But Interop's woes can't be placed entirely at the feet of TechWeb and the show's previous operator, Key3Media, which declared bankruptcy in 2003. The industry has fundamentally changed since the 1990s, when there were debates over several different network protocols and a number of contenders for networking leadership, Kerravala said. Now, IP is king and Cisco dominates the market.
"If you're a networking professional, the universe of companies you're looking at is much smaller," Kerravala said.
A self-deprecating marketing executive put it more bluntly.
"People have figured out how to build networks. ... (now) there's just vendors like us arguing about how to build them," said David Callisch, vice president of marketing at Ruckus Wireless, which will be exhibiting at this year's show.
With the growing cost of travel, there's something to be said for an event that covers all the bases, but that strategy could create its own problems, Callisch said.
"I think it's on the brink of either becoming the show for the industry or being the next Comdex," he said, referring to the sprawling IT extravaganza that collapsed under its own weight soon after peaking in 2000 with about 200,000 attendees.
Heymann said Comdex failed partly because it mixed consumer and business technologies, something he promised Interop wouldn't do. But at least one IT executive said focus is everything.
"Interop is too general for us," said Chris Rima, supervisor of infrastructure systems at Tucson Electric Power. His department's conference budget is limited to events related to specific projects, he said. "We don't do general conferences at all."
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