Strategy Session: Our Magazine's New Look

It's been four years since Network Computing last refreshed the look of its pages, so by magazine standards we were due for a tune-up. But the redesign you see here in these pages goes far beyond the head-to-toe photo of yours truly: Our goal was to re-create the magazine to better help you use technology to meet the needs of your business.

For the print version of Network Computing, that means finding new ways to keep you informed of the latest products and trends and help you evaluate the impact they'll have on your enterprise.

And of course in our cover stories and features you'll find Impact Assessments that analyze a new technology's risks and benefits for IT, your organization and your business' overall competitiveness. Rollouts offer a first look at new hardware, software and services, analyzing whether the vendor has met its objectives and how its product stacks up against the competition. With our new Tech Trackers you'll learn about new technologies as well as the key players developing the technologies and their prospects for success.

Shaping opinion and keeping you current are what our magazine does best. But there are some things we can do better outside the confines of the print magazine. One is delivering comparative product analysis when you need it most--as you're evaluating vendors. That might come as a shocking statement from a publication that's made its mark by doing complex comparative reviews, but it's true. An in-depth product review in a July issue isn't much use if you aren't planning such a purchase until next year.That's why we're moving our comparative reviews to nwcreports.com. There you'll find the same high-quality analysis, by the experts you trust, but ready for you when you need it. Instead of pawing through a stack of back issues on your desk, you can download a PDF of the review you need whenever you choose. And gone are the space constraints that come with print. Where we'd rarely spend more than a few hundred words on each product, we now can expand our coverage to include all the insights we find in the lab.

We know you'll appreciate both our new print design and the on-demand resources at NWC Reports, but there's more to your job than just keeping up with the latest technologies and picking the right products. There are also the matters of best practices and knowing what your peers and competitors are doing. That's where NWC Analytics comes in. But I'll tell you about that next time. For now, check out the new and improved Network Computing and visit NWC Reports, and let me know what you think.

Art Wittmann is editor in chief of Network Computing. Write to him at [email protected].