The Chinese contact centre market positioned itself in third place in the Asia Pacific region in terms of revenue in 2010 and will overtake Australia as the second largest market by 2017, according to Frost & Sullivan. [ + ]

Sixty per cent of corporations are expected to implement formal programs for monitoring external social media for security breaches and incidents by 2015, according to Gartner. Many organisations already engage in monitoring as part of brand management and marketing, but Gartner believes less than 10% currently use these same techniques as part of their security monitoring program. [ + ]

Metronode, a subsidiary of Leighton Contractors, today opened what it terms a “large-scale, energy-efficient data centre” in Derrimut, Victoria. The facility uses direct free air cooling and modular plant systems to help increase power utilisation efficiency. [ + ]

Optus has expanded the availability of 4G business services to Sydney and Perth. From today, customers will be able to utilise USB mobile broadband and mobile Wi-Fi hotspots in the two cities. [ + ]

Australian company Barbador has joined the Google Cloud Platform Partner Program as a services partner. The move will allow the company to help clients develop solutions based on Google’s cloud platform. [ + ]

A new report by professional services firm Deloitte explores how conventional payments infrastructure is changing with the emergence of a new generation of payments solutions using technology to interact and transact with people. [ + ]

The number of outsourced home agents will double by 2015 thanks to innovations around security, vertical market expansion and forays beyond the traditional US market, according to analyst firm Ovum. [ + ]

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is seeking comment on a proposed access determination for the declared local bistream access service (LBAS). [ + ]

The federal government will provide $15.2 million to 36 communities across Australia to help establish local NBN training services, as part of its Digital Hubs and Digital Enterprises program. [ + ]

Australian satellite company NewSat Ltd and Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems (LMCSS) have completed the preliminary design review (PDR) of the Jabiru-1 Program, NewSat’s next-generation Ka-band satellite. [ + ]

Microsoft has acquired Yammer for US$1.2 billion, in order to gain inroads into the enterprise social networking market. The move follows a recent trend in enterprise software, with many vendors adding social elements to their products, seeking to tap into the strong consumer appetite for social networking. [ + ]

MyNetFone has announced details of its residential and business NBN broadband plans, currently available in Armidale and Kiama. [ + ]

Australia’s National Broadband Network will grow increasingly important in the years approaching 2050, according to a new report from IBIS. The report, ‘A Snapshot of Australia’s Digital future to 2050’, also predicts the demise of newspaper publishing, free-to-air TV and the term ‘employee’. [ + ]

In 2011, IT analysis firm IDC estimated the Australian Business Intelligence (BI) software market generated $324.12 million in software licensing and maintenance revenue. This has resulted in a revenue growth of 5.4% from 2010 to 2011 and is forecast to grow at 8.0% CAGR between 2011 to 2016. [ + ]

Fujitsu has announced that it has been selected to supply one of the largest and fastest supercomputers in the world to the Australian National University (ANU), to be installed within the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), provider of high-end capability computational services to the Australian research community. [ + ]