Stories by: Jim Duffy

Juniper has the most to gain from Nortel's tenuous financial position, according to a bulletin issued this month by investment firm Oppenheimer & Co.

In terms of significant announcements, 2008 did not disappoint in Ethernet switching: Juniper entered the market, Cisco unveiled its next-generation platform, and other major vendors consolidated. It will be hard for 2009 to match. Here's a countdown of the top 10 stories for the year soon to pass.

Next year will see Cisco deliver a "Big Bang" in switching, blade servers for the datacentre, high-definition TelePresence conferencing for the home, and a security plan for virtualized and cloud computing environments.

Nortel is reportedly entertaining bids from three companies, including Cisco, for its Metro Ethernet Networks business unit.

Foundry Networks stockholders approved the company's merger with Brocade at a special meeting held December 17. The US$2.6 billion union is one of the network industry's biggest this year.

Juniper plans to stay the course in 2009 -- stick hard and fast to its high-performance networking mantra, invest in areas where customers can lower total cost of ownership, and not be distracted by trendy markets like video, collaboration and wireless LANs.

Internet-based cyberattacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and specialized as profit-driven criminals continue to hone their approach to stealing data from businesses, employees and consumers, according to a Cisco study released this week.

Cisco has a number of significant product introductions on tap for 2009 as the company continues to morph from a pure networking player into an overall IT supplier.

Cisco next year will unveil a new release of its unified communications software that will let companies more effectively collaborate with each other.

Cisco's "Big Bang" switching upgrade will emerge in late January and encompass more than just the Catalyst 6500.

Cisco this week is expected to unveil the first in a series of enterprise products designed to intelligently process video traffic in a network.