From January 27 to January 30, there will be one great reason to go to Miami, Florida, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the weather. More specifically, it's all about ITEXPO, which will be staged at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Those three days will be host to a variety of developments in an array of technological fields, as well as networking opportunities and chances to get a better handle on what's going on in the wider field. A new keynote recently announced, meanwhile, will detail one particular point going into ITEXPO (News - Alert) as Mitel's president and CEO Richard McBee will be delivering said keynote.

McBee's keynote is set to tackle the state of the industry as far as unified communications (UC) goes, offering a look at where it currently is, where it's likely to be headed, and just how Mitel (News - Alert)'s current operations will fit into those future plans. Given that Mitel's line of business phone, collaboration tools and conferencing software already drives over two billion connections a day—not to mention 33 million cloud-based connections—it's clear that Mitel has plenty to say here.

McBee offered up a bit of commentary ahead of the larger keynote, saying “Transformational technologies like cloud communications are changing the game and streamlining how we connect, collaborate and help our customers drive success, but as an industry we are still at the starting line of what UC has to offer. The challenge now is to replace the technical complexity with a simple, seamless and universal user experience. The industry will have to come together in new and unanticipated ways to make that happen.”

But McBee will hardly be alone in the field at ITEXPO; not only will he be in the midst of a huge number of industry figures, but he'll also be joined by Josh Haslett, Mitel's vice president of system engineering. Haslett will be on hand for two separate sessions: first, a panel discussion of UC trends and improving current UC operations set for Tuesday, January 27. Second, he'll be on hand for a panel discussion on the true meaning of UC on Thursday, January 29 at 12:30 p.m.

Two things are clear here: one, Mitel is going to have a really impressive presence at ITEXPO, and those who are looking for word on just what Mitel has in store for its users should certainly make time for this event. Two, Mitel is actually just going to be one part of the larger overall show, as ITEXPO has events and exhibitions planned from a variety of businesses in the field, so even if Mitel's advances aren't specifically of an interest, it's still worth attending the show to see what the other businesses in the field—not only in the UC field but in several other fields beyond that—are up to.

There's a lot going on in the technology world these days, and while some might think that we've seen the lot thanks to the recently-concluded Consumer Electronics Show (CES (News - Alert)) event, we've really only just begun. With a host of other shows coming up throughout this year, ITEXPO will kick off what amounts to the rest of the year in technology, and there will be plenty of developments on hand for all. Mitel's going to be a very big part of this show, but even so, it's still just the beginning of what ITEXPO 2015 is going to have to offer.