Security is also a part of this level and comprises items such as encryption, virtual private networks and firewalls. Enterprise management is the third level. In an organization, these technologies allow network administration to take place in a central location from the desktop. This helps determine how to manage information assets. This year, what's hot is remote collaboration, intelligent information management classrooms that include interactive video distance learning and collaboration, virtual meeting rooms and, most of all, a common look and feel to services, but it has to be tailored to what the individual user wants, Icore maintains.
Requirements vary and depend on the end-user.
This testbed environment shows customers that they will not have to be tied to one vendor. However, he adds that all the necessary components for complete interoperability are not yet in place, but industry is moving closer to this goal. And you don't care where the data is either. What you care about is a common feel to what the user sees based on the technology, which is vendor independent. One ATD backbone participant, Cisco Systems Incorporated, Herndon, Virginia, is demonstrating the versatility that information technology can add to enterprise operations.