Small to medium businesses (SMBs) are coming to realise - many with painful consequences - the crucial need to focus their information security strategies on being able to recover data as part of their backup process. StorageCraft’s Greg Wyman explains why SMBs must change their focus.

You probably cannot help but buy more storage, writes Simon Sharwood, but why not make sure you use every byte of the storage you’ve already got before you sign another cheque? Well that makes sense. Keep reading to find out the latest optimisation techniques.

Curtin University of Technology’s students and colleagues benefit from its CIO Peter Nikoletatos’s fascination with technology and its potential. These lucky people get to use and experience the most innovative technology. Merri Mack speaks to Nikoletatos about what drives him.

Orcun Tezel tells Voice&Data why there has never been a better time for corporations to get maximum value from their network vendor.

Unbatten the hatches and virtualise for operational excellence says Peter Croft as he identifies how to get a green IT strategy back on the agenda for operational efficiency.

Three Coca-Cola employees were charged with stealing confidential information and samples of a new drink in the hope of selling them to competitor PepsiCo. Information is the lifeblood of the company. Carlo Minassian knows this only too well as he is charged with the security of many companies’ data.

Telstra Business, which has been headed up by Deena Shiff since 2006, has the distinction of touching more small businesses other than the Australian Tax Office so she understands their needs and her focus is on making sure they get it.

2008 has been a roller-coaster ride of uncertainty. Every day we seem to hear new reports of organisations facing unexpected pressures and challenges. ProCurve’s Gurkirat Singh reports on the current state of play and provides common sense advice on what to do.

No one can deny the way we work has changed dramatically in the past five years. Business requires us to navigate complex inter-company networks of customers, colleagues and partners. Up to now, however, organisations have struggled to truly succeed in adapting collaboration technologies. Cisco’s Peter Hughes elaborates on ways to make these new technologies work for your business.

For a number of years, the security industry built effective defences from security threats using technologies including firewalls, anti-virus software and intrusion prevention systems. However, today, the majority of security threats have moved to the web instead of through email, and attackers’ techniques have matured. This shift, coupled with the proliferation of collaborative Web 2.0 sites, has changed the threat landscape and the way businesses need to think about security. Websense’s Adam Bradley walks us through the changing landscape.

A scant decade ago, packet-filter firewalls were sufficient to protect against virtually all threats coming from the internet. Today, however, the number, variety and sophistication of threats against business networks have multiplied, and firewalls and antivirus software on desktops are no longer sufficient. This has led to the evolution of unified threat management (UTM) solutions, reports Fortinet’s Richard Stiennon.

IT consolidation can reap significant ROI, but how realistic is it for your organisation? Riverbed’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Steve Dixon, looks at the challenges around consolidating and how a WAN acceleration strategy can help.

Unified Communications has been the subject of much discussion in recent years with vendors, analysts and the media all putting forward views and predictions. Yet, for many, the profusion of information has simply been confusing and it appears that for now, only those organisations with distributed, remote and mobile workforces seem to be reaping its clear advantages, reports Pushkar Taneja, managing director of GlobalConnect.

Clearly, improved electrical efficiency within the IT room - the ‘greening of the data center’ - is now a priority. APC’s Gordon Makryllos outlines why data centres are so energy inefficient and offers practical tips that they can use to become ‘green’.

The topic of sustainability or green IT remains a key focus for everyone in the industry this year. On the bright side, doing business is more accessible than ever before. Advances in technology have reduced transaction costs, created broader access to global markets and advanced technologies, and levelled the playing field among small businesses, large corporations, emerging economies and industrialised nations. IBM’s Mark Latchford tracks the positive changes in sustainable IT.