Technology

Cloud Computing is coming to your neighbourhood, and market competition soon will demand that you give it attention, because its likely rapid growth will bring large benefits for enterprises.

Mobile devices are helping to liberate the workforce. They are freeing employees to easily access email and make use of business applications while tapping critical information regardless of where their work takes them. At the same time, growing reliance on those devices is creating serious headaches for CIOs.

Microsoft made Bing, its new "decision engine", publicly available yesterday with a background image of hot air balloons lifting off in the countryside on the Bing homepage.

Recently leaked images of RIM's upcoming BlackBerry Storm successor, unofficially dubbed "Storm 2"--and a very early hands-on review--seemed to suggest that BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) had decided to scrap the infamous "clicky" SurePress screen technology that set RIM's first touch BlackBerry apart from the pack. However, RIM's co-CEO yesterday clearly stated that SurePress is alive and well. So will we see a second SurePress BlackBerry Storm? And is that pictured device simply a pre-production unit with a different screen than what will ship with the finished product?Mike Lazaridis, RIM's founder and co-CEO had this to say about the Storm 2 and SurePress when queried Wednesday at the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital event:

Enterprise 2.0 has the potential to provide knowledge and content management in a surprisingly cheap and easy fashion using Web-based tools. Learn what it's about, what distinguishes it from consumer Web 2.0 technologies and why you should pay attention.

IT managers should know the basics of how e-mail gets from sender to recipient, and what can delay or prevent its arrival.

Helping nontechnical managers calibrate expectations, learn the key issues in e-mail management and identify issues in setting corporate e-mail policies.

SLAs are a critical component of any vendor contract. Beyond listing expectations of service type and quality, an SLA provides remedies when requirements aren't met.

In healthcare, network dependability can literally be a matter of life and death, and US federal law mandates security and privacy levels beyond those needed in any other vertical industry outside finance and national security. And many health-care providers operate on shoestring budgets, in part because of the large population of uninsured individuals

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer delivered the keynote speech at his company's London conference "Technologies to Change Your Business: How Customers Are Implementing Tomorrow's Strategies Today".

Facebook will roll out a dramatic redesign of its member profile interface next month and much attention is being paid to the details and to how end users and developers will react.

What factors give some technologies staying power, while others come and go? We put the question to Esther Dyson — technology pundit, investor, conference organizer, and all-around mover and shaker

As corporate budgets have tightened, your company has asked you to choose a maximum of four items to support your work. You will be provided only with these items. Can you get by without a BlackBerry? How much do you really need a desk? Your PC? Take a look at some interesting survey results.

All's fair in love and war . . . and browsers

About 30 years ago, I tried to calculate the mass of a glueball, a highly mysterious subatomic particle composed entirely of gluons, which are the infinitesimally tiny elementary particles that make it possible for protons and neutrons to stick together in atomic nuclei. As you can imagine, the calculations were extremely complex and required an enormous amount of computing power.

Today, technology permeates almost every facet of business. IT can no longer just support the business; in most global enterprises, it must become embedded in the business. Forrester predicted this evolution back in 2003: IT is no longer information technology, but business technology (BT), and the primary mission is about business enablement, not business support. But moving from IT to BT is much more than an acronym change. At its very core is a cultural change that involves not just IT but the entire organisation from the board of directors (BoD) to senior management down to the lowest level employee.

Of the four UTMs we tested, ZyXel's ZyWall USG1000 is by far the most affordable.

I have a confession to make: About two years ago I made a big mistake and bought a phone designed for mere mortals when what I really wanted was an Apple iPhone. Don't get me wrong -- my Sony Ericsson W580i has served me well -- but I'm ready to move up to a super-phone.

Redmond's much-enhanced rich Internet application platform also runs on Windows or Mac desktops, online or offline

3Com says it has an alternative for network managers considering high-end switches from Cisco and others.