The spectrum shortage is forcing mobile operators to experiment more with pricing models, new technologies and partnerships, executives speaking at the Mobile Future Forward event in Seattle said Wednesday.

A bug introduced during a routing system update caused Gmail to turn some users into unintentional spammers by resending some messages multiple times to increasingly annoyed recipients including company bosses, clients, prospective employers and friends.

IT consolidation is the key issue faced by European CIOs – even if they're divided on what the main drivers are. According to a survey carried out by Brocade, 76 percent of enterprises consider IT consolidation to be more important than virtualisation and security.

Cisco has said it will acquire Arch Rock Corporation, a privately held developer of IP-based wireless network technology for smart grids.

When a small to midsize business installs a new server in its data center, it has to make a number of connections, including a keyboard, a mouse, a monitor, power cables, one or more network connections, and perhaps a storage connection.

Opsview Community Edition 3.8 is free, open source enterprise network and application monitoring software that is available as a virtual appliance for VMware player. However, it can be converted to run on VMware ESX or ESXi by using the free VMware vCenter Converter tool.

Cacti is a network monitoring and performance graphing tool that works with SNMP to capture what is happening on the network and present that information in easy-to-understand graphs.

Brocade will soon unveil 100Gbps Ethernet additions to its switching and routing product line, in what the company claims is its most significant Ethernet/IP product rollout since acquiring Foundry Networks in 2008. The new products could include a 32-port 100Gbps Ethernet router previewed at Brocade's technology day conference. It could also include a chassis-based core data centre switch mentioned at the same conference. 

Cisco is reportedly looking to buy Skype before the Internet phone provider goes public.

Skype has launched a Session Initiation Protocol-based voice service for businesses that integrates free and low cost calling into corporate IP PBXs, providing an opportunity to add voice features to corporate websites and to cut back on some phone expenses.