With a packed house of over 5,400 attendees, IBM's IMPACT 2009 conference officially kicked off this morning.Comedian Billy Crystal was the emcee for the 2 hour keynote session and he quickly managed to get the entire audience's attention by doing what he does best - cracking jokes at anything and everything. Making people laugh at 8:30 in the morning is no easy task, but the audience was loving every minute of him on the stage. I doubt anyone dozed off, no matter how late they arrived the night before (or how much alcohol they consumed while gambling into the early hours of the morning).

As expected, new products and services were announced during the keynote session and you can find complete details about them in IBM's official press release. Two things I need to mention since the questions I asked the IBM executives during our one-on-one interviews are relevant:

• The iLog acquisition a year ago has definitely made IBM a significant player in the Complex Event Processing (CEP) space. And keep in mind that IBM also has Cognos in its portfolio of products, allowing them to offer BI and real-time BI to their customers.
• The IBM WebSphere Cloudburst appliance couldn't have been released at a better time. Cloud computing and its benefits are getting a lot of coverage lately, and being able to easily create a private cloud is gold for financial and healthcare institutions.

Stay tuned for transcripts from my one-on-one interviews.IBM's IMPACT 2009 conference officially kicked off this Monday morning at the Venetian Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, NV. The company announced new products and services to an audience of over 5,400 attendees.