As you all may know, in July I'll make a big career change. I'm not worried; I believe I'm still marketable. I'm a self-starter, I'm proficient in Microsoft Office. I guess that's it. Also I'm learning how to give money away.

Senior chiefs behind Kaseya's automated managed services platform were in Sydney recently to educate resellers on an annuity-based services model. ARN caught up with Kaseya CEO, Gerald Blackie, COO, Tim McMullen, and Asia-Pacific executive vice-president, Martin Ashby, to discuss why this approach to IT is sounding a death knell for the SMB break/fix channel.

Microsoft continues to insist that all is rosy in the Vista garden but others are less convinced. The operating system, which was released to business a year ago this week, has been plagued with compatibility issues and many have been reluctant to migrate. There have also been claims that the software giant got it wrong by focusing so heavily on security features at the expense of usability. While Vista is undoubtedly the most secure operating system Microsoft has released to date, this hasn't translated into healthy sales.

Gartner research director for IT channels, Tiffani Bova, has some strong views about the evolving channel landscape. She spoke with ARN about the shift of power from vendors to partners and how the channel needs to break away from its transactional heritage.

Unified communications and IP telephony, virtualisation and SMB were on the lips of almost every IT vendor this year, but what will be the biggest technologies and trends next year? ARN asked a cross-section of the community for their predictions on what would be hot in 2008.