Stories by: Bob Brown

M&A industry veteran Paul Deninger, a vice chairman at Jefferies & Co., has made a living advising companies on mergers, acquisitions, IPOs and the like. But even he acknowledges that too much industry consolidation isn't a good thing for technology innovation. I spoke with Deninger this week about the state of the M&A market and what’s likely ahead.

Bargain hunting was all the talk of the 451 Group event this week in Boston, where one security pro quipped that vendors should be paying customers to install their software and where anyone remotely smelling of money became suddenly quite popular with other attendees looking to sell things.

Oklahoma State University's Technology Business Assessment Group recently announced it will fund research on an approach to information protection called data shuffling. The project is led by Professor Rathindra Sarathy of OSU's Department of Management Science and Information Systems, who explains to us just what data shuffling is and why it could be coming to your network soon.

Every day is something like April Fools' Day at the University of California Berkeley joke recommendation site, dubbed Jester.

Microsoft's US general manager/chief security advisor for its National Security Team thinks like a true security professional: In every bit of good news, Bret Arsenault wonders what bad news could be lurking behind it.

You might think the network you oversee is big, but consider Chris Robb's new job: network operations manager for Internet2, which in October announced completion of a new research and education network boasting initial capacity of 100Gbps nationwide. Robb takes on his new position as an assigned staff member from the Global Research Network Operations Center (GRNOC) at Indiana University. Network World Editor Bob Brown interviewed Robb by e-mail to get an idea of what lies ahead for him and Internet2.

The open source industry in 2008 will be marked by more news out of Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and other big IT vendors, less start-up funding, more M&A activity, and an increasingly serious talent shortage.

Wireless is one of the hottest research areas among academics, who are looking at ways to make networks faster, less expensive and more energy-efficient. Here's a whirlwind tour of some of the more intriguing projects underway at schools and labs across the United States (some of which are being presented at the HotNets IV conference being held in Atlanta next week.

Using mobile phones or text messaging mid-conversation or during an appointment or meeting cracked the Terrible 10 Rude Behaviours List issued by Johns Hopkins University.

We often hear corporate IT pros complain that justifying security expenses is tough because they don't necessarily generate revenue or enable new business opportunities. In fact, figuring out the economics of IT security is so challenging for customers and vendors that lots of the world's best researchers are putting their minds to the task.

A completely new kind of approach to innovation is required to ensure EMC doesn't lose its way as storage needs grow and change, in light of companies' adopting Web 2.0 applications, service-oriented architectures and software-as-a-service offerings.