IT hot spots

The lazy, hazy days of summer are not only a time to escape to the beach. If you are a federal information technology manager, you are most likely making decisions about what hardware and software your agency needs to keep business operations running efficiently and securely as the IT buying season draws to a close. You are probably wondering which technologies in the areas of desktop and enterprise computing, networking, security and storage will give you the most return on your investment.

To help with your decision-making process, we are presenting a series of articles on emerging technologies—and some older technology that has been given new life—that can improve the performance of your IT infrastructure and, at the same time, protect critical assets.

The first installment consists of three stories: one on the rising demand for thin-client computing, another on the emerging acceptance of blade servers and the last on the latest developments in encryption that give a stodgy security technology new life.

Next week, we will cover tools that enable IT administrators to squeeze more performance out of bandwidth-strapped wide-area networks, analyzers that detect unauthorized users and devices on wireless local-area networks, and ways users can get more space to store files and data through storage resource management.

So read on to find out how these technologies might work for you:

Blade servers gaining respect

• Planning for blade servers
• Saving space
• Blades open new markets

Encryption gets a boost

• ROI that's difficult to compute
• Different tech for different problems
• Follow the data

Thin-client desktops: Not defunct yet

• Building a thin-client strategy
• Keep it simple
• The payback