CeBIT Australia ‘08: Open Source for business gets show underway

CeBIT Australia 2008, is one of the largest business technology trade events in the region and will be held at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre in Darling Harbour from May 20-22.

The Open CeBIT conference, a sell-out in 2007, explores business opportunities presented by Open Source platforms and applications. This conference focuses on the strategic advantages offered by Open Source at all levels of the software stack, from operating systems to database to corporate applications and personal productivity solutions.

Open CeBIT includes detailed case studies on how successful implementations take advantage of the open collaborative process to create flexible, robust and cost-effective solutions for business, said Jackie Taranto, managing director of Hannover Fairs Australia.

“Open Source software has moved into mainstream business across all industry sectors,” she said. “This is well beyond just being a technical movement for the technical crowd, Open Source software today is a strategic business decision that reaps real business rewards.”

Speakers at this year’s Open CeBIT include Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and chief executive officer of Atlassian; Grant Allen, Google Architect; Shane Owenby, an Oracle Corporation senior director; Frank Feldmann, Red Hat Asia Pacific senior product manager on powerful Open Source models; Senator Kate Lundy and Roy Rubin, founder and CEO of Varien – the US-based developer of the just-released Open Source e-Commerce platform Magento.

According to Taranto, Open CeBIT is a flagship conference event at CeBIT Australia 2008. The event’s strategic business agenda differs from more technical Open Source events.