While it's so much easier to look back at the end of the year and reflect on the newsworthiness of a technology industry event than to do so as the event is happening, Network World this year is daring to make our picks for the top technology stories of the year as we go along. We'll update this article regularly -- as news dictates.
The one-day, worldwide event designed to show off the capabilities and readiness of the Internet Protocol update went off with . , which involved 400 organizations including big name content suppliers, carriers, hardware vendors and software makers, was said to be the most watched tech-related event since New Year's Eve 1999, when all eyes were on the Y2K bug.
The short-lived hacking group garnered international attention by attacking websites belonging to governments and companies, including the CIA and Sony. It : "Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind - we hope - inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love," the group said in . Though LulzSec might not completely have faded away, with some members reportedly .
Microsoft debuted its -- the company's answer to Google Apps -- and the latest Microsoft offering designed to expand the company's reach beyond packaged software. Microsoft is to use the new offering. Office 365 complements earlier Microsoft cloud offerings, including its Azure platform-as-a-service, which hasn't caught on in a big way yet.
is seen by analysts as an aggressive move to challenge Google, Facebook and others for the hearts, minds and wallets of online users. Some industry watchers say Microsoft actually had technology in its portfolio to compete with Skype on many fronts, but that buying the company gives Microsoft lots of customers fast. The combination of the Skype buyout and advances on the Windows Phone 7 front also gives .
The big Interop 2011 show could almost have been called the given that it served as one of the first significant exhibitions of OpenFlow switches and controllers, including those shown off in a lab at the event. The software-defined networking technology is designed to enable users to define flows and determine what paths those flows take through a network, regardless of the underlying hardware. OpenFlow stems from an project borne of a six-year research collaboration between Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.
Google launched , its browser-turned-operating system, and alternative to Windows, Mac OS and Linux (through Chrome OS technically sits on a stripped-down version of Linux. By putting most of a user's apps and data on the Web with some offline capabilities, Chrome OS presents a "stateless" model that the company believes will make it easier to use and manage computers. The .
A knocked the PS3 gaming community offline for days and . With more than 70 million people using the network, some are calling this breach one of the worst ever and a .
Seems the only way to get more powerful -- or less weak -- in telecom these days is to join forces. A couple of huge deals went down in April, with for $2.5 billion shortly after , and for about $1.9 billion.
Apple, Google and Microsoft were all answering questions after it was made widely public that some smartphones have software that enables vendors to track users' locations. This media storm started with revelations about , prompting to assure at least one customer the issue was being misunderstood and blown out of proportion and that it merely tracks WiFi hotspot and cell tower locations so that it can access that information when it's requested. Meanwhile, two users claiming Apple's actions violated federal privacy law, and naturally lawmakers got into the act as well. and didn't escape scrutiny either.
A due to undisclosed server problems resulted in customers' websites being down and/or flakey for days (even for those who took the precaution of signing on for , and raised all the usual concerns about whether it's still too early to trust your business to the cloud due to . Amazon, despite being plugged into social network systems such as blogs and Twitter, was , perhaps due to legal concerns.
A resulted in dozens of its customers -- including big names like Best Buy, Capital One and Eddie Bauer -- issuing warnings to their customers about theft of names and email addresses. Epsilon has sworn it will , though kept details of the breach close it vest. The fear remains that customers whose names and email addresses were swiped could become phishing targets.
would create the biggest carrier in the United States, with some 129 million subscribers. The union also raises lots of big regulatory, competitive and customer service questions, with about the prospects of this deal going down.
Beyond the devastating human tragedy that has been the world's main concern in the wake of Japan's earthquakes and tsunami disaster, the high tech industry has been impacted greatly as well. from Japan and concerns have been raised about as well. in Japan expect months of disruption and were damaged.
Google, Microsoft and Mozilla all released significant new versions of their browsers. focuses on security, speed and simplicity, with greater JavaScript performance, sandboxing technology for Adobe Flash, password encryption and an easier-to-use settings interface. also boasts speed, privacy and simplicity improvements, but with a stripped-down interface, tracking protection, pinned sites, jump lists and enhanced support for HTML5. got a speed boost and several feature enhancements that are so significant that they all have their own proper names, like Panorama, JaegerMonkey and Firefox Sync.
