Small ComNet soldiers on

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The ComNet Conference & Expo last week celebrated a bittersweet 25th birthday: Sessions and exhibitors focused on the hottest industry subjects from security to convergence to Web services, but the energy level was low because of sparse vendor and attendee turnout.

Missing from the event were industry bellwethers such as Cisco, Nortel and AT&T, that have made ComNet a network industry mecca in years past. But like other trade shows, ComNet has been hit hard by tight corporate travel budgets and the industry downturn. The crowd appeared to be much smaller than the 30,000 attendees expected by show organizers. The 141 exhibitors on hand represented a two-thirds drop off from two years ago.

Nevertheless, the show went on, featuring Daniel Mehan, CIO and assistant administrator for IS at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), among its keynote speakers (hear a rebroadcast of his talk). Attendees heard firsthand how the agency is attempting to secure its 40,000-seat network while relying increasingly on the Internet.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - The ComNet Conference & Expo last week celebrated a bittersweet 25th birthday: Sessions and exhibitors focused on the hottest industry subjects from security to convergence to Web services, but the energy level was low because of sparse vendor and attendee turnout.

Missing from the event were industry bellwethers such as Cisco, Nortel and AT&T, that have made ComNet a network industry mecca in years past. But like other trade shows, ComNet has been hit hard by tight corporate travel budgets and the industry downturn. The crowd appeared to be much smaller than the 30,000 attendees expected by show organizers. The 141 exhibitors on hand represented a two-thirds drop off from two years ago.

Nevertheless, the show went on, featuring Daniel Mehan, CIO and assistant administrator for IS at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), among its keynote speakers (hear a rebroadcast of his talk). Attendees heard firsthand how the agency is attempting to secure its 40,000-seat network while relying increasingly on the Internet.

Mehan spent much of his speech discussing security issues, including the recent MS-SQL Slammer attack. A combination of keeping up to date with patches, keeping workers trained and using a variety of antihacking strategies prevented the FAA's important computer systems from being harmed, he said. At the same time, he knows the agency isn't infallible."We can't promise you'll never get a cold," he said of the agency's security system. "But we have to make sure it doesn't spread to pneumonia."

Web services debate

The security theme that Mehan emphasized was also evident also at Network World's Web Services Showdown, which pitted representatives from BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in a debate about the promises and reality of Web services (hear a rebroadcast of the showdown). John Gallant, Network World president and editorial director, and Tony Picardi, senior vice president of software research at IDC, fired questions at vendor participants.

Security must be inherent in any Web services architecture, said Bob Sutor, IBM's director of Web services.

"Businesses want to use [Web services] to connect to the Internet and to partners," he said. "You want transactions with security and [to] not throw out [the infrastructure] you have."

Microsoft's Neil Charney, director of platform strategy, said that while customers can secure Web services today using technology such as Secure Sockets Layer, deeper security needs to be built into Microsoft products. "You will see security in all our products," he said.

Key to Web services are tools that let businesses make their applications accessible via the Web, says Oracle's Ted Farrell, architect and director of strategy for applications tools. "You won't see Oracle out writing a database or tool for specific applications. We want to wrap the [application] layer with Web services and offer any application as a Web service," he said.

Agreement on standards for Web services is essential to success, the panelists said. Once the technology is solidified, it should rightly assume an unglamorous role, said Adam Bosworth, BEA's senior vice president and chief architect for advanced development. "It's going to be part of the core plumbing," said Bosworth, who created a minor stir when he said that this summer his company plans to release an ambitious new version of its WebLogic Workshop development tool for Java environments.