NetWorld+Interop offers wares to fill your every networking need … even those you never knew you had. Our Best of Interop program invites vendors to submit their top new products for evaluation.
This year, 135 vendors submitted 185 products for consideration in 10 categories: Enterprise Network Infrastructure, Network Applications Software, Network Servers & Peripherals, Convergence Technology, Wireless Technologies, Networked Storage, Network Test & Measurement, Network Management, Performance Enhancement and Security. Five CMP Media technology publications–CRN, Network Computing, Network Magazine, Secure Enterprise and VARBusiness–provided 13 judges to review the nominations. The judges performed a competitive analysis, rating each entry on factors ranging from key distinguishing features to price. They evaluated how the products advance the state of the art for networking, weighed the strength of the business case for purchase and implementation, and chose finalists in each category.
Next, in face-to-face meetings, front-runners were put on the hot seat as judging teams probed each product. Then category winners were selected. There were also two special awards: Best Start-Up, for the outstanding product from a company less than 2 years old, and the Grand Prize winner.
Grand Prize Winner
Siemens HiPath 8000 Real-Time IP System. Siemens Information and Communications Networks, (www.icn.siemens.com)
Siemens’ HiPath 8000 Real-Time IP System is the next-generation answer to VoIP (voice over IP) woes for large enterprises and carriers. It provides a raft of features and surpasses existing IP-PBXs by supporting as many as 100,000 users per node at $132 per user, with managed licensing. The system’s Web services architecture, which facilitates the convergence of voice, multimedia, and multimodal services and applications across a centralized, scalable and manageable platform, makes it our 2004 Best of Interop Grand Prize winner.
Best Start-Up
Seclarity (www.seclarity.com)
With the ink barely dry on its April 6 inaugural press release, Seclarity rode into N+I with it’s SiNIC device and handily took home Start-Up of the Year. The company’s goal–to enforce security policies in every nook and cranny of an enterprise network transparently, inexpensively, scalably and with an emphasis on ease of management–reflects our stance that to be secure, companies must focus on protecting the client and server. San Francisco-based Seclarity was founded by Michael and Diana Neuman, co-founders of EnGarde Systems. Series A investors include Blumberg Capital, Intel Capital and Valley Ventures.
BEST OF INTEROP JUDGES: Computer Reseller News: Frank Ohlhorst, Vincent Randazzese Network Computing: Bruce Boardman, Curtis Franklin Jr., Dave Molta, Lori MacVittie, Michael J. DeMaria, Peter Morrissey, Ron Anderson, Sean Doherty Network Magazine: Andy Dornan Secure Enterprise: Mike Fratto VARBusiness: David Strom
Enterprise Network Infrastructure
DP5e Powered Patch Panel. Panduit Corp., www.panduit.com
The DP5e Powered Patch Panel injects 802.3af Power over Ethernet into a 24-port patch panel, eliminating space, power and point-of-failure problems inherent in many midspan panels. It also can remove two AC/DC power conversions from a UPS, resulting in significant cost savings for power and cooling. This, along with a low price per port and advanced remote cable management, will make those buying new switches think twice about paying extra for embedded PoE.
Network Applications Software
BlackMagic Server Edition. BlackBall, www.blackball.us
BlackMagic Server Edition is an application that provides a networked drive based on its own Rich Media File System, which automatically indexes files by content and metadata. Instead of overwriting files, RMFS intercepts every saved file and calculates changes made since the last save, so files can be rolled back to any previous version. BlackMagic runs on Linux, Sun Solaris and Windows 2000.
Network Servers & Peripherals
InfraStruxure High Density. American Power Conversion, www.apc.com
APC’s InfraStruxure takes datacenter design to new heights by compressing design and build time to days rather than months. APC has combined all of the elements into a modular architecture. The product allows designers to choose enclosures, racks, cooling components and power-supply technology and assemble them into a complete custom datacenter environment.
Convergence Technology
Siemens HiPath 8000 Real-Time IP System. Siemens Information and Communication Networks, www.icn.siemens.com
Siemens’ HiPath 8000 provides a scalable, full-featured communication platform that features voicemail, collaboration, unified messaging and presence in a managed platform for an enterprise datacenter. The product introduces real-time IP communication to large enterprises and carriers, thanks to its ability to handle 100,000 users from one node. Each node pairs two Linux servers in a fault-tolerant system that supports SIP, SOAP and SIMPLE in a multivendor, interoperable environment.
Wireless Technologies
Intelligent RF Access Point. Airespace, www.airespace.com
Airespace continues to innovate in the wireless arena with its Intelligent RF Access Point, the first AP to support MIMO (Multiple Input/ Multiple Output) technology to improve radio reception and throughput across complex enterprise wireless installations. Most notably, its smart-antenna technology combats the negative effects of multipath interference and optimizes signal transmission to ensure more consistent wireless performance, even when using legacy Wi-Fi clients. The new AP works with the company’s central management system, which dynamically adapts to changes in the RF environment and adjusts its power levels and radio channels to optimize transmissions.
Networked Storage
High-Rely 80GB 7 Bay HR-7BRACK-7-80BNDL. Highly Reliable Systems, www.high-rely.com
The new High-Rely 80GB 7 Bay HR-7BRACK-7-80BNDL backup system offers an alternative to tape by integrating inexpensive EIDE hard drives into a standalone or rackmount housing that includes two USB 2.0 connectors. The product supports hot-swap capabilities and runs on Windows 98, 2000, XP and 2003.
Network Test & Measurement
Abacus 5000 IP Telephony Test Migration Platform with Voice, Video and Data. Spirent Communications, www.spirentcom.com
The Abacus 5000 IP Telephony Test Migration Platform lets those looking to roll out IP voice, video and data services stress-test their networks with multiservice traffic streams. Such tests will help you prevent oversubscription and devise a road map for the infrastructure rollout, ensuring optimal scalability at the lowest cost.
Network Management
TrueSight. Coradiant, www.coradiant.com
Coradiant’s TrueSight appliance is one of only a few completely passive Web performance monitors available. It uses a network tap that lets it inspect traffic without affecting the network or requiring agent software. The TrueSight appliance is unique in its ability to inspect encrypted SSL traffic: Just import the public and private keys, and it decrypts on the fly.
Performance Enhancement
Maestro Platform. Crescendo Networks, www.crescendonetworks.com
Maestro Platform offers a boost in performance to the entire application infrastructure delivery chain. Maestro combines conventional acceleration technologies, such as SSL offload and data compression, with a high-speed RDMA interconnect fabric, supporting RDMA over Ethernet. At the same time Maestro decreases bandwidth utilization with compression, it increases the capacity of your infrastructure by eliminating the overhead of TCP setup and teardown. It also reduces overall latency by alleviating the data-transfer bottleneck between application and database servers.
Security
SiNIC. Seclarity, www.seclarity.com
Seclarity pushes security to the individual computer with SiNIC, a NIC-based system that provides encryption, translation, firewalling, authentication and access control for every host. Using a central database and management console, admins can push policies and feature updates to individual nodes or to all systems in the enterprise. Seclarity’s “central management with distributed enforcement” model lets policies and policy-enforcement mechanisms follow users to any location, with customization for individual roles, users and situations built in.
