Virtualisation’s premise is enticing: a single piece of hardware doing the job of many, consumes less power and generates less heat. Recent global research reveals that while 86 percent of technology decision-makers have implemented virtualisation projects, the vast majority of respondents expect to have virtualised just 25 percent of their technology environments in the next two years.

While the smaller players await licence conversions, the big players have the market to themselves.

When the time came to write a roundup of this year`s government and technology conference, I found myself at a loss for words: the entire conference was overshadowed by the resignation of former Sita CEO Llewellyn Jones.

From as young as age ten, Sean Wainer turned his mother`s cooking disasters into something edible.

WiMax technology has promised the potential to deliver high-speed internet access to rural areas and other locations not serviced by cable or DSL technology for some time now. But, it has yet to make significant headway in the South African marketplace. What`s more, time is against it, according to Dobek Pater, a director at consultancy company Africa Analysis.

Anton Potgieter and James Herbst head up Huge Telecom, very successfully, but the two personalities are somewhat different.

An emergency situation often takes place when it`s least expected. Can South Africa`s contact centres cope with demand, when they too are sometimes the victims of disaster?

Soon to open an office in the Netherlands, RDB Consulting has come a long way since starting out in a Johannesburg living room 13 years ago.

Gartner`s storage software hype cycle highlights technologies that CIOs should keep an eye on.

As more mobile know- ledge workers proli-ferate, management of both their devices and the data they contain becomes more important.

Customer service is something of a misnomer in South Africa. Customer frustration, customer irritation or outright customer disservice, perhaps, but service is rare. Customer relationship management (CRM) has long been touted as the solution to customer service woes. And many companies have implemented such systems with varying degrees of success. Service is still the exception though, which made Brainstorm wonder why companies should bother with CRM in the first place.

Insiders pose the biggest threat to corporate security. And trying to keep up with internal and external threats is nigh impossible. In this feature, Brainstorm gets to grips with realistic security management

ICT in the public sector has the potential to revolutionise delivery. A clear example is the South African Revenue Service`s electronic tax filing system (see sidebar on p.62), which has cut costs, improved efficiency and brought in more revenue for the government. Other departments range from good to totally dysfunctional. What`s needed to get them to the SARS` level? More training? More experience? More co-operation with the private sector? Brainstorm invited a panel of experts to give their views.

Absa internet banking head Carl Louw has an unenviable task: ensuring a secure banking environment for the financial institution`s online customers.

Data storage requirements and the associated costs are not a new pain point for IT organisations. What are new pain points are governance, risk and compliance imperatives. Data needs to be retrieved within a reasonable time frame to meet legal discovery requirements. In terms of South Africa`s new Protection of Personal Information Bill, companies not protecting personal data to the degree the Bill requires will feel a lot of pain too. And then there are green initiatives, or more pragmatically put, the urgent need to reduce power consumption countrywide.

South Africa`s move from an analogue to a digital terrestrial broadcasting platform will cost the country billions of rand, with government, broadcasters and even consumers having to shell out large amounts of cash in the process.