This week: Lotus set to uphold the future of Notes

EDITORS’ CHOICE

NOTE: This Week on NetworkWorld.com is now The Best of Network World. Here is this week’s Editors’ Choice; look for Readers’ Choice later this week.

Page One

Lotus set to uphold the future of Notes

IBM/Lotus this week hopes to finally attain what years of earlier efforts have failed to yield: widespread trust among Notes/Domino users that the company remains committed to the platform and its decade-long battle with Microsoft for collaboration-software supremacy.

Network managers getting apps savvy

The walls between IT groups are crumbling, and network professionals report that responsibility for optimal application performance is shifting to them.

Old-school VoIP: Hobbyists link old PSTN switches to IP

What began as a conversation on the TCI mailing list in the fall of 2004 culminated a few months later in the Collectors’ Network, a working VoIP system linking TCI members that uses the old gear stored in their basements, barns and garages.

Network World Hot Seat

Sun CTP Greg Papadopoulos

For Greg Papadopoulos, executive vice president and CTO of Sun Microsystems, computing was getting boring a few years ago, but now he can’t wait to witness the industry morph over the next decade. Watch him in our latest Hot Seat with John Gallant video interview.

Review

LANDesk rules the roost in desktop management

Our Clear Choice Test of desktop-management software points to Altiris and LANDesk.

Advice

Nutter’s Help Desk: The case of the wireless connection and the sneaky teenager

Ron Nutter helps a father whose daughter has figured out how to get around his restrictions on her late-night Internet use by getting onto a neighbor’s wireless network.

Tech Update

802.3at pumps up Power over Ethernet

The IEEE is working to enhance the 802.3af Power over Ethernet standard with PoE plus.

News

IBM looks to reinvigorate iSeries

Formerly known as the AS/400, IBM’s iSeries servers have a faithful following. But Big Blue is committed to expanding interest in the midrange servers, now built on the same Power processors as its Unix-based pSeries. Network World Senior Editor Jennifer Mears caught up with Mark Shearer as he ended his first year as general manager of the iSeries to find out where the venerable server is heading

Forget pork, local politician lobbies for fiber

Mayor Graham Richard of Fort Wayne, Ind., saw the benefit to his city of Verizon’s plans for an initial rollout of fiber-to-the-home in 50 cities across the country.

Carriers gear up to sell priority QoS

Carriers maintain that they can make deals to give better-than-average QoS to individual providers of Internet applications, such as VoIP or movie downloading companies. But critics say the practice could slow applications that don’t have priority and make the carrier the arbiter of what’s most appealing on a consumer’s broadband connection.

Q&A: Kriens evaluates Juniper at 10

Ten years after Juniper moved to become a formidable service-provider alternative to Cisco the company is challenging its rival in the enterprise. CEO Scott Kriens reflects.

Avamar enhances disk-based backup

Start-up Avamar this week is expected to roll out a new version of its Axion disk-to-disk back-up and data protection software that makes backups of network data not only faster but also easier to recover, according to the company.

Controversy follows Google

As hype envelops Google, the company can’t seem to avoid being dragged into one rumor or controversy after another.

Symbol shows its rugged side

Symbol last week unveiled a wireless handheld specifically designed for enterprise users and that the company says is more rugged than the typical device for such customers.

Outsourcing market losing some steam

It’s hard to call $11.5 billion worth of new outsourcing business a disappointment, but that’s what some experts are saying about IBM’s Global Services performance last quarter.

Foundry launches 10G line

Foundry launches 10G application switches, Ethernet routers.

But wait, there’s more!

Our This Week page will also link you to: IronPort adds Web reputation service to SenderBase; WebEx branches into systems mgmt.; Windows and open source: A growing trend; Internet Telephony show focuses on open source; BigFix adds security to patch product; Consortium helps define Web application firewalls; Symantec updates security service; Protecting e-mail; Software provides Windows safety net; The IT services catalog; IBM buys bolster net mgmt. offerings.