Contrary to what you may believe, Skype is primarily used for business, not home use. So concludes a Cornell University study of Skype use.

The server business is entering a fascinating phase, with processors that feature power through the roof and energy efficiency unrivaled by older chips; extraordinary hardware options available to you whether you're in a large enterprise or a small business; a growing, stable open-source platform in Linux that's going head to head with Microsoft's forthcoming, exciting Longhorn server and some wonderful legacy platforms; the old reliables of supercomputers or flexible new clustering methods to compete for the high-end; and pretty good pricing on all of it. If you can't figure out a server platform for your company that will increase your business efficiency, save you money and justify your investment, you're not really trying.

Last week, the Information Technology Solution Provider Alliance (ITSPA) put out a press release about the adoption of mobile data solutions amongst small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). The release cited a study, conducted by the Yankee Group, that surveyed SMBs about their attitudes toward mobility. The study had some interesting conclusions which I went into more detail about with the Yankee Group's Gary Chen on a conference call today.

In my last three columns I discussed the challenges of dense wireless deployments and some of the ways they can be addressed. In the first column, I focused on channel design and selection. In the second column, I looked at the poly-radio APs (access points) from Meru and Xirrus that facilitate dense deployments by dramatically increasing the number of radios available for clients. In the third column, I examined some non-metro Wi-Fi antenna and radio technologies more applicable to the consumer space, with some possible enterprise applications. In this fourth and final column, I'll touch on what some radio and receiver vendors that target the metro Wi-Fi space are doing to decrease deployment costs, enhance coverage and increase throughput and link stability.

A new study from PointTopic found that VoIP subscribers jumped by 83% in 2005, and hit nearly 19 million subscribers worldwide. It's just one more piece of evidence that traditional telephone are going the way of the horse and buggy.

I've covered the IT business long enough to be continually amused when companies decide to junk a technology that, a mere few years before, promised to save the world.

Yesterday BEA announced it would acquire SOA Governance vendor Flashline for an undisclosed sum.

Happy Friday!

Today's freebie is a product that's just been released as a service and provides IT analytic capabilities for free.

Verizon is aggressively targeting Long Island with it fiber-to-the-home FiOS service -- but it looks as if cable company Cablevision may clean its clock. This doesn't bode well for telcos in the upcoming cable versus telco all-out war.

A report from the Mail & Guardian Online claims that a home firewall is virtually useless, and "is not much more than a leaky dike." But there's less to this report than meets the eye, and its conclusions may be highly misleading.

IBM today announced it will acquire security vendor ISS for approximately $1.3 billion. ISS made its name selling intrusion detection and prevention products, but Big Blue snapped up the company for its managed security services portfolio.

Beyond Print 11 Podcast - Beyond Content (download here) - Successful blogs and podcasts can hold a visitor beyond what they originally were looking for. A visitor may discover your blog or podcast because they were searching for a topic, and came across your content. If your content is interesting, and visitors form a connection with the host, then they'll stick around for the long haul. Quality will bring users in; connecting with visitors will keep them coming back. This week's episode talks about why your goal should be to retain listeners/readers. I'll also talk about a company who didn't follow this advice, and lost me as a target. If you would like to subscribe to the NWC podcasts, please subscribe to our podcast RSS feed. It'll let you get all the new episodes automatically.

I bumped into the Phil Edholm, chief technology officer and vice president of Strategy and Architecture for Nortel's Enterprise Solutions and Packet Networks group, here in the halls at VoiceCon. We spoke about the opportunities for Nortel in light of the Microsoft relationship and his vision for the future of communications. Here's what he had to say:

The recent ruling by a federal judge that the NSA wiretapping program violates the constitution is bad news for AT&T and other telcos -- they may end up paying millions of dollars because of their acquiescence in the program.

AMD always does well when LinuxWorld rolls around, and this week is no exception. The first major upgrade of its flagship mid- and large-market server processor, the Opteron, sees AMD well on the path to quad-core processing. And it guarantees that 2007 will be the year of 4x, as both AMD and rival Intel vie to get you to toss out relatively inefficient and energy-draining single-core machines in favor of quads that will cut your costs in energy and time.

A new line of wallets has metal-infused RF shielding built in to prevent thieves from remotely scanning RFID-embedded credit cards. This is just silly.

Sprint Nextel announced on August 8 its choice of WiMAX technology for its mobile broadband network that will operate in its 2.5 GHz Broadband Radio Service (BRS) spectrum. Every other wireless pundit is going to have something to say about this, and I have so much to say that the constraints of this column will be a challenge. First, I'm going to make some general comments about the company's technology choice and early claims. Then I'm going to zoom in on the crux of the challenge that Sprint Nextel will have to address: managing capacity and performance expectations while finding a way of charging for service that enables a successful business model. This will be a conundrum, which according to one definition I just read means "a paradoxical, insoluble or difficult problem."

News.com is reporting that the fall out from AOL's privacy fiasco has begun.

Beyond Print 10 Podcast - Unpause (download here) - We're back from the hiatus. New episodes will come out weekly again. I'm currently in the process of writing the Beyond Print printed article. I've noticed that writing and podcasting require very different thought processes. What you say, how you present it, and the method of creation needs to fit the medium. I explore a bit of the differences between the two in this week's show. If you would like to subscribe to the NWC podcasts, please subscribe to our podcast RSS feed.

VoIP has dropped the cost of international calls so drastically that sleazy marketers and scammers call into the U.S. from overseas to evade our country's do-not-call regulations. And the problem is only getting worse.

When people think of VoIP, they think of Skype. That's the interesting conclusion of Phil Wolff's blog on Skype Journal. That's bad news for Vonage...and very good news for Skype.

