Comdex Ushers Host Of New Products

Gone are the massage tables, cars and consumer commodities that once littered the Las Vegas Convention Center. Instead, Comdex attendees will find vendors releasing more channel-related products this year than they have in the past four years.

"The general perception of Comdex is that it's outdated, but lately I can see they've really been trying to focus on solution providers," said Charlene Wan, director of marketing at BenQ America, City of Industry, Calif. The company is unveiling new LCD monitors and sub-$1,000 digital projectors.

Netgear, Santa Clara, Calif., is set to expand its Layer 3 line with a new Layer 3 Managed 10/100 26-port switch. The switch supports power over Ethernet, which provides

a dedicated power supply, and is designed to work with Netgear's new WG302 enterprise access points.

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Net Integration, a Toronto-based developer, is rolling out its autonomic computing solution. The offering includes the Net Integrator solid-state chip, which sits on a server and acts as a fully deployed back-office infrastructure, and its NIOS operating system. "Typically, our solution providers can sell a solution that's 50 percent more cost-effective than a traditional Microsoft solution," said Ozzie Papic, CEO and president of Net Integration.

Saflink, a Bellevue, Wash.-based developer of biometric authentication, plans to show off its new D2D (door-to-desktop) Identity Assurance Management Solution, which integrates desktop and physical infrastructure authentication.

Other innovative technologies include Avail's Integrity 2.0 backup and disaster-recovery solution, which automatically routes and stores data to the preferred storage vault. "With this [software], you can allocate data to as many different storage devices as necessary," said Randy Thorburn, vice president of marketing and sales at Avail, Escondido, Calif.

American Megatrends, Norcross, Ga., will introduce its K1 digital KVM-over-IP switch, which compresses digital, keyboard and mouse functionality to allow remote system access and features a "virtual CD" function that allows an IT manager to remotely add new operating systems and applications to PCs for a fraction of the cost of other remote management tools, said Michael Patellis, national sales manager of the company.

MARIE LINGBLOM & JOSEPH F. KOVAR contributed to this story.