Stories by Bob Francis

There I was, running late to the Black Hat conference because of the weather , riding the long escalator to the third floor of Caesar's Palace in Vegas when I heard someone at the top of the stairs yell to someone behind me on the escalator.

As security personnel met at this week's Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas, there was easy money to be made at the security vulnerability table.

Computer security can be a difficult problem to get a handle on, so sometimes it takes some creative thinking. I would say it involves "thinking outside the box," but that's a little too trite and overused.

Cast Iron Systems this week released two new appliances for data-integration projects, with one designed to provide a high-availability fail-over option.

Recent security breaches involving universities, credit card processors, and financial institutions are making security a hot topic, and security companies are busy upgrading their product lines -- either by acquiring new product lines or upgrading current products.

Dell on Monday introduced a new series of high-performance PowerConnect switches with new security capabilities and enterprise-class management features.

The ramp up of VoIP continued last week as Microsoft added to the technology with new products and services. It also announced strategic alliances with Amdocs, AT&T and Sylantro Systems.

Cisco is embarking on a new direction as it announced Tuesday details of its first move into the messaging middleware business with its Application-Oriented Network (AON) business unit.

EMC and Sun Microsystems Monday released updated and new systems designed for the growing content-addressable storage market.

Tacit Networks on Tuesday added e-mail acceleration, distributed software management capabilities, network and Web services, increased performance features, and flexible product packaging options to its wide-area network (WAN) optimization products.

Oracle and IBM on Tuesday both re-enforced their identity management software offerings with new features and functions.

EMC has joined the storage virtualisation pack, unveiling its Invista Network Storage Virtualization Platform at its annual user conference.

EMC will let the good times roll this week while Hewlett-Packard will roll the dice as both companies hold conferences for users of their storage systems.

Hewlett-Packard opened its StorageWorks conference in Las Vegas Monday with the company's largest release of new storage products and services in its history.

IBM and EMC both made storage announcements this week, while Hewlett-Packard is preparing a slate of announcements for next week.