HP and IBM have announced new blade infrastructure offerings that claim to make the technology more accessible – ideal for SMBs, they say.

My quest for Inbox Zero

Picking a winner among IT debutantes is tough. Not since Jake White met Luke Watson has it been so hard to decide if someone is the real McCoy.

Computer and console games have grown to become the single largest grossing entity in entertainment. They`re bigger than movies and music, and if you haven`t paid gaming any attention before, now is the time.

Already grappling with a shortage of critical skills, South African employers increasingly have to change the way they do things to meet the demands of a new generation of skilled workers. An EOH company is rising to the challenge.

Peter Pedlar`s dreams of grandeur are quashed by Sita`s decision to whitewash the seat he was keeping warm.

Most parents take a dim view of their children playing computer games. With gamers now able to receive national colours for interacting with pixels, that sentiment may change. Someday, L33tk1d may be mentioned with the same revered tones as Danie Craven.

The BI and BPM sectors of the IT industry have seen significant consolidations over the past few months. And there is more to come.

Judging from the recent nutty steamers coming out of Gartner, the firm must be trying to put the anal back into analysis.

Web 3.0... here we go again.

Ever since peer-to-peer music downloads became popular, the music industry has been in a deep crisis. Now comes the denouement.

Soon after it was recognised as an industry in its own right, software would be co-opted by businesses and individuals to help them work faster and smarter.

How will business intelligence tools help companies, especially telcos, with terabytes of transactional information? Will Microsoft`s recent moves on the BI front hurt or help the existing vendors? Present at a Brainstorm round table discussion to give their answers to these and other questions were: Caron Mooney of IS Partners; Marc Scheepbouwer, MD of Intellient; Adrian van der Merwe, MD of 8th Man Consulting; Richard Greyling, managing consultant at Knowledge Integration Dynamics; Carlo Gunter, COO of e.com Institute; Nitesh Vallabh, director at PBT; Dillon Gray, channel manager of Business Objects; John Olsson, sales and marketing director at Ability Solutions; Filip Vanden Houte of MCI Consultants; Greg Bogiages, director of Cortell; Estelle de Beer of BI Practice at Sybase; Erwin Bisschops, senior solutions architect at Harvey Jones; and Christo Bredenkamp of Synergy Computing.

SOA has been the flavour of the month for at least the last four years. Now it`s starting to take to the air as organisations get on board, but there`s still some uncertainty.

SOA has been heavily hyped in recent years. It has also attracted a lot of interest from global IT departments. What lies behind the marketing and what can SOA really deliver?

South Africa`s municipalities are looking to go digital, rolling out broadband networks and providing e-services to citizens. They will achieve this, the minute Icasa gets itself organised.

Business intelligence is on the verge of both top-down and bottom-up waves in adoption.

Local and global municipalities are starting to embrace municipal networks, but it goes beyond making technology and policy decisions.

Matrix vehicle tracking is in the process of moving from accidental architecture to a service-oriented architecture.

World travellers are no longer isolated from events back home and reduced to communicating by postcards. Ubiquitous internet access really has made our planet into a global village.