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This article describes wide-area file services (WAFS). WAFS are appliances or software that allow centralization of file services by optimizing connectivity to remote-office clients over a wide-area network (WAN). WAFS systems overcome bandwidth and latency limitations through a combination of caching, protocol optimization, compression, and other techniques. With the use of WAFS, branch-office file servers can be consolidated into the data center, where servers and data can be managed and protected more effectively. However, the convergence of WAFS and WAN acceleration technologies, and the entry of large players such as Cisco Systems Inc. are changing the market rapidly. INSET: How WAFS Vendors Cache In.

The article features the launching of computer products and services by different computer companies. Omni-Center 6.0 is a network management software by Netreo Inc. It includes faster graph generation, improved autodiscovery of network devices, user-customizable views and RSS 2.0 support for viewing network status on mobile devices. Hewlett-Packard Co. and Cingular Wireless LLC announced the HP Compaq nc6400 laptop, which features built-in mobile broadband connectivity. Xythos Software Inc. featured the Xythos on Demand, a hosted document and file management service aimed at small and midsize businesses that can't afford their own stand-alone systems.

Collaboration software, also called groupware, helps integrate work on a single project performed by several concurrent users at separate computers. Even though there are many collaboration and document-sharing applications on the market, it is still true that for the most part, the way people share files is to e-mail them back and forth as attachments. While this has been surprisingly productive for many people, it is a long way from collaboration. Even though networked computers allow high-speed communications and the fast and easy exchange of data and documents, it is still remarkably difficult for a group of users to work together on a project from separate computers. In 1989, executive Ray Ozzie at Lotus Development Corp. brought forth Notes, the first program that attempted to integrate a number of communication, scheduling and database-driven activities into a single software package that was designed from the start to live on a network. Collaboration can be done formally, from the top down, through established procedures and processes, or it can be done informally, from the bottom up, as communities and project teams collaborate in an ad hoc way. Some large organizations may be concerned about the proliferation of project-based collaboration software and they are likely to want a cohesive plan for supporting collaboration across the enterprise.