I wrote briefly about the financial troubles Zultys was having. So I popped off a few questions to Ian Milnes, the President of Zultys. If I were a Zultys customer, I would be really nervous until I saw an announcement about a new round of funding. I wish them all the best.

Here is his resopnse.

Fratto: How long do you think it will be before operations resume?
Milnes: Your question seems to assume something that has never happened. We have never ceased operations so there never has been any need to resume them. For the past two weeks we have been building product, selling product, taking orders, and shipping product. We have been supporting product and fixing software bugs that have been found in the field. So, I don't think your first question is the correct one. If your question is when we will be back at full bore as we were a month ago, I cannot answer that. We are going through a restructuring and will come through that a stronger company (with some managers who are wiser now than they were a month ago!).

Fratto: What services are being offered today and how long do you expect them to continue?
Milnes: I think I have answered your second question. However, I would add that each of our sales and support offices around the globe is operating at 80% capacity as before. It's a bit more of a work load for people, but sales are already picking up and we hope to be able to hire back people at the remote offices to full capacity this year.

Fratto: Is there a strategy in the event that Zultys can't get funding?
Milnes: I do not consider your third question a viable option at this point. We have engaged an investment banking firm in NYC that is an expert in assisting companies in our position. They have generated significant interest in Zultys and at this point I don't think we will fail to get funding.

I've got to admit, I've been most curious about Apple and what its server strategy will be going forward from its switch to Intel processors. Now, perhaps we'll start finding out. Apple honcho Steve Jobs used the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference last week to complete Apple's Intel line by unveiling the two most long-awaited items -- the Mac Pro desktop, which fills out the desktop line at its most important point, and a quad-core Xeon-based Xserve 1U server line that goes up to 3 GHz in speed and concentrates on efficient power management.

Digium, the company behind open source PBX software Asterisk, has just gotten $13.8 million in Series A funding from the Boston-based VC fund Matrix Partners. This should be the final nail in the coffin of old-style PBXs.

If you have any doubts about the likely market success of 802.11n, check out the early numbers. In its first four months of availability, Broadcom has shipped over 1 million of its Intesi-fi chipsets. That's a million chipsets based on an 11n draft standard that is likely to see considerable change before it is passed. That's 1 million chipsets in a highly competitive market where Atheros, Marvel and Airgo are also enjoying considerable success. Business is good.

Recently, I concluded the research phase of a large project to assess the future direction of all the major wide-area wireless technologies, including 3G and WiMAX. There is so much going on that it has left my head spinning. But at the same time I'm quite excited, because the future of mobile data just keeps getting brighter. As an IT manager, you won't be able to immediately take advantage of many of these enhanced technologies, but it may be helpful to know what will be available in what timeframe. It's also interesting to see how the 3G vs. WiMAX battle is shaping up.

Sony's new mylo instant messaging/calling device includes Skype so you can make VoIP calls using Wi-Fi networks. Yes, it sounds cool...but I think this one is going to crash and burn, so I don't think Skype will be a big winner here.

Possibly the most disturbing news out of the Black Hat security conference last week was how Asterisk, the open source PBX, is being increasingly used by hackers in a wide variety of hard-to-stop VoIP hacks. Everyone, from home users to corporate networks, could become a target.

Not happy with the limited choices you have for broadband Internet access? That may change. The FCC has just announced it plans to back broadband over powerline (BPL) technology, so you may eventually get Net access from your local utility. And AT&T and the other telcos certainly aren't happy about it.

Happy Friday!

Today's freebie is for the coders out there - an AJAX/JSF open source toolkit that lets you develop cool Web 2.0 applications without JavaScript...

This week Intel and SANS announced three vulnerabilities for Centrino device drivers on Windows, the worst of which could let the attacker execute code with kernel-level privileges.

A hacker's toolkit of 14 programs designed to test VoIP security has just been released at the Black Hat security conference. The tools were designed so that security pros can test the safety of their networks. But you can be sure that hackers are licking their chops at getting their hands on this one.

I really keep waiting for IBM to get around one of these days to licensing the late, great Eddie Kendricks's "Keep On Truckin'" for an ad campaign. Remember that mid-'70s solo smash from the Temptations singer, and the explosion of license plates with the funky steppin' dude that it spawned?

Internet telephony providers are in for some more rough times. The IRS and Department of Treasury helped traditional carriers cut their costs yesterday by eliminating the three percent Federal Excise Tax (FET) on long-distance telecoms. They also chose not to impose the tax on other services, such as IP telephony and wireless. Many IP telephony providers, however, have never included FET in their charges anyway.

The Vonage earnings report is out, and it's only bad news: A whopping loss of more than $74 million in the quarter, skyrocketing marketing expenses, and worsening customer churn. Despite that, the company had the gall to claim it's on the way to profits. Does anyone believe these people any more?

I recently reviewed a new version of Zulty's 3.0 release only to find out from a reader that Zultys has reduced operations. This little tidbit from Robert Liu on TMCNet.com provides more detail. Looks like Zultys is going to be selling and supporting the product while they search for funding. In fact, a press release today announces a case study of Australia's Health Services Union, Victoria Branch use of Zultys products. I have an email into Iian Milnes and hopefully I will have more details.

In the mean time, you might want to get familiar with the IP PBX space again.

Beyond Print 09 Podcast - Sonic Boom (download here) - Today's show is all about SonicWall's podcasting initiative. We'll talk about why they decided to podcast, how the shows are produced and their goals. If you would like to subscribe to the NWC podcasts, please subscribe to our podcast RSS feed. It'll let you get all the new episodes automatically.