Stories by John Dix

Wi-Fi is blossoming in the enterprise as organizations find new ways to leverage the wireless infrastructure and workers, having benefited from mobility, demand increased range and better performance (and support for all those devices they are bringing in from home). The industry is responding in kind, introducing new products and technologies, including gigabit Wi-Fi, and it is up to IT to bring it orchestrate this new mobile symphony.

IT professionals, perhaps more than anyone, have a sense of just how fast things are changing in this information-driven world. But Cisco's latest Visual Networking Index, an ongoing study of global IP traffic, adds perspective that may influence some of your thinking when it comes to long-range capacity planning.

Software defined networking was a hot topic at the recent Interop conference in Las Vegas, where enthusiasm for the emerging technology overpowered any lingering doubts.

When the moderator of a panel discussion at the recent RSA conference asked the audience how many thought their risk management programs were successful, only a handful raised their hands. So Network World Editor in Chief John Dix asked two of the experts on that panel to hash out in an email exchange why these programs don't tend to work.

If you aren't intimately familiar with Software Defined Networking, don't fret. Only 10% of 450 IT practitioners at a recent Network World event raised their hands when asked if they understand SDN. But if the emerging technology lives up to its promise to redefine networking as we know it, there is no time like the present to dig in and learn more.

On the face of it, the bill the Senate is considering to levy taxes on Internet retailers simply makes sense. The states are strapped for cash and we have a bifurcated system that requires local brick and mortar outlets to ante up while letting out of state online retailers off scot free.

The debate about the bring-your-own-device movement (BYOD) has quieted down, mostly because, it seems, while IT has been over in the corner arguing the pros and cons, employees have been streaming into office with their shiny new toys and using them to get work done.

A speaker at a recent Network World event asked the crowd of 450 IT practitioners if they were familiar with software-defined networking (SDN) and only about 10 per cent raised their hands.

As more organisations leverage the Cloud for critical business applications, they are discovering one of the greatest challenges is combining existing internal controls with cloud protection efforts.

Despite all the talk about the economic recovery, the IT purse strings are still pretty tight, at least based on an informal poll of practitioners at the recent Network World IT Roadmap conference in Chicago.

The recent RSA conference in San Francisco was awash in talk of big data, but it was clear there was some disagreement about what people mean by big data and some outright skepticism about it being the answer.

This year is shaping up to be critical in the development of software-defined networking technology, and two new events are helping chart the way.

Taking Dell private is a bold move, but won't ensure success. If you can't recognize opportunities and execute properly as a public company, buying yourself shelter from investors only takes you so far. The bigger challenge will be rejiggering the corporate culture and core processes to make more innovation possible.

Change is a given in this business, but 2013 promises to be particularly interesting because of the convergence of multiple, transformative developments, none of which are new, per se, given we have been tracking them in depth for some time, but each of which is forcing us to rethink long held conventions.

With the bulk of the IT budgets in place for 2013, it is a good time to reflect on how the budget process has morphed over the years to accommodate shifts in technology and evolving corporate demands and priorities.