Gartner ITxpo spotlights security, wireless

Enterprise IT executives attending this week's Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Orlando, Fla., got a peek at several forthcoming products for security, CM (content management), wireless, and SOAs (service-oriented architectures).

Computer Associates at the show announced its eTrust Security Command Center r8, which provides a centralized control center for managing and responding to security events. New features include rules-based event correlation tools, offering more than 100 default policies for threat analysis; incident management functions, such as grouping multiple events to be processed based on common attributes and enhanced visualization; and customizable, task-specific workspaces for simplifying security management. CA also added bi-directional integration with its Unicenter Network and Systems Management offering.

Another security player, Internet Security Systems (ISS), unveiled its Proventia Enterprise Security Platform (ESP), offering enterprisewide pre-emptive security protection integrated with business processes. The Proventia ESP aims to help IT managers avoid security incidents by providing continuous vulnerability assessment, virtual patching, and reporting functions.

Also at the show, CM vendor Interwoven introduced a Web CM offering designed for intranets. The Interwoven Intranet Solution, based on the company's TeamSite software, aims to simplify intranet publishing and management by tailoring the system for a broader base of content contributors, less technical users, and a proliferation of intranet sites.

The offering helps enterprises support multiple intranets by decentralizing content contribution and control while centralizing the underlying Web CM infrastructure, according to Anne Curran, senior marketing manager for Web content management products at Interwoven.

The key challenges for managing intranets are how to enable fresh, relevant content and give more control to a wide base of contributors, Curran said.

Moreover, enterprises need help coping with the costly proliferation of intranets, she said.

"A lot of business units and departments acquire a content management system on their own to gain control of the explosion of information. A business can end up with hundreds of intranets and multiple content management systems to manage that. [They] end up with redundant hardware and software and tons of inefficiencies," Curran said.

Features of the Intranet Solution include desktop content publishing, forms-based content contribution, VisualPreview edit, multi-site CM, drag and drop content import, and the capability to create a snapshot of an entire site for version control and compliance archives.

BEA Systems at the Gartner ITxpo released its MobileAware Interaction Server, BEA WebLogic Edition, which is designed to mobilize online data and business processes. To that end, the platform can extend the SOA technology in BEA WebLogic Portal 8.1 to the world of mobile devices, providing multi-channel access to Web and online content, according to BEA officials. The MobileAware Interaction Server uses BEA's WebLogic Platform development, execution, personalization, and presentation capabilities while transparently adding a mobile presentation layer.

Targeting the wireless arena, Research In Motion (RIM) used the show to demonstrate a new BlackBerry Wireless Handheld device that offers both wireless LAN and VoIP support.

Expected to ship by early next year, the BlackBerry 7270 works with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The new device runs on 802.11b networks and incorporates voice and data capabilities. Designed to extend desktop phone functionality to a wireless device, the BlackBerry 7270 uses SIP-based call control to deliver standards-based interoperability with IP PBX and traditional corporate telephony equipment, according to RIM officials.