Stories by: Trevor Clarke

For a security company to win 2008 Specialist Vendor of the Year indicates the importance the field has in the overall IT infrastructure and market at the moment, according to RSA Security’s regional channel manger, Gavin Jarvis.

EDS will cut 75 Australian staff over the next five weeks as part of restructuring plans announced following its acquisition by HP.

The Gershon review has slammed the Australian Government’s use and management of ICT as weak while recommending budget cuts of up to 15 per cent.

Australian IT companies remain upbeat on recruitment despite the financial market bedlam, increased redundancies and worsening unemployment figures.

Australian ICT income hit $123 billion in 2006-07 according to a survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

While virtualisation and blade technology have shaken up the server market, little copy has been inked about server operating systems. Yet, with Microsoft due to launch its Windows Essential Server Solution – which combines both Small Business Server (SBS) and Essential Business Server (EBS) – in early November, the server operating system market is sharply coming into focus.

Green IT has been brushed off as just another fad, but for many industry players it has generated strong revenue streams and is now considered part and parcel of good practice. TREVOR CLARKE reports.

Australian IT services providers have escaped entanglement in the US financial meltdown and report business conditions are remaining steady.

And the solid-state drives (SSDs) go marching in. Since their arrival on the IT landscape, SSDs have quietly maintained camp on the outskirts of the blossoming notebook market, constrained by poor economies of scale and performance. But now, as prices start to fall, memory capacity increases and users realise the technical advantages, SSDs are primed for battle – but not necessarily with traditional mechanical hard drives.

With many city-based datacentres struggling to keep up with contemporary IT demands, decision makers are left with the choice of moving on to a newer facility or refurbishing their existing one. But while newly built datacentres can have the latest and greatest energy efficient technologies and environmentally-friendly designs, not everyone is willing or able to migrate to them. For those who do elect to continue with their existing facility the cold, hard truth is that they must refurbish or renovate to keep up with increasing IT demands and financial – and environmental – pressures. ARN spoke with several industry leaders to identify areas the channel could help clients refurbish and renergise the datacentre.

If you are still a little sceptical on the green IT push, consider this: In Australia during the 2008/09 financial year, servers will use 2.61 billion kilowatt hours of power, the cost will be $256 million and that will result in 2.6 billion kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions.