The future of work
Having trouble escaping work now that your smartphone is a fully enabled 24/7 link to the office? According to Optus it seems professional life is only going to be more focused around mobile networks. The Optus ‘Future of Work’ Report released this week surveyed IT and HR decision makers from over 320 medium to large organisations, and found Australian businesses expect rapid growth of smartphones, tablets and mobile applications in the workplace in the next three to five years, which will mobilise their workforce and increase flexibility and productivity. The key findings were:
- Smartphones set to permeate the workplace
- Tablet growth to rocket
- Mobile Device Management solutions to be deployedBYO personal devices permitted to access the corporate network
- Mobile applications deployed in the enterprise
- Use of internal collaboration tools to become more widespread
- Greater social media access
- Cloud computing to increase in importance
The report also found that the two departments responsible for enabling flexible working – IT and HR – are disconnected and have different views about how flexible working should be enabled in the workplace.
Open Data Center Alliance delivers public customer requirements for the Cloud
Who is the Open Data Center Alliance? It is an independent IT consortium headquartered in the US, led by global organisations who have come together to provide a unified vision for long-term data center and cloud infrastructure requirements. They claim this will be achieved through development of a vendor-agnostic Open Data Center Usage models and industry collaborations on cloud standards development. Intel Corporation serves as technical advisor to the Alliance at the direction of the Steering Committee. In just seven months, the Alliance has quadrupled membership to more than 280 global IT leaders with collective annual IT spending of over $100 billion, formed workgroups, established alignment with key industry standards bodies and solutions providers and published initial cloud requirements. This week the Alliance announced the release of the first, user-driven requirements for the cloud based on member prioritisation of the most pressing challenges facing IT. It will shape member purchasing and outline requests to vendors and solutions providers to deliver leading cloud and next-generation data center solutions. The release was ratified by the Alliance Board of Directors, comprised of representatives from 12 leading global IT organisations: BMW; Capgemini; China Life; China Unicom; Deutsche Bank; JPMorgan Chase; Lockheed Martin; Marriott International, Inc.; National Australia Bank; Terremark; The Walt Disney Company and UBS.
For more information visit: http://www.opendatacenteralliance.org/.
APAC security software market up 7.5%
According to Gartner’s latest market share analysis, security software revenue in Asia Pacific was up 11 percent to reach US$1.5 billion, compared to 14 percent growth in 2009. In Australia, revenue grew 7.3 percent to reach AU$310.8 million in 2010. The two largest vendors Symantec and McAfee command more than 30% of the global market, according to Gartner’s analysis. The report also showed the security market could be divided into four groups of vendors from a competitive perspective. At the top are the large vendors Symantec and McAfee, with a strong presence in both the consumer and enterprise markets, as well as 30 percent combined market share. On the second tier is a group of vendors that offer a breadth of product capabilities covering many of the security segments – some with an almost complete focus on security, such as Trend Micro, and others, such as IBM, EMC, Cisco and CA Technologies, for which security is only a part of overall corporate interests. A third tier is composed of specialised midsize vendors, such as Kaspersky, Websense, Sophos, Blue Coat Systems and ESET, which tend to have more of a focus on certain segments in which they have built a relatively strong presence. The fourth tier is composed of large IT vendors with a small presence in the security space or small players with specialisation in one or two security segments.
CSIRO Boeing’s supplier of the year
With more than 28,000 companies or organisations from more than 50 countries supplying Boeing with goods and services, CSIRO being named ‘Supplier of the Year’ for research and development is no mean feat. CSIRO was given the honour recently at an awards ceremony at Boeing’s headquarters in Seattle. “These companies (Suppliers of the Year) are an incredibly strong group of suppliers that delivered outstanding results, superior performance and top-notch customer satisfaction in 2010,” Boeing chairman, president and CEO Jim McNerney said.
Juniper Networks helps connect NZ research and innovation
Juniper Networks announced this week the completion of a project with NEC and REANNZ (Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand Ltd) to extend the reach of KAREN (Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network) to more points of presence across New Zealand, making it easier for more organisations to connect to the research, education and innovation community. KAREN provides reliable, high speed, high capacity connectivity across New Zealand through 23 points of presence. As a Juniper partner,NEC will provide fourteen Juniper Networks(r) MX80 3D Universal Edge Routers to support the growth of the network, which links KAREN members to over 200 million advanced network users worldwide, using Juniper MX Series technology.
