Enterprise Application Lab ??? Yes,

Enterprise Application Lab ??? Yes, you read that right but before you freak out, let me just say: Don't PANIC. NWC isn't changing its core focus of testing sexy networking based products, we're just widening our coverage a bit to include more business applications. And if we're going to continue to cover business applications with the same hard-core testing model we apply to all our other core areas we need to have a lab specifically designed to let us do that. In the past, we've had to beg and borrow data and applications for our testing, create databases and directories and .. well, you get the picture. We've had to do a million things just to test one application. And the next time, we had to start all over from scratch again.

So we're going to build something to give you what you need to make your decisions even easier. We'll give you the skinny on implementing business applications from how much CPU and memory that app really sucked up down to how much code we had to write (yes, we'll even code for you) to get things up and running. We'll look at the effects of applications on our database, our network and our other applications - mission critical and not-so-mission-critical.

How are we going to do that? By building a lab that looks a lot like your enterprise, simulating a real live company we're calling "NWC Inc.". Hardware has been ordered. Software is waiting to be installed. Code is waiting to be written and our lab refrigerator has a 12-pack of Mountain Dew waiting to be consumed. (That's only a daily allowance, really. I'll buy more - I promise).But I can't give away all our secrets just yet. We still have a ways to go before we're ready to tell you the nitty gritty details, but check back often to see what's happening. We'll continue to update here as we progress and you can read about our daily successes as well as the walls we run into as we move forward.