KEY POINTS:
The country's largest IT industry gathering had to put out the "full house" sign again this year with organisers saying business enthusiasm for web-based technology is helping drive demand for the annual event.
About 2200 IT professionals paid up to $1860 each to attend Microsoft's three-day Tech Ed conference at the SkyCity convention centre this week.
The event provides training for IT developers and others who use or on-sell Microsoft technologies.
Tech Ed registrations opened on May 1 and the event sold out within three weeks.
"For the past three years we've sold the event out. Demand far exceeds the capacity we have," said Scott Wylie, director of Microsoft New Zealand's developer and platform strategy group.
"[SkyCity] is New Zealand's largest conference venue and we can't make it [the event] any bigger here."
Microsoft had offered registration latecomers a discounted deal to attend the Sydney version of Tech Ed, which began yesterday.
New Zealand is believed to be the world's most Tech Ed-enthused nation on a per capita basis.
The same event in the US attracts around 10,000 attendees while Australia draws about 3500.
Wylie said one reason for the Auckland event's popularity was growing business interest in the concept of "cloud computing" - delivering services over the internet - and the need for IT developers to skill themselves up in technologies that make it possible. This included the large number of what Microsoft calls "independent software developers" (ISVs) who use the company's software as the basis for building the solutions they develop and sell to their own customers.
"There is some new thinking required. There will still be people developing software just to be installed and run on PCs.
"That's not going away but increasingly - as the business value of being able to have people connected anytime, anywhere becomes apparent - there will be a drive for developers and ISVs to be thinking about these kinds of things and building them in."
Microsoft's Singapore-based Asia Pacific president, Emilio Umeoka, said there were about 100 ISVs in New Zealand and of the 66,000 people working in IT in this country, 29,000 worked with Microsoft technology.
"For every dollar we generate here in New Zealand our partners generate close to $13," he said.
One local ISV is Auckland-based Ontrack Systems, which specialises in developing software used to log and process jobs carried out by service technicians working in the field.
The company's software is used by more than 150 businesses in New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Canada and the UK.
"In order to stay fresh and to build new features into our products we embrace the new technologies Microsoft releases from time to time and as they become stable we build them into our products," said Ontrack founder Kevin Taylor.
"Using these new emerging technologies allows us to tick all the boxes when clients review our software."
Mobile functionality was important to Ontrack customers, and a growing part of the company's software development, he said.
"Our clients want to see all the information a technician needs on his mobile device, want to do call dispatch using the device and want to be able to sign off jobs in the field using the device."
TECH ED
* Provides training for IT developers and others who use or on-sell Microsoft technologies.
* Three-day event held at SkyCity convention centre.
* 2200 IT professionals attended.
