By Emeka Aginam

At the just concluded 2011 edition of CeBIT computing trade show held in Hannover, Germany where hundreds of thousands of visitors were in attendant, business software, Cloud Computing and tablet PCs dominated the ICT trade exhibition with about 4,200 companies showcasing the latest technology available in the market.

Steve Jobs

For one thing, Cloud computing for businesses, in which office work is done in web browsers using distant servers, was a key topic this year.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who along with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had attended a gala event to welcome business leaders even they toured the exhibition grounds Tuesday when the show began.

Meanwhile, the world’s first laptop to be controlled by rolling the eyes was one of the innovations on display.

Made by Swedish company Tobii, it uses tiny video cameras to track eye movements, interpreting them as commands, just like movements of a mouse-controlled cursor.

Bitkom, the German digital industry federation which sponsored the fair, said worldwide sales by the computer and online sector would rise this year by 4.8 per cent to 2.56 trillion euros (3.5 trillion dollars).

Deutsche Messe, the organizing company, said it had been a good start to the fair, with solid public attendance on the first day.

Although CeBIT is primarily aimed at the business world and offers little for the ordinary consumer, the five-day expo is still popular with computer programmers. Over the past decade, the fair has halved in scale as the digital industry has consolidated and other fairs have risen in importance, but CeBIT has been stable for the past three years.

Over 500 CIOs of major international companies were at CeBIT 2011, representing a total annual purchasing volume of over 50 billion euros , more than ever before,” Raue remarked.

More than 4,200 companies from over 70 countries participated at CeBIT 2011, including many firms which returned after a break of several years, such as Oracle, HP, Xerox, Canon, Epson and Siemens Enterprise Communications.