25 Technologies That Changed the Decade

16. POE

Power over Ethernet is still a relatively new technology, and many companies haven't implemented it yet. But companies that have moved to POE have seen major benefits, especially in the ability to run devices such as VOIP (voice over IP) phones, access points and other appliances without the need for a wall wart to provide power.

17. Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Coming into the decade, Linux was already a hot commodity, but it wasn't until Red Hat launched the buttoned-down and subscription-priced Enterprise variant of its Linux distribution that Linux was truly ready—both in terms of road map stability and of business model—to truly storm the enterprise. 

18. Salesforce.com

Rising from the ashes of the failed ASP (application service provider) market of the late 1990s, Salesforce.com proved that companies would run vital enterprise business applications—even CRM and sales force automation—over the Web.

19. Social networks

They may seem like a big waste of time, but social networks have had a significant effect on the way people and businesses connect and communicate.

20. Solaris 10

During the latter half of '00s, Sun Microsystems' Solaris 10 sat at the leading edge of operating system technologies, with unique capabilities that include Containers virtualization, Dtrace system instrumentation and the ZFS file system. Solaris 10 also helped put a stamp of inevitability on the x86-64 architecture and on the open-source-as-a-platform licensing strategy.

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