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I heard opposing voices at Interop about whether the bad economy will drive companies to software as a service.

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Here at Interop 2008 in Las Vegas, IronPort (a division of Cisco) is showing off its latest security solutions -- the S650 and the S350 Web Security Appliances. The S-Series was a finalist in this year's Best of Interop competition. In the new security appliance, the company leverages its SenderBase anti-spam reputation management technology to determine what parts of a Web page (if any) to let through to users' browsers. In the video below, IronPort product manager Samantha Madrid tells me more about the S-Series.

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At Interop, Oracle execs pitched the company's efforts to bring social computing to the enterprise. They might be on to something.

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I'm sure competing solutions exist (or maybe not -- you tell me). But this year's Interop marks the first time I've ever seen an intelligent patch panel: one that drives the visibility into your network another layer deeper than the visibility that might normally end with your routers and switches. The offering -- a Best of Interop finalist -- comes from Panduit, and about the only thing I can imagine coming next might be intelligent RJ45 jacks. Actually, after I finished my video interview with Panduit's Mike Pula (below) and sarcastically mentioned that idea, he didn't laugh and said the idea actually solves a problem.

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You've programmed your firewall to block the ports that some unwanted app is using and that app turns up on your net again. Net-enabled applications don't tie themselves down to one port the way the Web (HTTP, port 80) and other apps do. After some firewall shuts their ports down, they find another port. Using traffic profiles instead of ports to identify more than 600 applications, not only did Palo Alto Networks' series win InformationWeek's Best of Interop in the security category, it took the grand prize as well. In the video below, Palo Alto's Lee Klarich walks me through some of the firewall's innovations.

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Here at Interop in Las Vegas, a handful of exhibitors who also are Best of Interop finalists are waiting to find out if InformationWeek's editors have singled them out as winners or not. One of them is Alcatel-Lucent, who is here showing off its XML API-enabled Omnitouch Advanced Communications Server (ACS). Via those APIs, director of product management Peter Anderholm (pictured below left) claims that enterprises can, for collaborative purposes, easily integrate point-and-click voice conferencing into any application. I caught Peter on the show floor for a video interview.

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The anti-spam appliance vendor learned about the value of archives the hard way -- by getting sued by Trend Micro.

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Sure, open source software is free -- as in beer. It can also get you sued if you're not cautious.

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It's the eve before Interop here in Las Vegas and we've just wrapped up Energy Camp where, as can be seen from the user-decided agenda, the conversation went deep and wide on a variety of subjects related to the reduction of information technology's carbon footprint. Two key takeaways for me were (1) many so-called "green" remedies have a dark enough side to them that they may not be as green as we think they are, and (2) it may take another 15 or 20 years before we have it all sorted out. It's not as bad as it sounds, but ...

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Business travel hasn't waned much, if at all, despite the emergence of globe-shrinking technologies like Web conferencing and virtual worlds. Will the green movement finally kill it?

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How much are you paying to run your servers? A study on server electricity consumption says the utility bill for U.S. servers came to nearly $3 billion dollars.

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In the e-mail world, where possible, I used to urge organizations to stick with the Internet-standard Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) instead of using the addictive proprietary alternatives from Microsoft and IBM Lotus (found in Outlook/Exchange and Lotus Notes). Now, thanks to Google's GMail service, I realize I may have been mistaken.

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Are you coming to Energy Camp on April 28 where we'll be having an open conversation about green technology? If not, why not? Why do I ask? I was just checking the logs on our YouTube channel (TechWebTV) and noticed something unusual. Or maybe not.

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If you're an IT professional, solution provider, or someone else with an interest in how to trim back the energy consumption of technology (especially if you're someone with domain expertise to contribute to the broader conversation about "green IT"), then I hope you'll join me and Energy Camp master of ceremonies James Governor (blog) for Energy Camp in Las Vegas on April 28 (just prior to the start of Interop). Registration is free and it gets you a coveted hall pass into Interop, too.

