Stories by: Brian Corrigan

John Walters struggles to retain a healthy balance between his working and personal lives like most other people in the IT industry. He loves rugby, collects wine and gets a hit of golf in when he can. But having seen three months active service in the first Gulf war, he can put a bad day in the office into perspective better than most.

Although heavy-handed messaging has led to a great deal of scepticism in the market, there’s no doubting that environmental concerns are creating serious market opportunities. ARN recently brought together a group of IT industry thought-leaders to talk about myths and margins.

The past year has seen more column inches dedicated to the concept of green IT than just about any other topic you could name in this industry.

After six long and enjoyable years, this is my last ARN column. This half-page is normally dedicated to my musings on current events or trends within the local IT industry but I’m understandably in a reflective mood today.

You really need to do something twice before you can truly call it an annual event. So it’s with great pleasure that I use this week’s column to thank everybody that helped make the second annual ARN IT Industry Awards such a resounding success last week.

In some respects, the Internet has a lot to answer for. On the positive side it’s arguably the most important technological invention in history, one that has changed so many aspects of our daily lives for the better; but from a commercial perspective it has heightened the sense that ‘price is king’ to a point where nothing else matters for many of the goods we buy.

Every now and again a technology comes along that, to some extent, sells itself.

Virtual desktops are being touted as a way of delivering applications to any user via any device. So does this brave new mobile world mean curtains for the humble PC? ARN recently brought together a panel of industry professionals to hear their views.

In some respects, the Internet has a lot to answer for. On the positive side it’s arguably the most important technological invention in history, one that has changed so many aspects of our daily lives for the better; but from a commercial perspective it has heightened the sense that ‘price is king’ to a point where nothing else matters for many of the goods we buy.

Every now and again a technology comes along that, to some extent, sells itself. In recent years, the best example has been server virtualisation and many in the channel have had a great time closing deals based on this “no-brainer”. As usual in this industry, every man and his dog jumps quickly on the gravy train and skills that were recently seen as a market differentiator become commoditised before you can say ‘hypervisor’.