While much of Comdex has mobility on its mind, other important themes are emerging, too. Scores of vendors are showing products that may lack the eye-catching appeal of carrying an Oracle or Sybase database on a cell phone but could prove far more beneficial to companies struggling with reining in new expenses while trying to get the most out of money already spent.

Software licenses are ongoing expenses that typically take a big bite out of IT budgets but, in many cases, companies fail to track these expenses effectively end up overpaying for unused or underused licenses. SoftOnNet offers an alternative to traditional software deployment methods. Its Z!Stream 2.0 product will stream any Windows application to networked clients, downloading only the portions of an application that a user needs. This completely eliminates the time-consuming and costly process of installing and maintaining applications on each individual client PC. The downloaded code is cached on the client and, while a browser is used to request an application, the application runs in its native environment. And because the application is running locally, there's no performance hit. SoftOnNet has applied for a patent on its streaming technology, which the company calls "Distributed Virtual Paging Technology."

Z!Stream includes usage and license compliance monitoring features that will help you determine which software licenses are being used effectively. Administrators can control each user's access privileges and give selected users priority access to certain applications. System administrators also have some control over the cached apps; the cached code can be "time bombed" to self destruct after an allotted period of time. This helps ensure license compliance while still allowing notebook users to continue to use an application for a while even after disconnecting from the network.

It's not easy to convince a manager to shell out more bucks to help reduce current maintenance and support costs, but SoftOnNet makes a compelling case by complementing Z!Stream's impressive features with an affordable price tag. An entry-level system costs $10,000 and supports 50 concurrent users; additional 50-user packages cost $6,000. Contrast those figures with a Gartner report that SoftOnNet likes to cite; the Gartner study estimates that companies spend up to $10,000 annually to support a single desktop user, with software installation, maintenance, and support accounting for the majority of that expense.