The players are rapidly abandoning the field here, as Networld+Interop is overcome by the tragedies of yesterday's terrorist attacks in the U.S.
AT&T Corp., with offices in the World Trade Center, left early, and others are following. Many vendors, who were hanging on financially by their fingernails in the down telecommunications market, had pinned their hopes for advancement with new product launches at the show. Now, it seems that few people are paying attention, as many showgoers and vendors appear to be tending to transportation issues and trying to figure out ways to leave the area, since air traffic is still at a standstill. Most Microsoft Corp. employees at the show, for example, appear to have left together in a bus, leaving their booth untended.
Intel Corp. adorned its booth with a big white shroud and no one was at the booth Wednesday morning.
Novell Inc. was probably the big loser at the show. The show was supposed to be the big coming out party for the Novell NetWare 6 Internet services platform, but after yesterday's events, there aren't as many showgoers paying attention to the launch as the company no doubt expected.
Some of the product announcements at the show so far did include:
AT&T launched a Managed Services Portal on Tuesday for its managed hosting customers, to give them access to performance reports with integrated service level agreement data, collaboration tools, and electronic customer service tools, including trouble tickets and electronic billing. Pricing was not immediately available. AT&T, in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, can be contacted at http://www.att.comSpirent Plc. introduced an enhanced version of it SmartxDSL test suite at the show. The diagnostic tool measures key network and network device performance metrics such as throughput, latency, packet loss and session establishment tests. Pricing begins at US$3,995, with worldwide availability. More information can be found at http://www.spirent.com/.
Network Appliance Inc. released new versions of its NetApp DataFabric Manager data storage management tool, NetCache content delivery software and ContentDirector content distribution management system. Pricing was not immediately available. Network Appliance, in Sunnyvale, California, can be contacted at http://www.netapp.com/.