Interop is a huge gathering of IT professionals held in various cities around the world several times per year. Interop Las Vegas 2007 was held May 20-25, 2007 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Over 450 software, hardware and service vendors participated in the vendor exposition. The vendors booths varied drastically from a simple table with some basic "posters" about the products to extensive two-story booths with UFOs, magicians and famous impersonators. All were presenting their latest products for the consideration of the IT managers, business executives, and techies of all types who came to Las Vegas to view new and upcoming technologies. One of those was UF Security Team member John Sawyer, who reported seeing some unusual attendees.

Each day, dozens of presentations and demonstrations were held throughout the convention center so that attendees could learn more about emerging technologies. Some even got to do hands-on testing in interoperability labs for VOIP and NAC (network access control), among others.

Security is a huge focus at Interop. One large section of the show floor was dedicated to security vendors and their products and services. "I had the opportunity to meet with over 25 vendors, including Juniper, Sophos, Barracuda Networks, Network General, Blue Lane and Reflex Security," said Sawyer. "We primarily discussed NAC technologies and solutions along with IDS (intrusion-detection systems)/IPS (intrusion-prevention systems) and virtual machine security." Sawyer also had the honor of being one of the two judges for the security category for the Best of Interop awards. "That was tough! We had to choose three top products from over 50 submissions and then narrow it down to a single winner after meeting with the three finalists at the conference."

Learn more about this best-of-the-best competition at http://www.networkcomputing.com/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=199701913 and more about Interop itself at http://www.interop.com/lasvegas .

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