H IS FOR HARDWARE

Gartner's Johnson said hardware will increasingly take a supporting role as applications come to the fore. "[The main trends] are not driven by hardware. It's all about software now, and has been for some time," he said. Hardware vendors are looking to launch products next year that will follow the software and services trend, maximising support for triple- or even quadruple-play. D-Link's Famularo said a big wireless push is also expected over the next 12-18 months. But he added hardware vendors cannot firm their plans and product development until the major software players figure out what shape their innovations take. One thing's for sure: new hardware will aim to secure and support faster transfer of more data, he said.

I IS FOR INTERNET PROTOCOL

IP-everything is coming. 3Com technical director, Orcun Tezel, said IP video surveillance is proving popular over analogue systems because it can effectively monitor hundreds of city locations, store data for extended periods and allow providers to apply intelligent video services. Meanwhile, IP storage is growing as technologies such as service-oriented architectures (SOA), grid, on demand and utility computing spread. Tezel tipped tape will slowly fade away as storage moves online and multiprotocol. IP also helps businesses consolidate and simplify their networks, he noted.

As IP needs increase, nationwide gigabit-speed broadband networks are sprouting across Asia. "Mostly, a mix of Ethernet and Ethernet Passive Optical Networking (EPON) will enable these large-scale deployments," Tezel said. He predicted EPON will start taking over from DSL over copper in Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) deployments to support greater speed for triple- and even quadruple-play services. J IS FOR JABBER

A jabber is a device on the network that is mishandling electrical signals which it is trying to send. Often it is the result of a faulty network interface card (NIC) but the behaviour can be caused by electrical interference. Jabber is also the name of a presence company that now has support for its eXtensible Communications Platform framework clients on Cisco's Unified Meeting-Place. It lets users launch integrated voice, video and Web conferencing from Jabber Messenger.

K IS FOR KEY SYSTEMS

Key systems are on the wane as IP telephony takes a stronger hold on the market, offering advanced functionality supported on even the smallest business works. Why deploy traditional telephone infrastructure when it's all happening online, over the computer network via the Internet? The days of full PBX, too, traditionally found in larger enterprises, appear numbered.

L IS FOR LONGHORN

February sees the long-awaited launch of Microsoft Windows Server 2008, codenamed Longhorn. Microsoft server solutions director, Martin Gregory, said Longhorn takes aim at security risks and the need for greater productivity and performance across the network. There are also many new or enhanced configuration, management and diagnostic features aimed at making management and set-up easier for technical staff, he said. Receive Side Scaling (RSS) allows network adapters on high volume servers to receive more traffic, meaning fewer additional servers are needed. There are many new IPv6 features too, Gregory said. Network Policy Server (NPS) is a Radius server and proxy for centrally managing access through various network access servers, including wireless access points, virtual private networking (VPN) servers, dial-up servers, and 802.1X authenticating switches. IT staff can use the new EAPHost architecture for network authentication, via a Microsoft Windows Networking component introduced in Vista, he said.

MIS FOR MICROSOFT

Gartner's Johnson said the number one shift in the networking sphere is that the four giants of business computing - Microsoft (with Communicator), SAP (with Duet, NetWeaver), IBM (with Sametime) and Oracle (with its HotSIP and Telephony@Work acquisitions), are evolving ways to do communications from inside the platform. "In the next couple of years people are really going to have to evaluate how and what they use for communication services provision. Will Microsoft or Google be your next communication services provider?" Johnson asked. Microsoft aims to obtain user identities to use in directory, security and voice support for many applications. Its goal is to converge its solutions on CEBP, demanding infrastructure partners initially and delivery within 2-3 years, Johnson said.

N IS FOR NETWORK ACCESS CONTROL

Longhorn also offers Network Access Control (NAC), Microsoft's Gregory said.

"The first thing is NAC, which allows you to say how and if a PC is going to connect, that it needs a firewall and so on," he said. "So if users take a laptop out and put a CD-ROM in and it changes things, next time they try to connect to the network, the system will say, 'hold on, you don't reach minimum security levels'." Longhorn can stipulate certain security practices and refuse access via any device that does not comply. It can also reconfigure a device to comply by, for example, turning the firewall back on if it has been switched off, Gregory said. Longhorn's NAC sends users to a quarantined part of the network until compliance is achieved.

Network policies and permissions are becoming increasingly important and it's easier to set these up at the server level, rather than trying to manage and control network access client-side.

O IS FOR OPEN SOURCE NETWORKING

3Com's Tezel said people were increasingly looking to open source networking services, enterprise-class applications like OpenOffi ce, and open standard operating systems like gOS. Network services are also moving into switch fabric. And standardisation is getting increasingly important to create and maintain interoperability, D-Link's Famularo noted.