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Tim Howes, Chief Technology Officer at Opsware Inc.

... but the need for IT automation technology is immediate. What with Framingham, Mass.-based market research firm IDC estimating that there are at least 20 million servers and 39 million network routers installed worldwide, you can't blame IT executives and staffers for wishing for some robotic help with the endless, complex and costly tasks of patching software, changing configurations and provisioning systems. And all that work doesn't come cheap. IDC says companies spent $95 billion last year maintaining just servers. Alas, until a robotic sysadmin superhero swoops down from the skies to save the day, you'll need to rely on vendors like Opsware Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif. According to Chief Technology Officer Tim Howes, Opsware "wants to be able to code the expertise in IT people's heads." Howes says that most of the automation tools now on the market come from server and router vendors themselves -- which isn't all that helpful for users facing IT's heterogeneous reality. "We need to automate for a multivendor world, especially for networks," Howes says. Hence the planned March 21 release of Opsware's Network Automation System 4.0. Among other improvements, the upgrade can be configured to report on security violations as they relate to government regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. It also manages network administration workflows and automates the approval process for any changes to network gear. And Opsware has spiffed up the browser-based user interface so that mere-mortal admins don't have to install any client code to use the software. A typical installation costs $20,000 for 50 network nodes. And, yes, the company offers a similar tool for server management.

Tony Terranova, vice president of product marketing at Genesys

Corporate users of webconferencing tools ...
... racked up 1.5 billion minutes of online meeting time in 2004. And that's just on the service offered by Genesys Conferencing Inc. in Montpellier, France. Tony Terranova, vice president of product marketing at Genesys, says that the company is eyeing future market opportunities among midsize companies, which these days are more likely to use services such as WebEx from WebEx Communications Inc. and LiveMeeting from Microsoft Corp. A more immediate move by Genesys is this week's beta release of an online billing and reporting feature that's designed to detail things such as which department or end user is burning up the webconferencing minutes. And the company says that in Q2, its online service will fully integrate with the calendar in Lotus Notes so users can schedule Genesys meetings through IBM's