Cisco white papers most downloaded resource

BT Trax can do a lot more than analyze how much mindshare is held by a vendor or technology topic. Recently, we used it to see which vendor resources--white papers, case studies, and/or Webcasts--IT pros downloaded most frequently over the last 12 months. The first thing we found is that 10% of all vendor resources downloaded were related to Cisco products, which is pretty surprising when you have a directory as large as ZDNet's. Also, networking topics represent about 1/3 of all downloads. The table below shows how the networking vendors stack up.

A further look revealed wireless networking as the hottest topic--bar none. Among white papers and case studies, wireless LANs and wireless security claim the gold, though WANs are quite important, too. Cisco trumped the competition with technical guides on their security and VPN networking SAFE blueprint.

As formust-seeWebcasts, security and wireless networking are in a tight race for the most viewers. The most popular broadcast was A Practical Guide to Virus Defense, created by the ZDNet editorial staff (first released in September 2004). A case history of the UPS experience with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth took the #2 slot in viewership. (Note: registration is required to download the vendor resources in our directory.)

These findings are completely consistent with what our IT decision makers tell us they're planning for the future. For over a year now, our IT decision makers have been telling us that networking initiatives represent 25-35% of all their IT plans for the next 12 months. And they know just where to go for the technical information they need to get the job done.