You hold in your hands a copy of the freshly redesigned Network World, which represents the final change in a broader effort that has been rolling out in stages across print and online.
In its 19-year history, Network World has stayed true to its mission: synthesizing industry developments so enterprise network buyers can make informed strategic decisions.
While technologies come and go, we focus on the constants, delivering detailed information about products and services, opinion about how to apply technology to advance business needs, career/management advice, and information about technology advances. Network World’s print, online and face-to-face events are crafted with these needs in mind.
Since we launched Network World in 1986 we have updated the design five times, each one a refinement intended to make the publication more appealing, easier to browse and more useful. Some of the thinking that went into this latest design tweak, for example, saw the recent addition of the Enterprise Computing section to provide a focal point for coverage of system news and advances. And, of course, we hope you agree that the new look is bolder and cleaner.
The new design actually debuted online first. In May we rechristened our site NetworkWorld.com to make it easier for people who weren’t familiar with our old handle, nwfusion.com, and revamped the site from top to bottom. The principal design goals were to ease site navigation and surround stories with even more contextually relevant material so visitors could dive deeper with little extra effort.
As in print, we organize online content in buckets to save readers time. The top-level view is provided by 12 Research Centers focused on things such as security and convergence.
Each Research Center is further subdivided to deliver news, test results, expert advice, case studies and white papers.
Networking today is as vibrant as it was when we launched the publication 19 years ago, if not more central to everything. Most all of today’s hottest issues are network related, from security to convergence, wireless, storage-area networks, utility/grid computing and service-oriented architectures (SOA). Despite some execution problems, Sun basically had it right all those years ago when it argued that the network was the computer.
There is more work to do before we can realize the grand computing visions we have been exploring in our supplement series, The New Data Center. But when you combine a grid-powered service-oriented hardware architecture with an SOA software environment, the future looks bright.
We’re working hard to help you add it all up. Feel free to make suggestions. All input and feedback is welcome.
