CeBIT approaches

It's March, so it must be CeBIT, "the world's largest trade fair showcasing digital IT and telecommunications solutions for home and work environments". Next week, vendors, IT professionals, the public, analysts and the press — a crack squad from ZDNet UK among them — will descend upon Hannover for the annual 26-hall extravaganza that last year accommodated over 6,200 exhibitors and some 430,000 visitors.

Among the themes expected to emerge from this year's show are: virtualisation and IT infrastructure simplification; SOA (Service Oriented Architecture); telematics and navigation, including the latest on the EU's Galileo project; solutions for SMEs; security in all its forms; and a lot of noise from Microsoft and its software partners about Vista.

There will also, of course, be all manner of interesting bits of hardware, strange on-stand promotional antics, keynote addresses and press conferences. We'll do our very best to filter out the music from the cacophony of noise.