Qantas has launched a free application for Windows Phone which, according to the company, will help passengers keep an eye on how much time they have before their flight boards.

While Paul Jones has been CIO of Qantas for less than a year, he has spearheaded a number of IT projects at the airline including a freight enterprise resource planning (ERP) replacement.

As unions bunkered down for a process of arbitration with Qantas, the airline faced a new PR disaster over a twitter campaign.

Qantas is the talk of the town on social networking sites after CEO Alan Joyce took the unprecedented step of grounding the airline's domestic and international aircraft.

Qantas will trial Apple iPads as the airline takes the first tentative steps towards introducing wireless technology for in-flight entertainment.

Between 2005 and 2010, Gartner estimated IT managers and executive decision makers have gone from dealing with an average of 3.7 vendors to 10. The onset of Cloud computing as well as the revival of service outsourcing in wake of the economic downturn have only exacerbated this as companies increasingly look to multi-source their services to obtain the functionality they need at a cost they can afford.