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Cloud security and services will be one of the focal areas among the 1,200 CommunicAsia and EnterpriseIT 2012 exhibitors that hail from 48 countries or regions, according to Agnes Leung, senior project manager at show organizer, Singapore Exhibition Services.

"Other than industry professionals, government officials and ministers from the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions will also attend the events," Leung added. "The CommunicAsia-EnterpriseIT show occupies 43,000 square meter of gross exhibition space. Twenty one group pavilions will be present, out of which 13 are from Asia Pacific, 6 from Europe and Middle East, and 2 from North America. Under EnterpriseIT, some of the technologies that will be showcased include cloud computing and security, e-government and services, and telepresence and videoconferencing, to name a few."

Placing a strong emphasis on enterprise solutions is Huawei, whose focus at this year's show is on "promoting our range of cloud, IP surveillance, e-education solutions," said Heng Song Cheng, enterprise solutions director of the South Pacific Region at the company. "One of the key pain points that keeps the CIO awake at night is that enterprises today are more distributed, serving not only their employees but having to leverage ICT to serve customers, suppliers, partners and even end users. So, enterprises have to work across ecosystems, allowing them to collaborate seamlessly, securely and interactively. And as we go into the BYOD trend, enterprises have to containerize the end user devices so that they don't affect the rest of the network [as well as security and compliance]."

Resulting from the BYOD trend, the Southeast Asia smartphone market is expected to hit an estimated US$11.6 billion by the end of 2012. Cloud services will be a critical component in the mobile technologies ecosystem so one of the three CommunicAsia2012-EnterpriseIT2012 technology zones or clusters is dedicated to Cloud Security & Services. "The Tech Zones help visitors to zoom in on the technologies and exhibitors that most interest them," Leung said.

At the Cloud Security & Services Tech Zone, Singapore-based ThinkCube, a proponent of collaborative cloud computing, will launch its Cronus open source cloud computing solution. It currently offers solutions that help operators to deploy cloud services such as a SaaS platform that integrates business applications, business intelligence and other tools.

"We have also created the Discovery Lounge -- a new showcase and networking space for SMBs, startups, research centers and education institutions to present their innovative ideas and deliver elevator pitches," Leung added. "The pitching sessions are held daily for three days from June 19 to 21, followed by the business networking sessions." At the lounge, another Singapore firm -- Clault Pte Ltd -- will present their secure cloud-based solution for protecting and sharing confidential corporate documents. 

More than 200 companies will be first-time exhibitors at the show. These include multichannel commerce software solution provider hybris software; browser-based video conferencing system provider FaceMe; remote access, collaboration, and remote IT management cloud services provider LogMeIn; enterprise cloud and infrastructure provider NTT Singapore; cloud platform provider SoftLayer Technologies; and management software and services provider Ufida Software Co Ltd.

As the gold sponsor of this year's CommunicAsia/ EnterpriseIT, Huawei hopes to achieve three objectives. "Being a more telco-oriented platform, we want to showcase some of the solutions and technologies that [we now sell through] existing telco partners to the enterprise sector," said Heng. "Secondly, it is to showcase our industry adaptations like the e-education and e-learning solutions and our innovative applications that can bring value to the enterprise, and thirdly, it is to get the general awareness of our enterprise solutions."

More than 53,000 industry professionals are expected at this week's CommunicAsia2012, EnterpriseIT2012 and BroadcastAsia2012 concurrent events in Singapore for the global ICT, digital multimedia and entertainment industries. The events feature close to 2,000 local and international exhibitors. At the same time, 200 experts will speak at the CommunicAsia2012 Summit that feature tracks such as 'The Telco Rising Cloud' and 'Cloud Computing - The Next Wave'.