Companies are marrying customer service with social media, using the likes of Facebook and Twitter as public and easily accessible avenues for customer support. Is this new movement for every business? And how do you get started? Andrew Collins reports.

Giving employees access to data and processes while in the field is becoming increasingly popular. IT often responds to this need by creating device-specific mobile applications for each specific function or process. But as the number of devices and applications grow, this ad hoc approach can become unmanageable. Darren Besgrove, Director at BlinkMobile Interactive, discusses holistic mobile service delivery platforms as an alternative.

Learn how to use social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as a medium for customer service and support. Andrew Collins takes a look at how your social media customer support channel should operate, how to encourage community growth and which department inside your organisation should take responsibility for social media.

The Storage Networking Industry Association for Australia and New Zealand (SNIA ANZ) has revealed its board of directors for 2011-12. Board members are elected each year by SNIA ANZ members and are responsible for pursuing the association’s strategic objectives in the following 12 months. [ + ]

Australia may soon have a national e-waste recycling scheme, with the passing of a Product Stewardship Bill in the Senate last week. [ + ]

Australian businesses are eager for business video services. Ovum analyst Claudio Castelli reckons this presents telcos with a market that is growing and so far untapped, and recommends they move to exploit it.

With reports coming out virtually every second day on serious data breaches around the world and in Australia, it’s time to add up the cost and take serious prevention measures. Merri Mack reports on the state of data breaches, and chats to the experts on ways to mitigate the damage.

Australian research institute NICTA is trialling a technology that recommends media to consumers, based on their friends’ own media consumption. The technology may be used in future packages from service providers, Merri Mack reports.

With the continuing proliferation of WLANs, network administrators have some tough choices to make when it comes to securing these wireless networks. Hemant Chaskar*, Director of Technology at AirTight Networks, takes a closer look at these decisions.

Without an overarching strategy to guide the use of unified comms technology, a UC deployment is nothing more than another technology replacement program. This article, from iVision CTO Shervin Fathinia, explains how to make the most of UC tools by developing a solid strategy for the use of UC in your organisation.

Despite reports of the imminent end of IPv4 address space, many organisations are slow to make the switch to IPv6. Merri Mack reports on the importance of IPv6, World IPv6 day and Australia’s readiness for the switch to IPv6.

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has appointed Alan Patterson as its new CEO, effective immediately. Patterson has experience in a wide of sectors including not-for-profit, healthcare, accreditation and training. [ + ]

Spirent Communications has won Test & Measurement World magazine’s 2011 Best in Test award for the Network and fibre-optic testers category. [ + ]

Small businesses sometimes have difficulty building in-house IT infrastructure to match their business requirements, for a variety of reasons, including budget and a lack of IT expertise. Cloud computing presents an alternative to in-house solutions, offering the expertise of a company that specialises in a particular application, plus an on-demand payment model. *Bennett Oprysa, CEO of Bucan Holdings, explains how cloud computing works and the benefits it can bring.

Keen on the cloud but worried about the security of cloud computing - specifically, putting your data in the cloud? Andrew Collins talks to McAfee about what you should know before you pick a cloud service provider, to avoid losing control of your data.