Maybe it's all in the interview. Cisco Systems recently hired green guru Paul Marcoux from APC. As is typical for a hire like this, which is as much for public relations as anything, Marcoux set out for a round of interviews, and depending on which story you read, his plans lie somewhere between sensible contributions to the green movement and a very unlikely attempt at world domination.

Performance management software vendor Nimsoft has gone a step further in the industry to increase the usability of monitoring the health of complex IT environments.

The Trusted Computing Group, a consortium of vendors that are driving standardized APIs and specifications for secure computing, is perhaps opening up a bit with its recently announced blog. The TCG has been a very opaque organization for those folks who aren't willing to pony up the $1,000-per-year minimum membership dues, and I think the opacity has hurt its efforts to educate the ultimate consumer of its technology, the enterprise. Hopefully, the new blog signals a change within the TCG to be more open.

Enterprise mashup service provider Serena Software announced yesterday that it's giving away 12 pre-built mashups aimed at common business tasks. But if mashups are so easy to make, why is giving them away such a big deal?

This fall, Microsoft announced that mainstream support for SQL Server 2000 will end in April 2008. What to do? While many administrators are upgrading to SQL Server 2005, process automation vendor Stratavia is trying to help out.

The flailing around in Congress over giving big telecom companies, including AT&T and Verizon, retroactive immunity for playing along with the NSA's wiretapping program is over for now, and the news isn't good for the telcos.

The Web-based application development tools vendor formerly known as ActiveGrid has just relaunched itself as WaveMaker Software, claiming that it can make Web 2.0 "CIO-Safe."

If I were a CIO, I'd find that quite patronizing: It suggests that the CIO is just an obstacle to be overcome before users can play with cool new Web 2.0 technologies. But perhaps that's how users increasingly see the CIO, and enterprise IT as a whole.

Many organizations are still looking to reduce operational expenses while increasing overall efficiency. Here are 10 ways that you may be able to cut IT operation costs in your organization.

Although mobile WiMax is as new a technology as any other wireless standard, there are at least two different vendors that have WiMax-capable USB dongles available on the market (Wavesat being one of them). Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case with 5-GHz 802.11n, even though SOHO manufacturers have been pumping out 802.11n-like product for over a year.

There are many reasons to not consider open source NAC, the first of which is how much workload do you want to put into your NAC solution, above and beyond having to figure out what you want your NAC to do for you, laying out policies, ensuring that your network architecture will support NAC, deploying the product, managing endpoints, and a bunch of other little things that in totality add to your workload.

Sometimes I wonder about the value of surveys. Yes, some of them are very useful (we've been known to utilize a couple ourselves), but often I find myself scratching my head at the results of some random poll thinking, "Well, duh."

It's Press Release Wednesday. First up, SAP and VMware are getting their groove on.

Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), probably better known outside the United States and in the telephony space, has partnered with InfoExpress to provide NAC to ALU's customers. The shrink-wrap deal will roll-out InfoExpress to ALU's top-tier channel.

VMware has released VMware Infrastructure 3 for general availability. As expected, performance improvements, better automation, and easier management of host and VMs are on the list of improvements.

Last week, InformationWeek held a single-day event called the "Future of Virtualization." Along with me and Charles Babcock, InformationWeek editor at large, were reps from Citrix/XenSource, VMware, Sun, and Blue Lane.

I remember fondly the holidays when I was a young boy, sitting under the tree, ripping open presents only to find that I couldn't use them because batteries are not included. Those four words became a mantra during the '70s and '80s and even a cheesy movie.

Last week a notebook -- containing information on 268,000 blood donors -- was stolen from a Minnesota blood drive. The data included names, addresses, blood types and, of course, Social Security numbers. The police suspect it was a random act, and not one committed with the express intent of getting the personal data. Still, it's one just more case of data privacy woes that could be avoided if companies stopped using Social Security numbers to identify customers.

TrustSec, Cisco's network-based access control feature set due in 2008, seems to be analogous to functions like identity-based and role-based access controls that, as Dominic Wilde from Nevis Networks aptly points out, other vendors have had for years. What is new is the use of 802.1AE as the mechanism. More on that later, though.

I couldn't help but take notice of the choice of words another publication used to describe the status of Morrisville State College's implementation of 802.11n Meru access points: "shakedown phase".

When Aruba announced its 802.11n product just over a month ago, it shared with reporters and analysts a shipping date of the end of November.

When Cisco made its 802.11n 1250-series AP announcement a few months ago, one of the more interesting aspects was its claim that the PoE capabilities in some existing desktop switches and blades for its chassis-based solutions would be able to power all the radio chains in its dual-radio 802.11n access points and that it would only need a software upgrade to access them. Cisco was intentionally vague in its communications and presentations. It wanted to present to the public the greatest degree of backward compatibility and support even while it was verifying the hardware capabilities and coding the software.

I've only read this in a mailing list and not confirmed this with HP's public relations folks, but it appears that HP will not release an 802.11n compatible access point until after the standard is ratified, which most anticipate will not be until the end of 2008, early 2009. If this is true, that means Nortel, who plans to have 802.11n gear available the second half of 2008, very late by their competitor's standards, would be in the game ahead of HP.

Organizations apprehensive about 802.11n have pointed to the lack of IEEE ratification and interoperability with legacy devices as two significant concerns. While the first concern won't likely be satisfactorily addressed for another year, thankfully the IEEE has made interoperability a key component of the IEEE 802.11n draft. But it's one thing for engineers to agree to something on paper; the rubber doesn't really hit the road until the devices are installed into production systems and put into everyday use.

Have you ever wondered how much a single lost, stolen, or compromised customer record costs your company? According to a recent study, exactly $197. That's up 15 bucks from 2006 when an incident of data loss cost your org $182.

Remember when you were a kid playing with your favorite toy on the playground, then dropping it to hit the monkey bars or slide? You came back later only to find some big doofus took your prized possession and wouldn't give it back. It was a tough lesson to learn, but a valuable one: If you don't want something stolen, keep a watchful eye on it.

If I can speculate on the future, functions such as NAC, QoS, configuration, etc., are poised to be pushed deeper into the network as an automated service rather than a feature or product that needs to be baby-sat.

We are losing our long-term EqualLogic iSCSI SAN due to Dell's $1.4 billion acquisition of EqualLogic. Good for them, bad for us. The EqualLogic folks are rounding up all their loaner equipment as part of due diligence.

InfoVista software, which is typically used for network performance management, is making a more significant move into application management. Last month, InfoVista purchased the small French software provider Accellent, who makes the 5View appliance.

Possibly because Cisco stated in its Nov. 7 earnings call that "Wireless and Networked home growth were both relatively flat," its wireless business unit made a point of highlighting the numbers from two analyst firms suggesting a much more positive picture, at least in terms of market share.