How HP maps the future
Computerworld Australia 07 December, 2016
Had the former Hewlett-Packard company not split into two in late 2015, its world renowned research arm, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, would have been 50 years old this year. However it too was rent asunder: The part that went to the new HP Inc is now HP Labs and, rather confusingly, the part that went to the new HP Enterprise is called Hewlett-Packard Labs.
HP opens new demo centre for channel partners in Sydney CBD
Computerworld Australia 06 December, 2016
HP has opened a display and demonstration centre in the Sydney CBD, at 20 Martin Place, where channel partners and resellers can bring their customers to view and experience HP’s personal computing and printer products.
Machine learning: A new cyber security weapon, for good and ill
Computerworld Australia 06 December, 2016
There’s a new weapon in the never-ending battle against cyber crime: Machine learning. It’s generating a great deal of interest, getting substantial backing from venture capitalists and even being billed as a must-have addition to the cyber-security arsenal.
Huawei aims to be epicentre of 5G application research
PCWorld Australia 06 December, 2016
Huawei appears to be seeking to stake out a central co-ordinating role in the evolution of 5G mobile applications. It has announced the formation of a series of new collaborative research initiatives, collectively known as Wireless X Labs, to focus on key application areas of the emerging 5G wireless technologies.
Huawei dreams of all-wireless future
Computerworld Australia 25 November, 2016
For the much-hyped next generation of cellular technology, 5G, the first major commercial use case for the emerging technology could be delivering broadband to consumers presently underserved or poorly served by fixed networks, according to Huawei.
VMware talks cloud freedom to Australian IT pros
Computerworld Australia 11 November, 2016
VMware CEO, Pat Gelsinger and CTO Networking, Bruce Davie, used the vendor’s vForum conference in Sydney to give Australian IT professionals their first glimpse of VMware’s new Cross-Cloud Architecture.
Enterprises ramping up network investments, but for quick returns
Computerworld Australia 09 November, 2016
Dimension Data has released the 2016 edition of its Network Barometer showing a sharp upturn in enterprise networking investments, but with many enterprises spending on technology to deliver short-term returns rather than meeting long term strategic goals.
Optus opens new globally networked security centre
Computerworld Australia 03 November, 2016
Optus Business has formally opened its Advanced Security Operations Centre (ASOC) co-located with its network operations centre at its headquarters in Macquarie Park, Sydney.
IoT driving computing power back out to the network edge
Computerworld Australia 03 November, 2016
According to Matt Henshall, the ‘head of things’ at global software development company Thoughtworks, the Internet of Things is reversing to some extent the trend of recent years of moving processing power to the cloud and instead distributing it at the edge.
UTS researchers working on 5G, and beyond
Computerworld Australia 27 October, 2016
Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney are at the cutting edge of research in mobile communications technologies that will boost the capacity of future networks by making much more efficient use of spectrum and by enabling very high frequencies, in excess of 100GHz, to be used for mobile communications.
Australian IoT industry told to put security first
Computerworld Australia 18 October, 2016
Professor Jill Slay, the director of the Australian Centre for Cyber Security at UNSW in Canberra, has delivered a scathing attack on the IoT industry for failing to design in security, on the vendor community for peddling false promises, and bemoaned what she sees as a general lack of leadership in cyber security.
Vodafone demos 5G with Nokia, outlines research and deployment plans
Computerworld Australia 12 October, 2016
Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) and Nokia staged their first trial of 5G mobile technology in Australia at the University of Technology, Sydney, where Vodafone is supporting researchers working on 5G technologies.
Telstra combines SDN and cloud offerings
Computerworld Australia 23 September, 2016
Telstra has brought its software-defined network services offerings PEN (the former Pacnet Enabled Network) and its own SDN/NFV service developed in conjunction with Cisco under the umbrella of its cloud services division. The telco has unveiled two services to enable business customers to provision and manage, via a portal, cloud services provided by Telstra and the software-defined connectivity to access them.
Telstra to offer emergency services priority on LTE
Computerworld Australia 22 September, 2016
Telstra has announced plans to launch in December functionality on its LTE network that will give emergency services organisations (ESOs) priority access to network capacity.
