Demo 2004: Vendors tout innovations to streamline corporate IT

Computerworld - SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- New ideas for IT problem-solving continued to be the theme here yesterday on the second and final day of the 14th annual Demo 2004 conference.
Among the most innovative enterprise IT ideas being touted by many of the 67 exhibitors were those aimed at solving long-term IT issues that are often left unaddressed. Enterprise application monitoring tools, business-meeting archive software, data synchronization tools and antispam programs were among the products demonstrated for the 550 IT executives at the show.
Chris Shipley, executive producer of the Demo conference, spent the past year meeting with more than 700 technology companies and chose 67 of those to demonstrate their products for IT users at this week's show.
The vendors that displayed products yesterday included the following:
TurnTide Inc.
Paoli, Pa.-based TurnTide's antispam appliance tackles the spam problem in a different way than many other products. Instead of focusing on sorting and classifying the flood of inbound mail to a network, this antispam appliance automatically identifies spammers based on an analysis of their sent mail and then limits the availability of a company's bandwidth and resources to the intruders.
The device sits on the edge of a corporate network, operating like a router. Instead of targeting spam at the Simple Mail Transport Protocol level, the appliance identifies spam at the TCP/IP level, and can stop it from leaving a spam sender's servers, according to the company.
Foursticks Pty. Ltd.
Adelaide, Australia-based Foursticks launched its enterprise Net Prioritizer application, which lets users prioritize downloads. For workers sending a critical Word document or PowerPoint presentation via e-mail, for example, Net Prioritizer offers control over available bandwidth, giving a lower priority to nonessential Web activity, such as software downloads or instant-messaging applications. Net Prioritizer allows the highest-priority activity to be done immediately, according to the company.
Memento Inc.
Memento's Software Suite is aimed at giving IT managers an application-evaluation tool. Instead of installing and using applications without periodically reviewing them to ensure that they still fit the company's needs, CIOs and other decision-makers can use Memento Software Suite to measure and monitor the long-term value of installed applications. The software, which measures the use and performance of applications with software instrumentation models, doesn't require any changes to the already installed applications, according to the Concord, Mass.-based company.
Quindi Corp.
Quindi 's Quindi Meeting Companion is a desktop-based application that allows corporate users to create an indexed, archival record of any business meeting that could include video, audio, notes and documents. The goal is to