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E-mail and group calendaring are 1990's technologies. Yet, for some idiotic reason, they still only work well when everyone is on the same vendor's system. Interop's general manager Lenny Heymann, who uses Lotus Notes, can invite me to a meeting that ties in a Cisco MeetingPlace-based teleconference, and thankfully, I can accept that invitation in Gmail. But what if that meeting moves to a different time (as meetings so often do)? That's where the interoperability ends. If Lenny changes the teleconference time in MeetingPlace, the notification I get is an abomination of technology that can't interoperate with the originally booked meeting. Who's to blame?

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There's no hiding from it. Mobile instant messaging is creeping into the enterprise whether IT departments like it or not. Enterprises can embrace it or resist it, but they won't be able to prevent a new generation entering the workforce from using mobile IM and other less traditional collaboration tools.

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It's a purely unscientific and anecdotal perspective, but here are my picks for most interesting and most needed technologies from Interop this week, plus the most startling stat I heard in my New York City travels.

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The concept of "telepresence" is brilliant when it comes to meeting your peers face-to-face without ever having to step foot on an airplane. But not many companies are willing to shell out $300,000 to put such a system in place. That's why one startup, called LifeSize, caught my attention at Interop when it showed off its affordable high definition videoconferencing system.

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NetQoS marketing VP Steve Harriman noted at Interop that a customer of his application performance-measurement company has brought together two teams that in many companies today still barely speak to each other: application development and IT infrastructure.

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I expected my blog on net neutrality to draw plenty of flames, and I was right. In this new post I'll round up the arguments that readers have expressed in favor of net neutrality, respond briefly, and hopefully point the debate in a new direction. I can summarize the objections to my stance – that the price of access to privately owned networks ought to be determined by economics, not idealism – in four main categories: a) I'm a moron who doesn't understand the term "net neutrality" in the first place; b) we already pay for bandwidth, and adding premium pricing for heavy usage would be double-dipping, or even worse a form of Net taxation (shudder); c) there is no free market for network access because the telcos are greedy, evil, and mendacious; and d) I'm just a moron.

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In a conversation at Interop, Novell VP of product management Alan Murray noted that a recent InformationWeek cover story showing the Linux penguin sweating profusely due to having a gun pointed at its head representing the imminent threat of litigation from Microsoft was missing something.

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It's been awhile since we've talked of browser wars, but a new round could be upon us.

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LifeSize Communications competes with Cisco in the Web video business, but John Doyle says he's grateful for all the attention Cisco CEO John Chambers is giving to the promising new technology because there's huge opportunities to compete at different price points with varying levels of complexity for installation, deployment, and management.

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What happens when storage demand is growing at close to 80% and apps must be rolled out and available globally while consolidation is taking place across servers and data centers and branch-office infrastructure and virtualization is believed to be the cure for all ills?

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While various naysayers have tried to argue that RFID's time has come and gone, infrastructure player Reva Systems says the uptake for the technology is coming along quite nicely.

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Wireless and mobility were big topics at this year's Interop. Let's take a look at the wireless news in review.

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Most big companies have yet to install Internet-based phone systems, but many are considering it. Here's a warning for them: VoIP presents big security risks, a pair of Interop speakers said Thursday.

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Picture a beautiful sunset over the desert, the glow of the Vegas skyline in the distance. Then a towering wave of flames leap into the air that crackles with the heat -- a man just set his computer on fire.

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In its 22-year history, the Interop trade show has been synonymous with networking, and this year's exhibitors are true to that heritage. But there's a recurring, software-oriented theme from many of the vendors I met with: the impact of Salesforce.com on the networking business.

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I have heard a lot about seamless mobility -- the dream of universal wireless access where users can roam freely between wireless LANs and cellular networks and back again -- this week at Interop. I keep hearing vendors promise dual-mode access, but when I raise the issue of the pink elephant in the room, the vendors just smile at me and change the subject.

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It's about time someone stepped up and offered a useable optimization platform for smartphones. Do your smartphone applications run too slow?

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I was wandering around the outer bounds of the Interop show floor this afternoon and stopped by a booth from a company called SpectorSoft, which sells Internet monitoring software for small businesses and home use. Never having tried their software, I can't comment on it; from the short demo that I saw, it looked like it could be quite effective. It was the booth that made me feel a bit uneasy.

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At Interop in Vegas, reps from tech services companies were pounding a familiar mantra: Offshore outsourcing is necessary because there aren't enough tech workers in the U.S. to meet demand. Will the Senate listen to them?

