Optus Business has picked up a five-year, $30m deal to manage engineering company UGL Limited's ICT systems and mobile fleet. [ + ]

Frequent use of social networking is subconsciously causing users to reflect on their behaviour and improve themselves, Queensland researcher Dr Theresa Sauter argues. [ + ]

Victoria's technology ministry has called for consultation on the next stage of its ICT Strategy project, seeking feedback on ways to benefit from trends including mobility and cloud computing. [ + ]

Researchers from Alcatel-Lucent and BT claim to have achieved transfer speeds of up to 1.4 Tbps across existing core fibre. With a spectral efficiency of 5.7 bits per second per Hertz, the researchers believe this is the fastest speed ever achieved in commercial-grade hardware in a real-world environment. [ + ]

Telstra has acquired network solutions provider O2 Networks in a deal reportedly worth $60 million. [ + ]

IBM has revealed plans to open 15 new data centres this year, and to make recent acquisition SoftLayer the foundation of its global cloud portfolio. [ + ]

ICANN has approved Monash University to operate the new .monash top-level domain, with the first two .monash sites due to come online in the near future. [ + ]

Telstra's $454m sale of a 70% stake in Sensis is likely aimed at helping the company pursue its goal of growing through expansions into Asia, cloud services and new digital media. [ + ]

Intel plans to cut its global headcount of around 107,000 by about 5% this year, equalling a total loss of more than 5000 jobs. [ + ]

Google this week announced it plans to purchase home automation company Nest Labs for US$3.2 billion in what pundits are labelling a move into the Internet of Things. Users, however, have raised privacy concerns about the purchase. [ + ]

The next iteration of Microsoft's Windows is slated to ship in April 2015 and will likely be called Windows 9, according to supposed inside sources at the company. [ + ]

Southern Cross Cable Network has commissioned an upgrade that will add 500 Gbps of capacity to each of the two SXC subsea cables. [ + ]

Brocade's new distinguished engineer, Benson Schliesser, will help shape the company's future software defined networking and network functions virtualisation strategies. [ + ]

Defence has frozen a plan to bundle two IT outsourcing contracts into a "distributed computing" tender, and has instead extended an existing contract with Unisys in a $52m deal. [ + ]

News stories about hackers obtaining data on millions of customer accounts might grab attention, but are they that far removed from the situations of the organisations that most of us work for? [ + ]