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Ubiquitous Wi-Fi is almost here—in urban areas and many corporate campuses, at least. Last week, walking around San Francisco, I was able to check my e-mail in several spots without having to go pay for access at Starbucks. The reason, apart from demand, is that standards—namely 802.11b, which most access points run—have paved the way for open access. Wi-Fi standards have advanced quickly over the past few years from “g” to “n,” picking up throughput speed and distance along the way, as users became anxious to become truly untethered.
But as eWEEK Labs Technical Analyst Andrew Garcia reveals in his extensive interoperability tests of draft 802.11n routers, access points and adapters, its wise for corporate buyers to look before they leap into the latest “n” technology. Advancements in throughput speed and distance are there for the most part, Garcia says, but interoperability between products will take some time to mature.
More ready, it appears, for production deployment is Microsofts latest messaging and communications platform, Exchange Server 2007. Though in Beta 2, the product is feature-complete, writes Senior Editor Peter Galli. Though its sometimes difficult to tell the difference between a “major” and “minor” upgrade at Microsoft, Exchange Server 2007 does boast some big new features, including a new user interface and command-line scripting shell.
eWEEK Executive Editor Stan Gibson reported, back in February after a trip to India, that wage inflation will begin to eat into Indias outsourcing dominance. Gibson reports that this realization hit home for investors last week, as Wipro shares fell 5 percent July 18 on concerns of wage inflation, despite the fact that profits for the company were up 44 percent.
A week earlier, all that financial analysts wanted to ask Infosys executives about during the companys conference call was dealing with wage inflation, turnover and training. India could be losing its edge, leading many to wonder if U.S. companies will cut and run to the next source of cheap labor. China, perhaps?
Contact eWEEK Editor Scot Petersen at scot_petersen@ziffdavis.com.
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