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Here at Interop, there's a lot of focus on security and a lot of that security attention is aimed right at network access control. It's a hot-button topic here. The question plaguing many IT and security managers, though, might be where to get started.

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Hosted software provider Zoho this week at Interop launched its new multimedia writer, called Zoho Notebook. So, is it any good? Zoho first showed off Notebook at DEMO but didn't release a public version until yesterday.

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Positive Networks, a provider of hosted VPN services, is using Interop to promote a two-factor, telephone (land-line or cell)-based authentication system for users looking to access corporate applications. The company will look to hook customers with the authentication technology -- it's free -- then sell a series of add-on services.

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Zeus Technology introduced at Interop a Windows-based version of its Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager (ZXTM) software, which previously ran on Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD.

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My assumption has always been that the best way to get enterprises to go "green" -- to institute conservation policies via decreased energy use and technology recycling, for example -- was to hit them directly in the pocketbook (or via regulations, of course). It's the bottom line that counts.

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USB flash drives have become ubiquitous, among both tech professionals and consumers. They're used to pass along product information at trade shows, as a means to take your data and apps with you (when your MP3 player doesn't have enough space), as a backup device -- and as a fashion statement.

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Large industry shows like Interop Las Vegas are a great place for vendors to launch new products, for end users to find what they need to improve their business processes, and for us journalists to gather story ideas and to network. But what became obvious to me this time around is that vendors use these shows to test the limits of their technologies.

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Since launching Etelos CRM for Google Apps -- a lightweight CRM app that works with Google's productivity suite -- on Feb. 28, Etelos has nearly 3,000 businesses representing 30,000 individuals using the product, Etelos CEO Danny Kolke said at Interop today.

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I've always had a problem with the Internet-freedom crowd who declare that "net neutrality" – the principle that no one has the right to prioritize or charge higher rates for bandwidth regardless of how much is used or what it's being used for – is an inviolable right on the order of bearing arms and speaking freely. And now Mayor Michael Bloomberg has crystallized my vague unease. In his vision for the future of New York City, Bloomberg called for relatively stiff fees for motorists who drive into Manhattan on weekdays ($8 for cars and 21 bucks for trucks). This is a form of "congestion pricing," which has been employed successfully in cities like London and Stockholm. And to me, metered pricing for Internet usage (a.k.a. "traffic shaping") is another form.

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One of the more compelling product pitches I heard at Interop today came from a low-profile developer of software components called /n Software. Got lots of corporate data built up that your knowledge workers can't find or access? Need a lightweight, low-impact way to disseminate data from various systems internally or to partners?

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I was a bit nonplussed when I discovered that vendors catering to small businesses and individuals were starting to push 802.11n-compliant devices. Not only is it not certain that they even need them (since the only real advantage to individual home users would be if they're planning to stream video across it, and how many cable companies are advertising that these days?), but there is the small issue that 802.11 isn't going to be certified by the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee for, oh, a couple of years.

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The small- to medium-sized business (SMB) market is big at this year's Interop as vendors scramble to find new markets. Are SMBs really ready to kick down for routers and IP PBX systems?

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Patent claims against Linux notwithstanding, Microsoft is working with a startup to ensure a key security initiative includes support for the open-source operating system on client computers. On Tuesday, Avenda Systems said it will build Linux client software for use with Microsoft's Network Access Protection (NAP) technology. That software will allow NAP to interact directly with Linux clients.

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There’s tension between IT departments and grassroots Web 2.0 efforts in the workplace. IT likes top-down hierarchies. The Web 2.0 crowd prefers free-form work styles. They need to get it together.

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Coradiant is working with Splunk to add user performance and experience information to the types of data that Splunk collects in its IT search engine. The two companies are looking to provide a more integrated analysis of Web operations performance.

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There has been a lot of talk about improving the performance of the wireless LAN here at this year's Interop. Why do IT departments need high-performance Wi-Fi? Without it, initiatives like business mobility and unified communications will go nowhere fast.

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John Chambers has some feedback and some advice for CIOs. Speaking in an Interop keynote address, the Cisco CEO says half of CIOs are viewed as adding value to their business while half are viewed as expense areas "and that's not good."

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