Anyone who has been going to RSA year after year has seen lots of change. Changes in the quantity of vendors, changes in the vendor types, changes in the booth personnel, even changes in the swag you get if you sit through a presentation. I’m so glad we are past that dry spell of just pens and mints, we like t-shirts, USB-drives and remote control helicopter s! This year was a great show and I’d like to share with you some observations.
When I first started going to RSA, there were more vendors than there were customers. It was a huge vendor boondoggle and while the business development people were having a great time, I was looking for customers to speak with and have a great conversation about what they were looking for at the show and what type of problems they were trying to solve.
This year was great in terms of customers-to-vendor ratio. We had a great turnout at our booth and I’ve almost lost my voice from non-stop conversations. What does this change mean for future RSA shows? I remember one year being at the show and having a customer tell me “You know what TK, this is a show of car parts, and frankly, I need transportation.”. I’ll never forget this statement and I have a working theory.
In the early days of the RSA show, the exhibitors sold all kinds of parts that when put together by a skilled craftsmen, created a powerful solution. Composability was more important than Usability. As the attendees change to more of a business level buyer persona, consumers that are not security subject matter experts, we move toward deeper solutions where Usability trumps Composability.
When I hear those words “…this is a show of car parts, and frankly, I need transportation.”, I imagine a trend on the exhibit floor dominated by much more complete solutions. Product designed for a persona that does not know how to fire up a debugger, does not know how to read a set of ACLs, but knows how to read market results and can use Excel to model any financial system you can imagine. That might be a little extreme but nonetheless, the customers out number the vendors by a larger and larger margin.
I predict that RSA next year will have less small highly technical one-trick-pony companies and more multi-product solutions and managed services companies. To use that great quote, there will be more vendors selling cars and transportation services than there will be vendors selling parts.
—tk