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. [ + ]

With electricity prices reportedly set to rise faster than inflation in the long term, organisations are looking for new ways to encourage employees to cut down their electricity usage. Gamification - the application of game mechanics like levels and experience points to non-game contexts - may provide an answer to reducing end-user power consumption. [ + ]

The big stories this week include a critical security hole in Java, Lenovo’s plans to restructure its consumer and business brands, and a cautionary tale of New Zealand users unable to access the cloud-based Office 365. [ + ]

While IT delivery is typically seen as a technical discipline, Telstra’s CIO sees that it’s more about culture and attitude. Agile is more than a technical buzzword - it’s being woven into the fabric of Telstra’s IT operations. [ + ]

If you think Windows 8 tablets are the answer to the mobile device management problem, maybe you need to change your thinking. [ + ]

The Petraeus scandal - the story of the resignation of the Director of the CIA following an investigation into harassing emails sent by his mistress - provides not just an insight into the lives of top spies, but also serves as a reminder that no one is exempt from digital privacy breaches. [ + ]

Three years ago, concepts like BYOD, big data and the cloud were barely on the CIO’s roadmap. Today, they dominate discussions whenever technology is mentioned in the C-suite. Of those, big data is the one that can potentially have the most impact on your company’s bottom line. [ + ]

The Asia Cloud Forum, an online media portal, has been created to represent the interests of enterprise users, governments, telcos, vendors, policy makers and others with a stake in the development of cloud computing in Asia.

Big data is here and IT leaders are wondering how to successfully pull together the technical and business elements to deliver a coherent strategy that delivers value. Anthony Caruana spoke with a panel of experts to find out how to deliver big data success. [ + ]