The time has come to think strategically about systems management, and how it can be used in a co-ordinated and effective manner to deliver real business benefit. This is one of the key conclusions drawn in recently published report, ‘IT Systems Management’, as organisations demand the IT infrastructure delivers increased levels of availability and quality of service, the focus for IT managers is shifting towards a business service perspective.

Organisational IT structures are often characterised by many different silo’ed teams of technical specialists. These silos often drive the technology selection process in organisations, which to a large extent is governed by the existing skills within the IT department. Continue reading “Systems Management Evolving to Deliver Real Business Benefits” »

HP (Hewlett Packard) has announced that it has signed a pre-bid agreement with TOWER Software to acquire the Australian Enterprise Content Management (ECM) vendor. TOWER Software’s strength lies in its Document and Records Management (DRM) capabilities, although with the addition of Web Content Management (WCM) it has moved further into the ECM space, despite lacking some functions that the larger ECM vendors have added to their portfolios. The acquisition, which is expected to close in the second quarter of 2008, will be conducted via an off-market bid for all the outstanding shares of TOWER Software. The board of directors of TOWER Software have unanimously approved the transaction and the three largest shareholders have stated they intend to accept the offer in the absence of a higher third party offer. Between them, these three shareholders own more than 90% of the shares.

Continue reading “HP Acquisition of TOWER Software, an excellent move” »

The Queensland Environmental Protection Agency’s desktop program has replaced 2,500 obsolete PCs. They put in place procedures to dispose of the redundant equipment responsibly, and addressed other environmental issues found in the IT environment. While not expected to be at the forefront of thinking on ‘green’ issues, the organization is leading the way for other public sector bodies in Australia.

Continue reading “Desktop Strategy: Taking the Sustainable Approach” »

Hybrid Disk Drives (HDD), the combination of a standard hard disk drive and a NAND chip, are a budding phenomenon enabled by new features of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. It is different from standard hard drives in that it employs a large buffer of non-volatile flash memory to cache data during normal use.

A new report shows that this technology promised to sweep the PC hard drive market. However, some say Hybrid Hard Drives have been a disappointment for consumers, and the makers admit Hard Drives with cache fall short of expectations.

Continue reading “Hybrid Hard Drives Fall Short of Consumer Expectations” »

Is your internet connection at home being difficult? No sweat, you can soon run down and check your email on the nearest traffic light.

About 400 cities in the US and UK have deployed or are currently building municipal wireless internet connections which will see service providers using the city’s infrastructure to provide community wireless access, says a new report.

In the next five years, the spend on municipal wireless in the UK and US will reach $6.4 billion, as local governments and internet service providers recognise the benefits these networks offer, predicts the report.

Continue reading “Cities Aim For 24/7 Public Internet Connectivity” »