Here’s something we at InfoTech Spotlight learned early during the labor of love that gave birth to the magazine you’re reading: Part of what’s daunting about an inaugural issue that focuses on topics such as cloud computing, security and virtualization is the sheer scope of those technologies.

A great competitive equalizer, cloud computing provides immediate access to resources, saves time and money in developing new services and, more and more, addresses infrastructure, platform and software needs.

So what does all that mean for information technology decision-makers? In the vast terrain of IT, what do C-level executives and senior IT executives need to know?

In this our inaugural issue, InfoTech Spotlight drills down into what thought leaders will consider as they draw up their 2011 IT budgets and why. We solicit expert opinions on the pros and cons of starting up an IT business in the new economy, and, in what we believe will become a widely read standing feature, we interview former Yahooer Jeff Bonforte on his remarkable career path, daredevil hobbies and Start-Up Camp event at ITEXPO (News - Alert) in Los Angeles on Oct. 4.

Our fi rst cover story delves in to dramatic growth of WiFi adoption and the cost effectiveness of deploying a wireless network over Ethernet, which makes the decision an easy one for most companies (see “Enterprise WiFi Takes Off”). TMC’s Group Editorial Director Erik Linask caught up with Xirrus CEO and founder Dirk Gates (News - Alert), who provides his insight into the evolution of the wireless market and the performance improvements the WiFi market will see over the next few years.

It’s uncertain whether the economy will continue to stabilize or whether we are headed into a “double-dip” recession as Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans warned in a recent speech. In our first IT budget report, InfoTech Spotlight spoke to the CIOs of several Fortune 500 organizations and industry analysts to get their forecast for IT spending in 2011. A common theme that was revealed in our report finds there will be a continuing uptick in cloud computing investments to save organizations big dollars over the long-term (see “2011 IT Spending Report: CIOs to Spend More on Cloud, Automation”).

So we hope you fi nd reading this fi rst issue of InfoTech Spotlight as informative and engaging as we found in putting it together. If IT decisions are important to you or your organization, we’ll be here to guide you and deliver new ideas for your consideration. Keep an eye out for our next issue, and many more. IT

Erin E. Harrison
Executive Editor

P.S. We at InfoTech Spotlight would love to hear from you – drop me a line at: [email protected].