A delegation of leading Australian ICT research institutions is on its way to Brussels to participate in the European Commission’s biennial ICT research event. [ + ]

IT teams responsible for Australia’s business data transmissions services are likely to be operating in survival mode. Costs are rising and security risks escalating.

Business analytics empowers organisations to solve complex business problems, manage performance to achieve measurable business objectives, drive sustainable growth through innovation and anticipate and manage change. It allows organisations to make a difference, providing the insight and understanding to support fact-based decisions and confident actions - and providing the feedback that is needed to create a learning organisation.

While information is the lifeblood of every organisation, exponential data growth and rising costs make it difficult for businesses to manage their data. Neville Vincent outlines the issues and how organisations can alleviate the associated pressures and costs.

In July’s feature we looked at the recent trend of vendors offering pre-integrated packages of infrastructure, combining servers, storage, networking in the one physical box. This month, Andrew Collins wonders how these integrated boxes fit into a security strategy.

Christopher Johnson’s insatiable interest in technology has not waned since he was a child. In fact, Johnson thinks he was born with zeros and ones in his blood. Now the CIO for Parsons Brinckerhoff Australia-Pacific (PB A-P) and part of its leadership team, Johnson is less interested in specific technology and more focused on how technology can support business. That’s not to say that he has given up on researching (and occasionally ‘playing with’) leading-edge technology, as his peers will attest.

The infrastructure for vastly improved desktop management is being rolled out right now. It’s client-side virtualisation and it looks just like a nice new PC, says Citrix Systems’ Peter Brockhoff as he explains the technical details.

The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) has welcomed the announcement of the new Australian Government. [ + ]

Relationships matter when dealing with IT vendors. [ + ]

The government has recently announced plans to green its ICT, including reducing the PUE of its data centres from 2.5 to 1.9 by July 2015. Christian Bertolini, Chief Technology Officer, APC by Schneider Electric, issues a response to the government’s green ICT plans and the validity of PUE.

Pre-integrated stacks of servers, storage and networking are the latest thing in the world of IT infrastructure. But how long will they stick around, and what effect will they have on the security vendors? Andrew Collins investigates.

In July's feature we looked at the recent trend of vendors offering pre-integrated packages of infrastructure, combining servers, storage and networking in the one physical box. This month Andrew Collins wonders how these integrated boxes fit into a security strategy.

Thorough quality assurance is crucial to effectively deploying new IT systems. Nick Finlayson, Capgemini Australia’s Head of Testing Services, discusses how to choose the right outsourced testing partner for your organisation.

Hardware, storage management software and document management software all stake a claim for tiering duties claims Simon Sharwood. Storage tiering is a hot theme, and rightly so, because it can lower costs and is an important way to use the speed of solid state disks to your advantage.

Data is a vital business asset for most organisations. Although high-availability technologies significantly reduce the probability of data loss, events such as technical failure, virus attacks, deliberate sabotage or employee error can still destroy data. Therefore, organisations must plan for data recovery and implement mechanisms for managing the data recovery process, says CA’s Scott Caulfield.