2009 Technology of the Year: Networking and Security

Award Networking and Security

Networking and Security

The following nine winners include the Test Center's top picks for small office telephony, wireless LANs, WAN acceleration, datacenter switching, UTM appliance, security assessment, anti-spam gateways, and Web browser security.

InfoWorld Test Center Staff

 

Microsoft Response Point

Microsoft Response Point

Response Point combines software from Microsoft and hardware from IP telephony vendors to create a phone system that is remarkably easy to set up, use, and administer. Reliable voice recognition -- without any training -- is unique among the products in its class. Telephony features are basic, but if basic meets your needs, this system hits the sweet spot.
See the review

 

Ruckus Wireless ZoneFlex Smart WLAN System

Ruckus Wireless ZoneFlex Smart WLAN System

The Ruckus system delivers incredible flexibility and a rich feature set, and we've never seen another wireless system that comes close to Ruckus in ease of deployment and management. It wouldn't hold up to configuring and managing hundreds of APs across multiple subnets, but that's not the target audience. Small businesses wanting enterprise-class wireless networking without requiring an enterprise-sized staff to manage it should look no further.
See the review

 

Riverbed Steelhead

Riverbed Steelhead

Perennial winner Riverbed still leads the way in WAN acceleration. CIFS and FTP traffic receive excellent speed boosts in the 2008 edition, while native support for Exchange improves Outlook response, an improved QoS engine helps keep traffic flows in line, and three modes of transparency facilitate monitoring. New optimizations for dynamic HTTP and a better system for setting up HTTPS connections bring even more value.
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Cisco Nexus 5000

Cisco Nexus 5000

The Cisco Nexus 5000 brings a completely new technology to network consolidation that blends together Ethernet and FC transport with a single protocol fluent in both languages. That combination makes the switch a flexible player that can be deployed in both servers and storage consolidation projects. With a price that drubs the competition, a small 2U form factor, great scalability, and unrivaled speed and latency, the Nexus 5000 is poised to take on all challengers in the space.
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SonicWall NSA E7500

SonicWall NSA E7500

SonicWall's E7500 rises above the competition by excelling at the two aspects of UTM performance that matter most. First, its protection capabilities are top notch, with configuration and administration features that make it easy to tailor protection to your specific needs. Next, its network performance is simply unreal for a product in this category. If you have a network slowdown, look somewhere else for the cause -- the E7500 is likely to be the highest-performing component on nearly any small business network in which it's deployed. 

 

RedSeal Security Risk Manager

RedSeal Security Risk Manager

RedSeal's SRM captures device configuration information from your infrastructure via SNMP (or by importing the configuration files) and performs rapid and accurate analysis of network risk. Combining the configuration data with vulnerability data and other information, SRM creates a visual map of high-value, high-risk assets, and provides a collection of views and reports that help you zero in on the most effective path to mitigation. Any organization with valuable network assets would be well served to implement it.
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MessageLabs Email Anti-Spam

MessageLabs Email Anti-Spam

In addition to turning in the best spam blocking performance among the hosted solutions we've tested, MessageLabs boasts very easy setup and an excellent feature set, including good content management. MessageLabs can even detect porn images, and can create signatures from images and documents to ensure that intellectual property is not sent or received without authorization. Look for our hosted anti-spam shootout later this month. 

 

Red Condor Message Assurance Gateway

Red Condor Message Assurance Gateway

The Red Condor appliance proved so accurate during testing that our reviewer accused the vendor of cheating. A spam-killing "black box," the MAG is as close to zero administration as any anti-spam solution we've seen, with disconcertingly few configuration options. Can Red Condor thrive on a reputation of high accuracy and an uncluttered, minimalist interface? Come to think of it, the leading Internet search engine has made a good go of it.
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Prevx

Prevx

Prevx 2.0 provided the best identification of malware in our Web security test, and it prevented most of the exploits thrown at it, though by no means all. We'd like more accurate threat defense, but it's also nice to be told what was trying to infect your system instead of having to make trust decisions on the fly. Prevx was also the only product we tested able to detect previously installed malware, and earns points for an elegant user interface and availability in 64-bit and business versions.
See the review