More and more Australian companies are looking to employ social media - including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn - as a means of customer service. But many are making mistakes that are often quite costly, causing damage to their brand. Stephen Withers explains how to get the most mileage out of your social media strategy. [ + ]

Ninefold has congratulated all winners and participants of the largest GovHack 2012 competition yet in Australia, particularly the 10 of 22 winners using Ninefold virtual machines. GovHack is a not-for-profit event that brings government, industry, academic and civil society together to create new mashups, data visualisations and apps from government data sets. [ + ]

Aspect, provider of customer contact solutions, has appointed Mohamad Ali to the role of CEO of its workforce optimisation division. Ali will be expected to accelerate Aspect’s market growth, customer development and product innovation. [ + ]

Proponents of software defined networking claim that it will revolutionise network infrastructure. Merri Mack reports on a lively debate on the subject that took place recently at the NetEvents APAC Summit. [ + ]

If you read certain sections of the media you would not be wrong in thinking that flash storage is like ‘the cavalry’ coming over the hill to save the day, but is it going to be the industry saviour? Clive Gold, CTO Marketing at EMC and Vice Chair of SNIA ANZ, comments. [ + ]

Given its many promises of increased productivity, videoconferencing continues to gain popularity in the workplace, both in enterprise-grade systems and simple desktop video apps like Skype. But these benefits come at a cost, with networks becoming clogged with high-bandwidth video traffic. Monitoring the flow of traffic on the network is the first step in solving video-based bandwidth issues. [ + ]

Across the internet, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks continue to increase in size and intensity. Businesses can minimise the damage from a DDoS with a well rehearsed DDoS mitigation plan, or 'playbook'. [ + ]

Dave Buckmaster embarked on a career in IT following a chance encounter with some Microsoft books, which led to positions at Toyota, AMP and McDonald’s. Now the Technology Services Manager for Medibank Health Solutions, he speaks to Merri Mack about the importance of uptime to a business that operates 24 hours a day, every day of the year. [ + ]

Fujitsu today reopened its Melbourne data centre, which the company recently upgraded in a $60 million program. According to the company, the upgrade has improved the centre’s security, connectivity and availability, to provide its 2000 Australian enterprise and government customers with increased access to secure hosting services. [ + ]

What happens when a well-meaning employee inadvertently shares your company’s financial records with the world? That’s a reality organisations could face if they ignore their employees’ use of consumer cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox. [ + ]

Huawei Australia is cheering on the cyclists riding in the sixth annual Tour de Cure. Huawei’s Corporate Relations and Programs Manager, Lisa Connors, has committed to complete the 11-day, 1656 km ride from Brisbane to Mission Beach in Queensland and will ride alongside Sunrise Sports Presenter Mark Beretta and 90 other cyclists from corporate partners including Optus, Commonwealth Bank, Lexus, Harvey Norman and more. [ + ]

Unified communications vendor Polycom has appointed Gary Denman as managing director of its Australian and New Zealand operations. [ + ]

Having successfully visited nine major hubs across Asia since November last year, the Asia Cloud Conference series comes to Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland in May. [ + ]

Around the globe, the role of CIO is changing. Once upon a time, the CIO was responsible for IT infrastructure, IT systems and their management. Now, CIOs are required have a deeper understanding of business strategy. Merri Mack talks to several IT executive officers about these changes. [ + ]

Virtual private networks (VPNs) offer a way to allow mobile devices to securely access the corporate network from locations with suspect security outside of the firewall - like cafes and hotels offering free public Wi-Fi. But if misused, these VPN tunnels can act as back doors for virulent material. Keeping the VPN clean is of utmost importance. SonicWALL’s Country Manager, Sandeep Joshi, explains. [ + ]