You’d think that with the consolidation of computing driven by blade servers and virtualisation that the number and size of data centres would be shrinking. But the opposite is true. [ + ]

In news this week, Telecom NZ’s Yahoo! Xtra email service hacked, Adobe global CEO Shantanu Narayen avoids questions about the company’s high Australian prices, and NBN Co blames contractor Syntheo for NBN install delays. [ + ]

Mid-size organisations exist in an odd part of the budget spectrum: they have significantly more difficult IT burdens to bear than smaller organisations, but they don’t quite have the expansive budgets that a larger organisation might have to deal with such problems. [ + ]

With so much change happening in enterprise IT with the proliferation of mobile devices, the introduction of BYOD and shifts towards cloud-based systems, there can be moments where the importance of security can take a back step in the name of expedience. [ + ]

In the last week, Labor MP Ed Husic decried Apple’s tax practices, Oracle made a move on Cisco with the purchase of Acme Packet and the rumoured Dell privatisation deal was announced, then quickly opposed. [ + ]

Recent public criticisms of the Australian Computer Society reflect a scepticism that runs deep in the Australian IT community. The ACS has its work cut out if it wants to be relevant in today’s IT world. [ + ]

While there’s much focus on the impact of cloud technologies on enterprise IT, are we thinking about disaster recovery, backups and other essential services delivered by IT? [ + ]

In news this week: web legend Sir Tim Berners-Lee calls the Australian government’s data retention plans “really, really bad”; Juniper reveals a critical flaw in its routers; and the world speculates on who was behind the recent massive attack on Twitter. [ + ]

Microsoft Office is considered a staple of office life by many, and if numbers are anything to go by, people like it, or at least can tolerate it; the product had one billion users halfway through 2012. But with the release of another version, users and IT departments alike are left wondering: should I bother upgrading? [ + ]

IT departments have been measuring speeds and feeds for years now. Is that good enough? [ + ]

Mozilla has revealed that phones running its Firefox OS will go on sale in February. But while Mozilla’s goals are lofty, it remains to be seen what impact the OS will have on an already-crowded marketplace. [ + ]

This week in IT: Grattan Institute figures show yet another fall in IT enrolment share, Belkin buys Cisco’s home networking business and the ACCC seeks to overturn a court’s decision about TPG and misleading advertising. [ + ]

Love it or hate it, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) was affecting security and network performance long before it became the industry’s newest buzzword. Proponents suggest that BYOD will make more room in the budget, and on the surface it seems like a cost-cutter. [ + ]

The high costs associated with big data projects will push more and more organisations to use their stores of data as a direct revenue source in the coming years. [ + ]

In news this week, Facebook revealed its potentially lucrative Graph Search engine, anonymous sources claimed that Dell is going private and news agencies everywhere declared the PC as dead. [ + ]