issues IT faces in 2007

Network World looks into its crystal ball and considers issues that IT faces in 2007.

The year ahead: Juggling IT risks, opportunities
In 2007, IT executives will need to clearly evaluate risk as they weigh sometimes opposing proposals to bolster security, increase wireless connectivity, extend more business processes over the Internet and address regulatory requirements.

Dzubeck on the year ahead: What’s hot for 2007
Looking even a year ahead into the network future can be a daunting task. For example, three years ago at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Bill Gates, then Microsoft’s chairman, boldly predicted the problem of spam on the Internet would be solved by 2006. Recent studies, however, indicate worldwide spam traffic doubled in 2006 and now accounts for nine of 10 e-mail messages sent on the Internet.

Five issues Microsoft must deal with to make an impact in 2007
It was a rough 2006 for Microsoft, relatively speaking for a company that posted $44 billion in revenue, as it weathered long-awaited new versions of Windows and Office. But as the software giant heads into 2007, the newest incarnations of its cash cows are out there, a number of important product upgrades are on the board, highlighted by Longhorn Server, and the path to success over the next 12 months is littered with other challenges such as services and cross-vendor interoperability.

Top five challenges for Cisco in 2007
Network professionals always need to have an eye on what Cisco is up to. Here are five key developments Cisco will be spearheading in the year ahead.

The year ahead: Open source smackdown ahead in 2007
Now that Linux has become a data center mainstay, companies in 2007 should be taking a closer look at open source applications and how they can meet traditional business needs, industry experts say.

Service providers changing stripes in 2007
The service provider business segment is in the process of morphing into multiple parallel lines of business. YouTube.com, Google.com and MySpace.com consider themselves next generation or alternate service providers. These companies are just the tip of the iceberg for the number of new entries in this market in 2007. Low entry cost and high growth driven by ad-model revenue is fueling this next phase of network growth and investment.