Hazard detection system vendor Xtralis is reaping the rewards of greater efficiencies with server utilisation rates of up to 70 per cent thanks to a private cloud initiative that goes back three years, says the company's CIO.

Yvette Vignando has been working for 11 years as an executive coach specialising in emotional intelligence. She describes EI as her soapbox issue. Vignando says people often arrive to executive management after many years in a technical or semi-technical role, but rarely with any management or leadership training.

Documents are the lifeblood of many organisations and of most governments. Each transaction or contact culminates in a document, file, or record of some description — an email, tweet, blog, video, fax, form, photograph or report that chronicles an everyday conversation, weekly bulletin, quarterly statement or annual announcement. But no matter what the content is or how you manage it, failure is not an option. CIOs know that in a world that demands records be maintained for seven years, it is possible to live with some information disarray, but not information chaos. And given the high cost of paper storage, electronic solutions are now essential.