DEMOfall: Still more for IT

Tuesday afternoon at DEMOfall, continued from here:

* SuccessFactors showed a workforce performance dashboard intended to let a CEO spot where the work isn't getting done and letting the CEO drill down to figure out what's causing poor performance. Sounds like a potentially useful management tool -- but for managers, not for CEOs.

* Determina has a nice approach to dealing with security vulnerabilities: Instead of keeping track of worms and viruses, spot and patch the problems on the fly. Exactly how the technology works isn't explained. But if it actually means you don't have to wait for vendors to ship patches that break the software in new ways, it's worth a look.

* iCentera demoed another portal creation tool, this one designed for bridging the gaps between product designers and sales people, and between sales and customers.

* Teneros showed an appliance that sits between an Exchange mail server and users. If the server goes down, the appliance pretends it's a mail server. Once the mail server comes back up, the appliance repopulates the Exchange mail database and gets everything delivered. Teneros is pitching this as an "application continuity" appliance. Very impressive if it works as advertised.

* Workshare has a "document integrity" system called Workshare Hygiene that scans each document to make sure confidential information doesn't get sent to the wrong people, and that there's an audit trail. Yeah, it's over-the-shoulder-ware, but CFOs and legal counsel will love this.

* inSORS showed a nice videoconferencing system -- good for mixing and matching live video meetings and replaying previous conferences at the same time. The usual bells and whistles -- shared whiteboard, chat, data sharing.

* Green Array has...well, I have no idea what the purpose of this product is, based on the demo. It appears to have something to do with project management, but what's different about it was completely opaque. The notes in the DEMO program book don't help either. Murkiest demo at DEMO.

* IntelliReach demoed an all-in-one system for solving e-mail problems -- antispam plus encryption plus archiving. Rules-based antispam. Archived mail is indexed on the fly, so finding archived mail should be easier. Offered with a traditional license or as a service.

* ATG has a customer service and support suite called Wisdom based on lots of use of personalization technology. Great, very dense demo, which means I'll never be able to describe it in a paragraph. Put simply, it's like CRM, only with the machine making it easier for a sales person to help a customer, rather than the usual CRM selling-machine model. OK, that's not simple either. Just go look at their website, OK?

* Rotani takes us back out of IT shops and back to the consumer products -- it showed AirReferee, an appliance for managing wireless streaming video over 802.11.

* Tendril has middleware and a console for managing wireless sensors and control systems. Yes, it sounds strictly industrial, but some IT shops really need this stuff because they're responsible for integrating factory automation as well as office data.

* Echelon had the last demo of the day, and the most whizzy: They're working on a system called Pyxos, which networks very small, very cheap sensors that can be embedded in almost anything. The whizzy demo was a smart carpet that can detect someone walking down a hall, the theft of a safe, even someone falling down injured. It's future stuff, but it all worked -- and after thunderstorms, power outages and network failures today at DEMO, there's something to be said for something that just works.

Coming Wednesday: 29 more demos. Presuming we survive that long...