Opengear, which has its CEO and global Research & Development team located in the Brisbane suburb of Toowong, has already had to postpone international meetings due to heightened security and accommodation pressures caused by the global G20 gathering.
Also, Opengear CEO Rick Stevenson flies from Brisbane for California this Sunday, the same day Presidents Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and other leaders leave Queensland after the G20.
Mr. Stevenson is heading to the US to attend next week’s Fog Computing Conference in San Jose, where Opengear is sponsoring its first significant event beyond the data centre and remote site management sector, moving into the broader Internet of Things marketplace.
Rick Stevenson said the G20 Leaders Summit was both a blessing and a curse for Brisbane-based businesses. “It has created a lot of congestion and contention for resources in the city this week,” he said.
“For example, we recently hired a Principal Product Manager who’s based in New York. We’d booked to bring him to Brisbane this week to spend five days with our R&D team here, but given the prospect of G20 congestion and public holidays, we’ve now rescheduled this visit for early January.
“On the positive side, sitting at the head of the G20 Leaders table gives Australia credibility and extra visibility, kudos which can be leveraged by companies like Opengear that operate in markets globally. Also the G20 is bringing a host of global players to Brisbane to interact with local businesses.”
Founded in Brisbane in 2004, Opengear (www.opengear.com) is a leading provider of products that enable businesses to use cellular networks to securely connect with and manage distributed technology infrastructure, even when primary Internet access is disrupted. Opengear earns more than 90 per cent of its revenues from international sales, especially from the US and Europe.
During the G2O Summit week, Opengear Chairman and founder Bob Waldie is meeting with Sangeet Paul Chaudray, a global authority on “Platform Thinking” (networked platforms and networked business models) who is in Brisbane for a G20-related business forum.
While Mr. Chaudray’s speciality is market transformations at the macro level, he recently co-wrote an article, called The Age of Social Products, predicting how the Internet of Things will become explosive once it moves from simple connectivity to social interaction.
This innovative view of the Internet of Things ties in closely with Opengear’s perspective on ubiquitous connectivity, especially the need for secure resilient online access.
