Matt Hamblen

The stakes are high when choosing technologies and vendor partners. Get it wrong, and sales can tank or projects can fail. Pair that decision-making responsibility with the ongoing constraints on budgets, and IT executives say the task of picking the right technology or the best vendor is an enormous weight to bear and requires meticulous evaluations.

3Com Corp. on Monday announced its highest-performance LAN switch to date, as it continues to woo large corporate users through a joint venture with Chinese vendor Huawei Technologies Co.

Networking vendors point to continued growth in the adoption of voice-over-IP technology. But several users this month said they

Hewlett-Packard Co. this week announced more than 40 IT management products and services in an effort to further its autonomic computing initiative, including new software that provides systems management capabilities across its Windows, Linux and Unix server lines.

Cisco Systems Inc. last week said it will add support for the Secure Sockets Layer protocol to its virtual private network hardware, elbowing its way into a market now occupied by many smaller vendors

Cisco Systems Inc. and Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. this month announced a move toward ending a lawsuit Cisco brought in January that claimed Huawei had copied Cisco's software and other intellectual property.

Alaska's state government this week said it has terminated a US$100 million voice and data communications contract with Alaska Communications Systems Group Inc. (ACS), citing delays in an installation of voice-over-IP phones.

Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. said it has completed a three-year project to install IP telephony systems at several of its U.S. offices. But the New York-based banking and investment management firm isn't moving away from circuit-switched call-routing technology altogether.