Dayna Delmonico

Like it or not, Instant Messaging (IM) has invaded the enterprise and corporate America. Retailers such as L.L. Bean use custom forms of IM for “instant access to a customer service rep”; corporate employees, use AOL’s IM (AIM) for access to colleagues, suppliers and customers during business hours (with or without the knowledge of IT); […]

It’s been a long, slow road for directories. Though few doubt there’s a future for directory-enabled services, the scheme hasn’t quite caught on yet. But rest assured: The battle for directory services between arch-rivals Novell, Microsoft, and Sun (with Netscape) is heating up. Directory services provide a consistent way to name, describe, locate, access, manage […]

Two years ago, there seemed to be as many definitions of Virtual Private Networks as there were vendors. Some vendors concentrated on hardware devices that provided a gateway and established communications channels across a public network. These devices included router capabilities and firewall security. Other vendors offered software solutions that ran on the server and […]

Don’t look now, but Ethernet is about to go anywhere it pleases. If you haven’t invested in Gigabit Ethernet, you will shortly — or, at the very least, you’ll be be preparing your network infrastructure for the technology. Predictions were that vendors would cut Gigabit prices this year, and they have. Network Interface Cards (NICs) […]

Now is the time to address your information security needs. Why? According to Gartner Group’s “Total Cost of Ownership Model for Information Security,” if you don’t it will cost you 10 times more 10 years from now. Gartner figures the total cost of information security is now, on average, 0.4 percent of a company’s revenue. […]

It’s taken almost four years, or eons in techno time, but the Gigabit Ethernet is about to hit its stride. Hard as it is to believe in these IT budget-conscious days, companies are finally embracing Gigabit Ethernet — the local-area network (LAN) protocol that can carry more than 1,000 megabits a second — in large […]