Solid-state disk drives are fast, use little power, get cheaper almost every day and are winning friends among all the big storage vendors. But the disks may also make it harder to use the last line of defence: data recovery. Simon Sharwood reports on the (mostly) upsides and downsides of data recovery using solid-state drives.

The one consistent theme in the digital world is that growth is a constant. It is estimated that from 2009 to 2020, the size of the digital universe will have increased 44-fold; that is a 41% increase in capacity every year. Storing, locating and extracting value from high volumes of data will become increasingly complex. Oracle’s Angus MacDonald outlines a storage strategy to cope with this avalanche of data.

The cloud is the subject of many thoughtful and insightful articles. Salesforce knows a little about the cloud having been one of the first to offer cloud services so Salesforce’s Peter Coffee is qualified to set us straight on ‘private cloud’.

Security vendors like to throw around various apocalyptic scenarios in order to convince IT and security chiefs to buy the latest security doodads. But how realistic are these scenarios? Andrew Collins spoke to one penetration tester about the likelihood of one particular scenario: hackers compromising an airline’s IT security in order to blow up an aeroplane.

The proliferation of email however it arrives is causing storage headaches for service providers.

NBN Co has appointed Tim Smith to the role of General Manager Marketing. [ + ]

Recently in Voice+Data we looked at the plans for Australia’s national e-health network and, in particular, the politics that have delayed its introduction. This month Andrew Collins takes a look at the actual technologies involved, the benefit they bring to remote areas and obstacles to their adoption. There is hope but there is a long way to go.

Cloud services are all the rage now and becoming increasingly so, but how do you actually measure performance? Daryl Cornelius, Director Enterprise EMEA, Spirent Communications, asks: How do you know until you test it? What are the complexities of measuring virtual systems?

Bruce Winzar says, “It’s a complete misnomer that you have to be good at maths to pursue a career in computing.” Winzar has certainly seen the pace of growth in computing and applications for business grow unabated. This is one of the main reasons he is still stimulated by what technology can do. He started his computing career as a student at Bendigo Institute in 1971 on an ICL 1901 which used punch cards for programming and data input.

The NBN has certainly engendered debate about fibre versus wireless. Motorola’s Roy Wittert enters the debate and charts the future of wireless networking in Australia.

IPscape appoints two senior executives: Emma Dart and Steve Roknic. [ + ]

NetSuite has announced the opening of a new office in Melbourne to provide sales, support and services to meet the growing demand for NetSuite's cloud solutions. [ + ]

The reality of cybercrime is that many businesses make it easy for both malicious and inadvertant breaches of company IT security to occur. Rigorous adoption, implementation and enforcement of in-house security guidelines can help limit the threats to data security. These five tips are a good place to start.

GlobalConnect Australia has appointed Rodel Fortunado as National Sales Manager. [ + ]

Silver Peak Systems has announced the opening of offices in Sydney and Melbourne, with Wayne Neich leading the company's strategic growth. [ + ]