Leading British location app developer, Companion HQ (www.companionhq.com) is sponsoring this year’s Virtual Confex exhibition at International Confex, which takes place from the 6^th- 8^th March 2012 at ExCeL London.

International Confex is the UK’s top show for event organisers. It connects organisers with an exciting range of venues, destinations and support services, providing the perfect forum to do business and source essentials for any kind of event. Additionally, ‘Virtual Confex’ held in parallel with the exhibition looks at the future of exhibition management by exploring the future of virtual and hybrid exhibitions; from understanding the virtual audience to implementing and delivering high-quality events all within the cyber domain.

Adam Wright, Companion CEO and Head of Solutions for Black Pepper Software (www.blackpepper.co.uk) will participate in a panel, also comprising UBM, CISCO and Universal WorldEvents looking at the technologies that can be used to make virtual events work.

Companion’s core product is a brand-new innovative smartphone application which has been designed for use at exhibitions, conferences, shopping centres and attractions. The app provides visitors with a range of useful, ‘real time’ information, venue specific navigation and mapping, interaction via embedded social media and real-time analytics to improve both the visitor experience and the business management of venues.

Adam Wright, Companion CEO, said: “Companion works to bridge the gap between the physical world and the ever expanding digital landscape. It provides a digital platform to communicate and interact with people in a complex venue (and remotely) while also delivering deep insight into how the physical space is being used. Companion has created an app for Virtual Confex to facilitate communication at the event and encourage responses and interaction.”

Companion has been used at: BBC Good Food Show; the Motorhome and Caravan Show; the Classic Car Show and BBC Gardeners World.

The rapid growth in high powered mobile devices such as tablet pcs and smartphones, coupled with pervasive high speed network connections over 3G and Wifi is driving a significant change to the way that companies need to view their IT infrastructure.

Adam Wright, Head of Solutions at Black Pepper Software which is heavily involved in this development said: “IT Services no longer need to be constrained within the physical infrastructure of the workplace. Aided by Cloud computing and Software as a Service provision, innovative companies are gaining competitive advantage and operating more efficiently by extending their core IT services to mobile workers armed with laptops, tablets and smartphone devices.

“What is more, the most savvy companies are simplifying processes for users  by bundling specific functions and features into  mobile apps targeting specific devices like the iPad or Android tablet to deliver just the functionality required by mobile workers and no more, in an intuitive user friendly way,”  he added.

For example, traders can now carry apps into their client’s offices so they are armed with the latest prices and quotes at their fingertips to close deals on the spot. Logistics companies can also provide specific apps to third parties within their supply chain to update on the progress and tracking of goods and products.

These apps provide ring fenced access to specific key parts of corporate data, and can tap into some of the additional features and functions of tablet devices. These devices enable multi-touch manipulation of information on a screen, allowing users to zoom in or out of data sets or supply chains, or offline storage of sales figures and stock information for sales and trading in remote regions of the world.

However, the development of mobile enterprise application platforms are not for the feint hearted and demand skilful development and software creation to be effective. Enterprise apps are not driven by the consumer oriented games and platforms that have made smartphones so popular. Instead, the next generation of mobile enterprise application platforms is being driven by enterprise IT experts, with a deep knowledge of the issues of enterprise IT first, such as security, scalability, integration, and extensibility.

Black Pepper Software, a leading agile IT consultancy, has a significant track record of developing both Enterprise IT and Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms for companies such as Thomas Cook and Companion Technologies Ltd.