Tech budgets zigzagged between mundane maintenance projects and bet-the-business initiatives in 2005, as more IT managers wore both support and strategy hats. This was a year when locking down systems and apps took center stage, server virtualization and low-cost SANs fueled consolidation, AJAX rocked the app-dev boat, and service-oriented architectures dissed EAI in favor of ESBs. Our product reviews tracked all these developments and more. In our third annual year-end roundup, you’ll find summary evaluations of every product we tested in 2005, listed alphabetically by vendor in eight categories.
AJAX gained traction for Web apps in 2005
Applications
Salesforce.com dominated the CRM space while the enterprise service bus race sped up
Data management
From better databases to smarter search engines, 2005 was a good year for data management
Hardware
Multicore processors and x64 supercharged servers over the past year
Networking
VoIP continues its march on the enterprise, while WAN management tools get even better
Platforms
We kicked the tires of a slew of solid operating systems, both proprietary and open source
Security
From securing apps to securing networks, 2005 sported products to lock down, lock in, and lock up enterprise resources
Storage
iSCSI SANs posed a real challenge to their Fibre Channel counterparts in 2005
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