Editorials

By John Dix

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Out with SOPA, in with cloud: 01/23/12; Count us among the critics of SOPA and PIPA, the two ill-conceived bills that were intended to protect American firms against copyright infringement by foreign websites.
Bang for your IT buck: 01/09/12; By all accounts the economy is stronger now than it was 12 months ago, but it is also clear that companies are still moving cautiously, and for the bulk of IT that means continuing to do more with what you have, which is at least better than doing more with less.
Tower, tower, come in tower: 12/19/11; It is hard to put your finger on any one thing that sums up developments in the world of IT this year, but a speaker at one of Network World's recent IT Roadmap conferences had an interesting analogy that seems apt.
The water pump alarm: 12/01/11; If nothing else, the now disputed "hacking" of an Illinois water utility has brought the spotlight back to shine on the vulnerability of our national infrastructure.
Corralling complexity: 11/21/11; It has been referred to as Moore's Flaw: The IT complexity that results from the inexorable innovation driven by Moore's Law.
Assessing the APT threat: 11/07/11; Do security vendors secretly create the attacks their tools are designed to ward off? Of course not, but that old chestnut hints at a broader suspicion about whether the current state of security is really as bad as the security firms make it out to be, especially when it comes to the latest poster child: advanced persistent threats.
Nudging IT forward: 10/24/11; There is basic agreement on the nirvana vision for the next-generation data center, but the tricky part is getting there from here.
The OpenStack juggernaut: 10/10/11; The OpenStack collaborative industry effort to build an open source cloud platform is to be applauded for the remarkable gains it has achieved in a short amount of time. Founded by Rackspace Hosting and NASA in July last year, the organization is now backed by 120 companies, including the likes of HP, Dell, Intel and Cisco, and has already issued four major code releases, the last of which, Diablo, just came out last month and has already been downloaded 50,000 times.
Efforts to block AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile USA are at odds with our mobile demands: 09/12/11; Sprint last week filed suit against AT&T in an attempt to block that company's $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA, a cause that looks good on paper but is at odds with consumer demand for improved mobile experiences.
Partnering with vendors: 08/22/11; Does the majority of your communications with suppliers revolve around problem resolution and sales presentations? If so, how do you get them to step up and improve service levels? How do you get them to work with you on innovation? How do you build a relationship that focuses their energies on your needs and benefits them in the process?
Data center surprises: 08/08/11; It isn't surprising that virtualization topped the list of technologies expected to have the biggest impact on data center investments over the next two years, according to a new Network World study, but the survey turned up some surprises as well.
Vacation, all we ever wanted: 07/18/11; Our esteemed editor-in-chief, John Dix, was on vacation this week, and that's a good thing. Not just because I get to take his place on this page, but because taking a vacation -- whether you're a regular employee or president of the company -- is a good idea.
Build a cloud service review board: 06/20/11; Like it or not, the arrival of cloud means IT isn't the only game in town anymore. It is increasingly easy for corporate denizens to simply bypass IT to get what they want. The deceit? They simply don't tell you about the services acquired.
Big questions about cyberwar: 06/06/11; The Pentagon is expected to announce a cyberstrategy this month that concludes a cyberattack on the U.S. can be an act of war, and while the damage from such an assault may warrant that position, hopefully this just amounts to loud barking given the perils involved.
No end to innovation: 05/23/11; The recent Interop show in Las Vegas was awash with big ideas and the latest and greatest technologies, a healthy sign that IT is alive and well and the industry is brimming with innovation.
Survey shows mixed emotions about outsourcing: 04/18/11; Cloud computing might ultimately usher in an era where more IT assets and functions live off premise, but one of the things that jumped out of a recent survey about outsourcing is there is still a lot of customer churn when it comes to relying on IT service suppliers.
The network is built in: 04/04/11; Cisco last week added more detail to its data center fabric story by rolling out a bevy of new products that provide extra touch points to use when comparing Cisco's strategy to the fabric plans of Juniper and Brocade.
The change imperative: 03/21/11; Some 400 of your peers gathered at Network World's IT Roadmap show in Chicago last week to discuss everything from cloud plans to iPad support, flat network options and Windows 7 migration.
The new cloud tool kit: 03/07/11; While the term "cloud" still puts many people off, chances are good that within a few years most companies will have a mix of legacy infrastructure, private cloud pods, public cloud services (SaaS or other), and resources at co-location or hosted facilities. Some people look at that say that's just business as usual, while others say it adds up to one big IT cloud. Nomenclature aside, the question remains: how will you manage it holistically?
Cisco's moment of truth: 02/21/11; Cisco achieved a milestone in its most recent fiscal quarter, one with profound implications for the future of the company: Cisco made more money from its new products and services than it did from routers and switches.
Introducing ECS: 02/07/11; With this issue we introduce the Enterprise Cloud Services series, a Network World bi-monthly special report exploring the possibilities of cloud computing.
Sizing up the IT role of Apple and Google: 01/21/11; The publication of our Tech Debate on Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs couldn't have been more timely given the news last week about Jobs taking a medical leave and Schmidt handing over the CEO reins to Larry Page, one of the company's co-founders.
Communicate the value, not the tech: 12/20/10; As we close out 2010 and welcome 2011 it is clear we're at an interesting juncture in IT, with new opportunities stretching out before us. The key will be what we make of the opportunities and how we position our efforts to capitalize on them.
Our vote on net neutrality: 12/03/10; The net neutrality framework FCC chairman Julius Genachowski outlined in a speech last week and which will be voted on later this month sustains many of the original goals of neutrality while giving the telcos enough to give a tentative nod of approval, all of which adds up to a meaningful step forward.
Virtualization meets its organizational limit: 11/22/10; We've been staring a simple truth in the face for a few years but generally trying to ignore it because the implications are big. That truth: If we are to get the most out of highly virtualized, cloud-ready environments we are probably going to have to rethink the way parts of IT are organized.