When it comes to hot buzzwords, nothing comes close to Web 2.0. Nobody knows exactly what it means but everybody uses it. In fact, at Network World we've started getting press releases referring to Web 3.0.....whatever that is.
ISCSI runs over plain, old Ethernet, which means you don't need a separate Fibre Channel network. You don't need host bus adapters. You don't need Fibre Channel switches. You don't need specialized IT staffers.
Some day the IEEE will get around to finalizing the 802.11n standard that it began working on in 2003. That some day was supposed to be 2006. Then 2007. Then 2008. Maybe, the standard will be finalized in 2009. Maybe 2010.
There is no topic hotter than global warming. After all, Al Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in raising awareness, his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar, and terms like "carbon footprint" are now part of the common lexicon.
VMware, which created x86 server virtualization and is the dominant player in the market, is absolutely on fire. When EMC bought the company in 2003, VMware revenues were around US$100 million a year. VMware's final numbers for 2007 aren't out yet, but the company is on pace to hit US$1.5 billion.
Russian security professionals Eugene and Natalya Kaspersky discussed the Russian mafia, the latest in hacker tricks and their view that the bad guys are winning.
IT will waste an estimated US$100 billion over the next five years by overspending on network products and services.
Microsoft's Vista is expected to ship early next year, but companies shouldn't even think about deploying the new operating system until well into 2008, Gartner analyst Michael Silver says.
In Nemertes' benchmark of Avaya, Cisco, Nortel and ShoreTel garnered enough statistical responses to be counted individually.
Reventador, located in northern Ecuador, is an active volcano. In 2002 it erupted with such massive force that it blanketed Quito, Ecuador's capital city 60 miles to the west, with a layer of ash so thick the airport had to shut down.
If you think your wireless is slow, imagine what it's like to be a scientist waiting for data being beamed back from Mars via existing wireless RF technology. "It can take hours,'' says Karl Berggren, assistant professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
IT does matter -- and it matters in a big way.
The war on spam is far from over, but there was a growing sense among the antispam crusaders gathered at MIT last week that advances on both the legal and technology fronts have turned the tide against the Viagra peddlers and Nigerian princesses.
If you're looking for a hardware-based network modeling tool that does a great job on the WAN, check out Shunra's Storm.
Packed with 112 ports of 2G bit/sec Fibre Channel, the latest version of Cisco's MDS 9509 delivers a feature set, management interface and performance that was very impressive.