With a long career in IT spanning years at vendors such as Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Tandem as well as working at the helm of IT operations for large corporations such as Corning, Ziad Sukkar*, CIO of SIRVA in Asia-Pacific, is most excited about virtualisation technology.

NetApp's John Martin points out the best practice for storage utilisation. With continued pressure on IT departments to prove their worth to the business, a key area to examine is storage utilisation. Implementing storage best practices will allow IT professionals to drive value back into the business and demonstrate return on investment. With this in mind, here are 10 best practice areas to consider when reviewing data storage.

Storage. For those organisations struggling to manage and protect the explosive growth in data, it is a huge issue. Indeed, many companies require 40% more storage each year. However, it is possible to reduce your storage footprint. Reducing your storage impact is a smart step forward in 2011 for any business, regardless of size.

In business, as in life, we regularly learn that the unexpected is a reality. For IT leaders, the cyclone season serves as a reminder to review disaster recovery processes, policies and procedures to prepare their critical technology infrastructure in the face of a natural or human-induced disaster.

Collaborative technologies are changing the way we work and meet, in many cases due to the time and cost benefits. Premiere Global’s (PGi) Paul Crighton* outlines the evolution of these technologies and how the road warrior is an endangered species.

Cloud, mobile and convergence are three security trends for 2011.

The Experts Conference survey predicts cloud computing, virtualisation and identity federation will be key issues for 2011.

The ease of use and accessibility have made cloud computing a popular concept. Now, with the onset of the cloud computing era, it will be up to law enforcement officials, particularly in computer crime forensics, to keep cloud safe for all users.

Migrating to a new operating system (OS) can be a mammoth task for organisations - from hardware compatibility checks, system requirement planning, backup of important data, down to the actual execution to hundreds or thousands of systems across an organisation and its remote offices.

What a difference a year makes! John Harris looks at how the great technology fad of 2009, the netbook, has gone from must-have fashion to forgotten with the arrival of a new fab form factor - the tablet.

The Peoplebank Intermedium Federal ICT Labour Hire Index tracks reduced reliance on - and demand spikes for - ICT skills. [ + ]

Cloud is not a product. There is confusion in the market about what cloud is, due to the fact every other day a vendor will announce their “latest cloud solution” which equates to little more than a hardware and software bundle - this is not cloud. Cloud is also not managed service, software as a service or a fancy lease.

The Box Hill TAFE in Victoria, through its entrepreneurial relationships with leading vendors such as Cisco, Microsoft, Apple and APC, provides students with the opportunity to study at specialised academies within the TAFE. Chris Tayler*, the acting CIO, has the responsibility of ensuring the 24/7 operation is accessible for students across three metropolitan campuses plus many more international sites such as Fiji, Samoa and Kuwait.

New research by Check Point and the Ponemon Institute has revealed nearly half of Australian employees rarely or never consider security issues when engaging in social networking sites, downloading internet applications, opening links or video streaming. This apathetic attitude can put organisations at severe risk, particularly as Web 2.0 presents increasingly sophisticated threats. It’s time employees took responsibility for their actions in the workplace.

Data centres need a constant environment to operate efficiently. The right room design and the air-conditioning equipment will go a long way towards achieving this. There are also a number of best practices that can be applied in any data centre that will help to keep the equipment cool this summer. Eight of these practices are included in this article.