Network World

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By John Dix

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NWW changes afoot: 06/22/07; Two exciting developments at Network World have a bearing on how we deliver content to you.
Climate Savers step in right direction: 06/15/07; Google, Intel and the other backers of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative announced this week are to be commended for their efforts to address an issue that is on the minds of corporate buyers but not well understood.
Bots on your net? Look twice: 06/07/07; Think the botnets you read about consist solely of zombies on unprotected consumer PCs? Think again.
Some of the gems at Interop: 05/31/07; Interop in Las Vegas two weeks ago featured the usual litany of big vendors, but it's fun to nose around to see what the smaller shops have cooked up.
Network industry alive and well at Interop: 05/23/07; Interop is always an interesting bellwether for the tech industry, and by this indicator things look pretty good. The show in Las Vegas this week featured 475 exhibitors —100 more than last year — and was expected to draw 20,000 attendees, a 10% increase. The large main hall of the Mandalay Bay conference center was filled almost to capacity.
The role of IT in driving agility: 05/18/07; Of all the things companies can strive to achieve, agility delivers the highest return in today's business environment, according to Peter Weill, director of MIT Sloan School of Management's Center for Information Systems Research.
A security tool with a message: 05/10/07; Security experts will tell you that it isn't always about technology. While the latest tools help, more often than not security comes down to policy and staff education. If you can get employees to commit policy to memory and understand how threats may target or involve them, you've gone a long way toward locking down the organization.
Mobile tech can map human activity: 05/03/07; At a recent IT symposium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one area of study discussed was digitally augmented urban environments.
OLPC laptop has the right stuff: 04/26/07; Regardless of where you stand on Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child effort, there is no denying the attraction of the product this nonprofit has developed for distribution to needy children around the world.
Why can't we all play NAC nicely?: 04/19/07; This week, we've released the findings of the industry's most in-depth, hands-on evaluation of network access control gear available today.
Don't overlook your local wireless ISP: 04/12/07; The emergence of WiMAX is driving a lot of interest in the potential of metropolitan wireless data network services, but don't overlook existing fixed wireless ISPs that offer legitimate alternatives today.
Data center design revisited: 04/05/07; While power and cooling have always been core data center issues, with the price of providing these essentials now rivaling the cost of the computing gear itself, it's time to take a new look.
Auditors can help: 03/30/07; If your company is large enough to have internal auditors, you may want to grab a copy of a new report from The Institute of Internal Auditors to see what role they can play in your assessment of outsourcing options.
Think twice about new security gizmos: 03/22/07; In a recent study about spyware by Nemertes Research, Senior Vice President Andreas Antonopoulos was surprised to find that 16% of the companies examined were not concerned about the threat.
WiMAX IPO boon or boggle?: 03/16/07; Depending on who you ask, Clearwire's $600 million initial public offering earlier this month is either a ringing endorsement of WiMAX or another overblown service provider IPO, the likes of which we haven't seen since the height of irrational exuberance.
IT Roadmap show hits hot buttons: 03/08/07; Network World's IT Roadmap conference in Boston last week opened with an analyst roundtable discussion that provided a series of quips about the current thinking on everything from mobility to VoIP and e-discovery.
Riverbed's hot, but options abound: 03/05/07; WAN acceleration vendor Riverbed is on a tear. It just released glowing financials for 2006 (the year it went public), said it will soon offer a half million more shares of stock, and today unveiled Version 4.0 of RiOS, the operating system that drives its acceleration appliances.
Put virtualization to work in the lab: 02/22/07; Companies have realized huge gains by using virtualization to consolidate resources, and many are now looking for other ways to leverage the technology.
Study provides insight into hacks: 02/09/07; A new study by the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering shows the Internet wilds are still teeming with hordes of good old-fashioned brute-force attacks and quantifies how frequently machines are attacked and the methods used.
Venture capitalists reveal hot sectors: 02/01/07; I recently hosted a panel discussion featuring leading Boston-area venture capitalists and the conversation ranged from hot investment sectors to the differences between East and West Coast venture capital firms.
Breaches: Boards need to wake up: 01/25/07; The first reports of fraud using data stolen from retail giant TJX in December started to trickle in last week, and many observers fear a torrent will develop.
IEEE anoints tech winners, losers: 01/18/07; It's the season for looking forward and back, and the IEEE's Spectrum magazine is in the middle of the fray with its annual issue of tech winners and losers. What makes Spectrum's efforts worth noting is the nature of the organization it serves: the IEEE is the world's largest professional technology association.
iPhone: All in the user interface: 01/11/07; Apple's new iPhone isn't likely to take the enterprise market by storm, but it certainly will rattle the cell phone incumbents and make them rethink common user interface tenets.
Telecom: Back to the future: 01/04/07; AT&T's acquisition of BellSouth moves the industry one step closer to its past as competition drives a consolidation cycle that is returning us to the days when the market was dominated by a handful of players.
Mobilizing the desk phone: 12/15/06; One of the interesting things to watch next year will be how the cellular and Wi-Fi worlds collide, and a start-up called Divitas hopes to be one of the players in the middle of the action.