Stories by: Fleur Doidge

Many in the channel have been rubbing their hands with anticipation at news of what the Rudd Government has dubbed a Digital Education Revolution. Neat slogans aside, new funding of $1.2 billion over five years is being earmarked for technology in education to target a growing need and desire for IT coming from the institutions themselves as well as from the business and wider worlds.

Managers are hunting down software based on Linux and other open source-derived applications throughout the datacentre. ARN reports on where open source solutions are gaining ground.

Botnets, spam, malware, phishing - the list of security threats continues to get longer and more alarming. ARN spoke to a range of security experts and came up with the 10 biggest security threats looming in 2008. We also asked vendors and analysts for advice on how the channel can help their customers deal with these issues.

Thunderbolts and lightning may indeed be the downfall for users who haven't worked to ensure power continuity through effi cient adoption and integration of UPS and associated technology.

Network Appliance has launched a scheme aimed at assisting resellers to develop an effective strategy for boosting revenue and build better, stronger business around its storage offering.

As hardware margins come down to the wire, providers are exploring new ways to maximise storage space for customers. And services are being touted as the way of the future.

The buzz around unified communications (UC) keeps getting louder. Already, more than half of some providers' customers are flagging interest in UC - and actual deployments are multiplying as endpoint software vendors join the fray.

Better document management and concern for the environment are seeing printing evolving in the enterprise - and printing solutions and channel approaches to customers must evolve with it. ARN discovers what the vendors are up to in the drive towards Print 2.0.

Mobile solutions have come a long way, yet this diverse, exciting sector remains a confusing market. Mobility was once scorned as pie-in-the-sky but now resellers who don't keep up with mobility in the business IT environment may never really fly. In the following case studies, ARN examines a range of successful implementations which suggest the potential scope of this rapidly expanding market.

As business needs change, so do the requirements for the business backbone. ARN looks at networking trends and technologies and reports on predictions for 2008 and beyond.

What's in store for Aussie SMBs from the vendors who have recently turned their resources to targeting this gap in the market?