World’s leading event for digitization CeBIT 2016 was held in Hannover, from March 14 – 18. Global Event for Digital Business announced in a press release that CeBIT 2016 shed a new light into our economy, digitization, and society as a whole. “CeBIT 2016 put digitalization at the top of the business, political and social agenda,” according to Oliver Frese, member of the managing board at Deutsche Messe AG. “CeBIT underscored its role as the world’s leading platform for the digitalization of the economy and society. In its own unique way, CeBIT made digitalization tangible,” Frese added.
Held in Hannover, Germany every year, CeBIT brings together various companies, global enterprises, organizations, SMEs, startups, and many participants from all over the world to share their ideas and get introduced to new ones. This year CeBIT features over 500 digitization and IoT examples. As Frese put it, CeBIT “brought the Internet of Things to life and made it touchable.” The majority of attendees had plenty of discussions over the future of Internet of Things. According to Frese, it is possible that in the near future, “more than 50 billion objects will likely be connected with the Internet, with 90 percent of added value being created in the B2B sector.”
This new edition, the lead theme of CeBIT was ‘d!conomy: join – create – succeed,’ mainly focused on key people that are behind every digital transformation that comes to life and eventually changes the way we live for the better. That is why the number of professionals from various fields attending the event was higher compared to last year, featuring around 3,300 companies from 70 countries.
Furthermore, the new CeBIT event included for the first time topics like ‘construction, planning and management of state-of-the-art data centers’ which were carefully discussed on two separate stages: a conference that was totally focused on discussing all topics related to data center’s infrastructure, and the other one focused on software and open-source-related topics. Both stages, along with various conferences and other events happening within CeBIT program, for the first time were free to all visitors.
“There was also wide interest in the future of the human-machine interface. Many visitors were looking to find out more about humanoid robots for use in education and service areas. A controversial topic of discussion, both in the trade fair complex and on social networks, was the issue of "bio-hacking". CeBIT visitors were also able to have a tiny RFID-NFC chip implanted in their hand,” according to CeBIT after show press release.
CeBIT Global Conferences featured over 200 keynote speakers and panelists including Konica Minolta CEO and President Shoei Yamana, Enterprise Business Group of Huawei President Lida Yan, Ericsson CEO and President Hans Vestberg, Waze navigation startup founder Uri Levine, and many more. CeBIT 2017 will be held from 20 to 24 March next year.