LAS VEGAS – A cloud computing service is like an airliner - even though it can experience devastating crashes that affect many people, like Amazon’s crash last month, it’s still safer than driving your own car… or IT infrastructure.

Side-by-side Windows displays might be the last thing you would expect to see taking center stage at Red Hat's booth at the recent Interop show in Las Vegas. But it makes sense when you consider they were part of a demo showcasing the company's pursuit of what it sees as a huge opportunity: the emerging virtual desktop market.

The recent Interop Las Vegas had its bright spots: cloud computing generated genuine buzz; HP flexed its growing muscles; and dozens of innovative products were rolled out. However, there was no escaping the fact that the dour economy and significant market consolidation have taken their toll on the network industry and its biggest general trade show.

Automation isn't new, but with few budget dollars and strapped IT staff, many enterprise network managers are turning to the technology to complete operational tasks and create a more efficient environment.

X86 virtualization is often a risky proposition for highly regulated, mission-critical applications, because people and processes are not ready for virtualization and the security risks it introduces, IBM security expert Joshua Corman argued at Interop Las Vegas this week.

One big obstacle to SaaS vendors getting their applications adopted more widely is that so many of them don't offer open APIs. Offering APIs is crucial for vendors to get their applications supported by channel partners and for customers looking to integrate SaaS offerings with legacy applications, said participants on the panel for a lively but lightly attended session Tuesday at Interop in Las Vegas dubbed "Herding cats: Managing SaaS sprawl."

High-tech professionals with fewer skills could land more IT jobs, according to Interop speakers who argue that specific high-tech training and IT certifications could be detrimental to a career in next-generation data centers.

WAN optimization is becoming just an element of larger application-delivery schemes that vendors are approaching quite differently, Interop attendees were told this week.