EMC's RSA Security division shook the industry in March when its executive chairman announced that a sophisticated cyber-attack on the company might have . The attack for remote access to sensitive information to stop doing so until RSA clarified the extent of possible compromise.
More than 50 , a sign that hackers were hard at work trying to compromise mobile devices running the Android OS. In fact, it got so bad that to remotely delete infected Android apps.
The next generation of Apple's iPad tablet computer is sleeker and more powerful than the original, and boasts two cameras so that users can use Apple's FaceTime video chat. CEO Steve Jobs surprised the faithful by himself. Here's a . The iPad 2 unveiling both .
and Nokia both have a lot to lose -- and gain -- by their mobile alliance, with the Finnish handset maker deciding to adopt as its smartphone operating system. Nokia won't abandon its own platforms, Symbian and MeeGo, yet. The company still plans to put out a "MeeGo-related" product later this year and "expects to sell 150 million more Symbian devices in the years to come," it said.
President service to 98% of the United States within 5 years. The plan, which would involve freeing up 500MHz of wireless spectrum over a decade, is expected to meet with plenty of questions from lawmakers and industry reps.
, passed away at the age of 84 on Feb. 6. He was remembered for his scientific focus and his epic battles vs. IBM and others as DEC rose to become the No.2 computer maker in the world before eventually succumbing to competition and being acquired by Compaq.
space in early February when the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority assigned two of the remaining blocks of IPv4 addresses - each containing 16.7 million addresses - to the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre. This action sparked an immediate distribution of the remaining five blocks of IPv4 address space, with one block going to each of the five Regional Internet Registries. Now that IPv4 addresses are gone, Internet policy makers will be ratcheting up the pressure on network operators to migrate quickly to IPv6.
and cell phone networks in an effort to diffuse protests against the government not only burned free speech advocates around the world, but it cost the country's economy at least $90 million, . It also raised the specter of an being put into the U.S. President's hands.
Google announced in January that it was shaking up top management, with longtime CEO Eric Schmidt becoming executive chairman and taking hold of the CEO reins all in the name of streamlining the company's top-level decision making. It's hard to argue that , in coming to Google from Novell in 2001, didn't make one of the greatest career moves in the history of history.
Following month after excruciating month of rumors, Verizon and Apple finally got together in January and announced that the . that there was much pent up demand for the iPhone on an network other than AT&T's, which has been criticized by many for dropping too many iPhone calls. The said the news put an end out our long national iPhone nightmare.
While almost everything seems to be going right for Apple, the health of its CEO Steve Jobs has been a constant concern. Jobs that he would be taking a leave of absence for medical reasons and that COO Tim Cook would be handling day-to-day operations in his stead.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer as head of the company's Server and Tools Business, Windows Server 2008 generally gets high marks from customers, but Microsoft is still trying to prove itself in the virtualization and cloud markets, and it was the in particular where Ballmer focused in explaining the move. In February, Microsoft named : Satya Nadella, who led the company's technical efforts to launch its Bing search engine.
It turns out that the appeal of app stores isn't just for smartphone and tablet computer users. Apple's Mac App Store hit the on its first day upon opening in January. The opening wasn't without hitches, as a piracy vulnerability was spotted early on. Meanwhile, Apple hit the on its earlier App Store about a week after the Mac App Store opened.
during the summer of 2011. AT&T also announced that it would be launching around 20 different "4G devices" this year, although many of those devices will actually run on its 3G HSPA+ wireless network. Much like rival carrier T-Mobile, AT&T refers to both the LTE and HSPA+ wireless standards as "4G" technologies even though HSPA+ is most widely considered a faster and more reliable version of the 3G GSM-based HSPA standard. Separately, 10 LTE devices it would be selling in the first half of 2011. This followed in December, 2010.
The Apple iPad assault ramped up at the in Las Vegas in January as Acer, Dell, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, NEC and others introduced Windows or Android . RIM showed off its tablet, Google previewed its tablet-optimized and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked up his , including ARM support for Windows.
in Network World's Software section.