Stories by: Sandra Gittlen

First will come virtualization, then utility storage. That's long been the vision of how enterprise storage will evolve as IT grows increasingly dynamic and on-demand becomes business as usual.

Consider this: In the week following September 11, 2001, your users were glued to their television sets tracking breaking news. If an event of similar proportions happened today, they would expect the enterprise network to be able to handle not only real-time video feeds but also high-definition videoconferences and surveillance, as well as instant access to social-networking tools.

Here are 10 tips network managers should follow for a successful video deployment.

With the rise in adoption and availability of enterprise videoconferencing systems comes a warning from IT pioneers: Thinking this technology is simply plug-and-play will lead to disaster.

Not wild about wikis? Not big on blogs? Not sold on Second Life? IT execs who ignore Web 2.0 collaboration technologies could be hurting their company's bottom line.

While rapid-fire cost-savings and consolidation efforts typically dominate an IT executive's annual to-do list, what's getting the green light this year are multiphase projects that protect organizations from regulatory fallout and data leakage.

For Scott McCollum, IT services director at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, network security can't mean one thing for the wired LAN and another for wireless connections.

For the past few years, organizations have gone full-force in deploying a combination of wired and wireless enterprise networks. But now, as wireless technology matures, they are left asking: Where are the tools to unify management of these disparate networks?

Companies are trying to demonstrate that they're getting better at securing online transactions by adding multiple forms of authentication at sign-on, such as site keys. But experts say they could do 10 types of authentication at the start of the session and users would still be subject to attacks.

While blade servers can offer tremendous benefits for the data center, early adopters of the technology warn fellow IT implementers to plan very carefully.

The IEEE's latest project could significantly boost the speed of traffic delivery across the Internet. In November, the IEEE's 802.3 Higher Speed Study Group announced that it's working to create a 100Gbps Ethernet standard, which could be ready by 2010. The group is racing against time to accommodate the increasing demands of content creators and consumers around the world. Sandra Gittlen recently spoke with John D'Ambrosia, chairman of the study group and a scientist at Force10 Networks, about the impact of 100G Ethernet on technology users.