Anti-Spam Software and Services
As junk e-mail reached epidemic proportions this year, spam blockers rushed in to rescue ailing e-mail in-boxes.
Centralized Patch Management
Patches were the bane of IT managers existence this year, and many have turned or are turning to centralized patch management to ease the burden (if not their ire over having to patch in the first place).
AMD 64
Advanced Micro Devices Opteron and Athlon 64 chips gave enterprise buyers a ticket to ride on a 64-bit address space while letting them carry on their paid-for portfolios of x86 code and skills.
Wi-Fi
The wireless LAN industry took major steps forward this year, with 802.11g providing increased bandwidth and backward compatibility and Wi-Fi Protected Access offering wireless security that administrators could start to trust.
2
Information Lifecycle Management
Thanks to regulations like HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley, companies must not only store data but also make sure that data is preserved for longer periods of time while still being easily accessible.
Mature Back-End Web Services
Web services technology has made great strides in connecting enterprise systems in companies and among business partners. With open standards and common development tools, Web services are making the promise of B2B finally come true.
Multiplatform Productivity Suites
IT consumers should be able to select the computing platform that best suits their needs. Applications such as OpenOffice.org and Mozilla help keep our options open by delivering key application functionality thats consistent across multiple platforms.
Multiprocessor Xeon Blades
The use of the Xeon processor allowed server vendors to engineer high-performance systems in a form factor that is a fraction of the size of industry-standard predecessors.
Utility Computing
Although customer adoption has been slow, server automation and system management tools paved the way this year for enterprises to set up utility computing platforms.
.Net
With good developer tools available from Microsoft, Borland and other vendors, companies now have the tools to build practical .Net applications.