- New attack fells Internet Explorer
- Steve Jobs is a man of a few words
- Oddball gifts for uber geeks
- Global warming research exposed after hack
- Google adding IPv6 to YouTube
Rss FeedRss Feed
Rss FeedHow do organizations pass their PCI DSS audits yet still suffer security breaches? Paying attention to PCI DSS checklists only partially secures the cardholder environment. Learn the next steps for fully securing your data.
The market for products to improve the delivery of application software over networks remains dynamic and innovative. Vendors focused on solving enterprises' most-pressing application problems have become the top players.
With the ratification of 802.11n you may be asking yourself, what does it really mean for your organization? Why should you care? Here's one reason, industry experts say that by the year 2012 80% of wireless LAN installations will be 802.11n. The result of that is not only will the vast majority of IT departments need to support 802.11n but the hundreds of millions of legacy 802.11 a/b/g clients need to be accounted for as well.
Here are five questions for enterprise network managers to bear in mind when considering UC deployment:
1. What applications need to be unified communications-enabled?
Many enterprise IT organizations divide responsibility for networking and applications into two groups. Unified communications requires both application and network infrastructure support, so that means getting both groups on board before deployment. Enabling unified communications support may involve a little or a lot of work, depending on the application. For some messaging and VoIP applications, presence support may already be built-in.
Other applications – such as databases, CRM packages and especially custom-developed transaction-processing programs – may lack presence support altogether. Identifying which applications will need unified communications support, and getting the appropriate development help if needed, is a necessary first step.
2. What existing network infrastructure supports unified communications?
Passing along presence information in a unified communications-enabled network usually means supporting new protocols and/or adding infrastructure services. With location-based unified communications services, for example, DNS servers may need to be updated with SRV (service type) and LOC (location) records. Other infrastructure services, such as those for e-mail and instant messaging, may need to be extended. Presence information (for example, to move availability status between voice and instant-messaging systems) can be added via SIMPLE or XMPP.
Security is always a concern whenever adding new pathways through the network. Most unified communications systems can use centralized directory servers such as those based on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol or Microsoft Active Directory to authenticate users or processes seeking to communicate. And firewalls and other security devices will need to be reconfigured to support new messaging protocols – not just SIMPLE and XMPP but also any proprietary messaging protocols such as those used by AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and the like.
The Leader in Network Knowledge