross-border situation," he said.

See CRN 19 November for a full analysis of the event.