Market Watch

A strong stock market could open the floodgates for more tech IPOs in the wake of Friday's solid debut of Marketo and Tableau, but not all segments of IT may be able to ride the wave.

Google beat Apple to the music subscription service punch this week, perhaps the doing of record labels who wanted to put Apple in its place, an analyst said

E-commerce trade group NetChoice takes aim at state legislation -- and at open access and privacy advocates -- in the newest list of bills it deems would be awful for the Internet.

Can the old guard in business continuity and disaster-recovery services thrive in an era when the companies are looking at new ways to process business data? SunGard Data Systems, with decades of experience in availability services, is feeling the pinch as some business clientele move data to the cloud. But SunGard says it's pushing forward with innovations that are making it a public cloud provider as well with the kind of application availability it says will be hard to match elsewhere.

Treasurer Wayne Swan's sixth budget may well be his last. But it certainly had some highlights although most analysts agree that it didn't offer a great deal to Australian economy. The following stories offer a broad-based, ICT-centric coverage of the budget.

How to retain profitability within the channel is an issue vendors, distributors and resellers have to constantly stay focused on

Selling technology for technology’s sake simply doesn’t cut it anymore. ARN recently brought together a panel of industry representatives to look at why selling business productivity, ROI and innovation are critical to the channel’s success and how these elements will be the force behind cloud computing take-up.

Cloud computing is a transformative phenomenon affecting all manner of channel and end-user organisations. ARN brought together several industry representatives to discuss where cloud computing adoption is today, and ways IT providers can monetise this broad-reaching opportunity.

Bringing more women into ICT leadership roles is an ongoing issue, despite efforts from individuals and organisations to achieve parity. While vendors typically have a better blend of the sexes, at least across HR, marketing and customer-facing roles, numbers appear poor across the reseller and distribution community. ARN recently invited a collection of female leaders from the ICT industry to share their extensive knowledge and opinions on why the trend continues to occur, and what businesses can do about it.

It became clear at Google I/O this week that Google is quietly but assuredly implementing CEO Larry Page's strategy to use Google+ to transform the entire Google experience.

Sometime soon, Microsoft will tell Windows 8 users whether they will have to pay for the upgrade code-named "Blue," and if so, how much. Analysts don't expect it to charge anything for the update.

Economic woes have pushed companies of all sizes to shake up data center hiring, development and other processes to better align IT and business operations.

Just about anyone in the office can introduce open-source code into the company's IT infrastructure. Yet CIOs face real dangers if they're not properly managing their open-source assets.

IBM's reported interest in selling parts of its x86 server business to Lenovo may bring major changes to the global market.

Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst is coming up on his five-year anniversary at the helm, following his arrival in December 2007. Under Whitehurst's leadership, Red Hat's revenue has grown from US$523 million in its fiscal 2008 to more than $1.1 billion in its fiscal 2012, without deviating from its core strategy of open-source infrastructure software.

Data#3 has been a real success story over recent years. ARN sat down with managing director, John Grant, to discuss the course he’s taking to chart the company through the troubled waters of the current economy.

NICTA CEO, David Skellern, who has been in his post since 2007 and has 20 years in the ICT sector, was one of several keynote speakers discussing strategies for Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) at the recent CeBIT show. He sat down with ARN to discuss the viability of the largest ICT infrastructure project in Australia’s history, as well as Internet filtering and why our industry needs more unity. Skellern will be retiring next year to head over to the UK.

Wireless and networking specialist distributor, Lan 1, is celebrating its fifteenth birthday this year. NADIA CAMERON caught up with managing director, Daniel Lee, to discuss the importance of the NBN, potential acquisitions and his plans for the future.

Labor Senator, Kate Lundy, is one of the few Government politicians to go on record against the proposed mandatory ISP filter. ARN spoke with her about voting against it, the effects of Gershon on jobs and CeBIT 2010.

A lot more innovation is desperately needed for mobile hardware design and platforms. Are Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft up to the task?

As small businesses implement the latest technology to keep up with client demands, next-generation servers come to the forefront of the discussion. But what is a "next-gen" server exactly?

According to pundits a good percentage of IT spending is already out of IT's control and the trend calls for it to keep tipping away.

Microsoft, Apple and Google have long seen that their future is in the cloud. Now they see their present there as well.

The fat client desktop system has ruled computing for 30 years. Could Google Chrome OS and other cloud-based, thin-client systems dominate the next 30?

With the introduction of Windows 8, touchscreens are coming to the desktop -- but they're not cheap. We look at three of the latest monitors from Acer, Dell and ViewSonic.

We look at a range of Bluetooth speakers that can improve your smartphone's audio at home, at work or on the go.

While SQL Server 2008 was little more than a service-pack level upgrade, the 2012 version of Microsoft's database has a boatload of new features and delivers solid performance improvements.

Virtually all our testing took place across 512Kbps frame relay, T-1 and T-3 WAN links. The test bed network consisted of six Fast Ethernet subnet domains linked by Cisco routers. Our lab's 50 clients consisted of computing platforms that included Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/Win7, Macintosh 10.x and Red Hat Linux (both server and workstation editions).

HP's new Envy Sleekbook 6-1010us offers an alternative to higher-priced ultrabooks: It's not as fast, but it's got a fine display and great audio.