Networking: Features

While there are sure to be a lot of new networking and IT companies that emerge in 2012, these nine stood out for their potential to deliver game-changing innovations in a wide array of fields, including Cloud computing, enterprise search, and mobile application development. (These are in addition to seven hot Cloud companies and seven storage companies to watch that we highlighted last year.)

Technology firms wowed us in 2011, delivering tablets, ultrathin laptops, innovative cloud services, and voice command digital assistants. Not so long ago, the technology underlying these products was nothing more than research and development projects. So, in an effort to peek into our not-so-distant tech future, here's a glimpse at ten promising projects percolating in tech research labs.

Networking will be an exciting field in 2011. With that in mind, ARN asked six prominent vendors in the space for predictions and trends that can be expected to be big in the New Year.

One of the chief benefits of getting in on the ground of a fast-moving startup company is a speedy ascension up the promotion curve as the company grows.

There are only 21 days left before the first kick at 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. But as millions of fans from across the globe wait in anticipation for that first goal to be scored, behind the scene host broadcaster ESPN of Bristol, CT., is figuring out new ways of showing the soccer crazed masses those goals as well as the goal scorers.

Servers get most of the glory when it comes to energy management, but networking gear is about to catch up.

It was nearly an hour into the opening keynotes at the Americas Partner Summit on Monday until a Hewlett Packard executive finally used the C-word: Cisco. But the one-time networking partner was certainty front of mind though as HP re-affirmed its commitment to become the leader in every business segment it competes in including networking.

One of Italy's 100 most wanted criminals was arrested in Isola Capo Rizzuto on Tuesday, thanks to his love of Facebook.

Technologies come and go, but managing networks is still about problem-solving in a changing world, as these IT executives can attest.

The most popular Web sites are under increasing pressure to add support for IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to IPv4, the Internet's main communications protocol.

Sun was a tech juggernaut for nearly three decades. Our memorial slideshow gives this former titan its due.

Cisco, HP and others are waging an epic battle to gain control of the data center, but at the same time they are joining forces to push through new Ethernet standards that could greatly ease management of those increasingly virtualized IT nerve centers.

Faced with the continued commoditization of servers, IT vendors this year will try to differentiate their offerings by moving toward more highly integrated, unified compute platforms.

A round-up of recent and not so recent departures by Cisco executives and where they landed

We all know what buzz is: It's noise. At InfoWorld, one of its self-appointed tasks is to extract the signal from that noise, to separate the stuff valuable to IT professionals from that which is popularly considered a big deal.

As the U.S. Federal Communications Commission moves toward developing formal net neutrality rules, some U.S. lawmakers and telecom-related companies have told the agency that new regulations will cause more problems than they're worth.

It's a great time to set up a small business. The Web gives even the littlest operation enormous reach, while vendors now sell small-business technology that delivers unbelievable bang for the buck.

Oracle has launched a high-end database and storage system that it co-developed with Sun Microsystems, the companies' first joint product since announcing their plans to merge almost five months ago.

Managing storage technology is an oxymoron these days. It seems like the more tools you add to manage your increasingly complex environment, the more convoluted the environment becomes. Nirvana is within sight, but your budget prevents you from getting there. Even worse, the budget shrinks but the demand on your resources grows. What's a storage area network (SAN) guru to do?

When you look at the worst corporate security breaches, it's clear that network managers keep making the same mistakes over and over again, and that many of these mistakes are easy to avoid.