At the Coalface

The Internet was defined in 1974, but, in 1995, Bill Gates wrote a book called 'The Road Ahead' and failed to mention how it would transform our lives. Similarly, Informational Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) first saw light of day in the UK in the mid 1980s. Today there is hardly a serious CIO who has not embraced this set of concepts and techniques for managing IT infrastructure, development and operations. However, it has taken a long time to gain traction and is only now gaining significant support in the US.

In all the post mortems I have read about John Howard's downfall I've seen no mention of the part IT played. Yet I believe that it was the then federal government's ignorance of IT that was the first thing Kevin Rudd exploited to paint himself as a man of the future. His ambitious proposal to roll out a high-speed broadband service was really his first big policy announcement

I can be a real Neanderthal when it comes to technology. I don't rush to embrace the latest and greatest. Nor am I interested in gadgets and the digital lifestyle. Instead I get enthused by the business practicality of technology in overcoming problems and transforming processes. If 25 years in IT has taught me one thing it is that the best products are the robust ones, which usually means they have been around for some time

I strongly believe that IT practitioners should take a conservative approach when it comes to the adoption of technology

It must seem like heaven to a CIO: A software product that only costs you something when you use it. A product that eliminates software upgrade angst and support requests. The neon sign over the pearly gates reads "Software as a service", better known as SaaS

Please allow me to eat some humble pie. Last year I used one of these columns to call for IT vendors to put a sock in all their pronouncements about Sarbanes-Oxley

I thought the project was going to be a doddle. A certain vendor wanted the prices of its rivals' products so it could gauge the price-competitiveness of its own offerings

Even after 25 years in the IT industry it has taken me a fair amount of time to get my head around the topic of service-oriented architecture (SOA)

You would think that someone living close to the CBD of Australia's largest city would have a reasonable chance of getting satisfactory Internet service. Think again

For as long as I can remember experts have pointed to inexperience and poor judgement as the reasons so many young people are involved in road accidents. Certainly experience does count in all walks of life, but perhaps most measurably in business. The longer you do a task the better you become at it.

It is inevitable that there will be more IT offshoring in this country. That was my conclusion after a recent series of roundtables on the topic with local IT executives.

"I believe that when you select a software supplier what you are really doing is choosing your poison." These were the words a senior IS executive used when we met for lunch the other day.

The First World War claimed around 14 million people from many nationalities by the time it was over. Yet nearly twice as many people died in the Spanish Influenza epidemic that followed the war.

There's gold in them thar demographics