Network Worlds Best Products 2008

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2008 Best of the Tests winners
Out of the more than 170 products tested by our Lab Alliance members last year, a dozen stand out as the absolute best. They excel in performance, ease of use and feature functionality.
+ AirMagnet Laptop Analyzer • FastScale’s FastScale Composer Suite • Heroix Longitude • HP BladeSystem c3000 Enclosure • IBM Lotus Sametime • Juniper’s ISG-1000 • LogMeIn’s LogMeIn IT Reach • NetSupport’s NetSupport Manager • Riverbed’s Steelhead • SolarWinds’ ipMonitor 8.0 • Symantec Network Access Control • VMware ESX Server 3 with VirtualCenter

Fave raves
Readers tell us about seven products they love for making their IT operations more efficient, mobile and secure.
+Citrix XenSource • Coradiant's TrueSight IM • Lumension Security's Sanctuary Application Control and PatchLink Update • VMware ESX Server • Wave Systems' Embassy Trust Suite • Zenprise's Zenprise for BlackBerry

Your picks
Which products deserve kudos for improving the way your enterprise works?

“Opnet has the best network simulation and analysis tool out there in
ACE, but [its] Panorama product is even more amazing. ...” READ MORE, and tell us about your favorite network products

Sleepers but keepers
Five products and technologies that went from so-so to highly promising as testers checked them out
+Mu Security's Mu-4000 • NetFlow • Packeteer's iShaper 400 • Radware's Linkproof 1000 • SonicWall's SonicWall Pro 5060

2008 Category-Breaker Award winners
Selected by columnists and bloggers, six innovative products focusing on today's biggest challenges, from how to keep the data center cool to how to support social networking in the enterprise

	Active Power’s CoolAir UPS JAMES GASKIN: “You can replace a very large UPS system with a fairly small … flywheel UPS and save data center room and avoid typical UPS battery creation and disposal problems.”
	Airwave Wireless’ Airwave Wireless Management Suite 5.3 CRAIG MATHIAS: “This does all the typical [management] functions … available across what could be a very heterogeneous wireless LAN installation.”
	Cisco’s VFrame Data Center MITCHELL ASHLEY: “Now servers and storage and the network itself can all by dynamically configured.”
	OpenID 2.0 DAVE KEARNS: “2.0 makes the whole [OpenID single sign-on] protocol useful.”
	Sourcefire’s Sourcefire 3D System JOEL SNYDER: “The Defense Center [piece] is really … a security information management system that is very tightly and beautifully integrated with the IDS and IPS … and the vulnerability management system.”
	Twitter MARK GIBBS: “Could become a major player in the Web 2.0 world and potentially become an enterprise solution in specialized areas.”