Telstra and Microsoft integrate voice with Office 365
Computerworld Australia 21 September, 2016
Telstra and Microsoft have formed a partnership to deliver managed enterprise voice services to Office 365 customers, and to co-develop offerings that they say will be unique to the Australian market
Telstra aims to ensure 5G is good for ‘Australian conditions’
Computerworld Australia 21 September, 2016
Telstra and Ericsson have staged the first public demonstration in Australia of 5G mobile technology, with Telstra saying its early participation in 5G is essential to enable it to ensure that the evolving standards meet Australia’s requirements.
Massey University goes hyperconverged
Computerworld Australia 21 September, 2016
After initially experimenting with hyperconverged infrastructure for a small project New Zealand’s Massey University is now deploying Nutanix equipment to handle its mission-critical student management system. The university says it is planning a broader rollout of the technology.
HP goes after US$55b A3 printer/copier market
Computerworld Australia 15 September, 2016
HP Inc has announced plans to introduce a range of A3 printer copiers in at bid to boost its share of the A3 printer copier market from five percent. However none of the products will be available this year, and some not until late 2017.
HP Inc revamps channel program, dumps Salesforce
Computerworld Australia 14 September, 2016
HP Inc is transitioning its customer relationship management from Salesforce to Microsoft Dynamics as part of a revamp of its channel partner program. The refresh aims to increase the percentage of indirect sales from 80 per cent of total today to 87 per cent by the end of its next financial year, November 2017.
Spacebelt plans secure celestial network and storage
Computerworld Australia 14 September, 2016
US startup, Cloud Constellation is planning a celestial information superhighway: A network of low earth orbit satellites, dubbed Spacebelt, that will act as orbiting data storage devices and provide secure and encrypted communication between any two points on most of the earth’s surface without the traffic having to touch any terrestrial communications infrastructure.
Infinera brings SDN to optical and packet networks
Computerworld Australia 01 September, 2016
Optical switching and transmission system manufacturer, Infinera, has released a suite of software that adds software defined networking functionality to networks built with its equipment, enabling networks to be created on-demand at the level of individual optical wavelengths and up to layer 3.
Menlo Security seeks to isolate web-borne threats
Computerworld Australia 30 August, 2016
Australia’s top 50 websites could be helping steer end users towards malware, according to cyber security company Menlo Security, which is about to enter the Australian market with what it says is a solution to the problem.
Telstra unveils new broadcast operations centre
Computerworld Australia 26 August, 2016
Telstra has taken the wraps of a new broadcast operations centre built in its former Sydney CBD exchange building at 76 Pitt Street. The centre manages the delivery of video broadcast content for both domestic and international broadcasters and is the hub of Telstra’s Global Media Network.
HPE’s ‘The Machine’: Is this the future of computing?
Computerworld Australia 26 August, 2016
Meet Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s vision of the future of computing. It’s called simply ‘The Machine’. It’s a radical departure from today’s computer architecture that is being developed HPE’s R&D arm, Hewlett Packard Labs, to deal with the conflicting trajectories of computing hardware and software.
Healthcare industry embracing the digital workspace
Computerworld Australia 09 August, 2016
VMware says the digital workplace, or digital workspace, is making a big impact on the healthcare sector. The terms ‘digital workplace’ and ‘digital workspace’ might appear synonymous, but Sumit Dhawan, senior VP and GM of desktop products at VMware, makes a very clear distinction. Digital workplace, he says is simply an acknowledgement of the fact that a person’s workplace is no longer a fixed location, but whatever physical location they are working, thanks to digital technology.
Hyperscale networking vendor Big Switch launches in Australia
Computerworld Australia 05 August, 2016
Big Switch Networks — a US startup that develops software-defined networking technology for data centres that bills itself as a “disruptor of traditional Ethernet switching” — has formally launched its operations in Australia and named Mario Vecchio as managing director of Asia Pacific, based in Melbourne.
PICA scraps in-house IT systems, taps Urbanise for cloud
Computerworld Australia 07 July, 2016
Prudential Investment Company of Australia (PICA), one of Australia’s largest property management companies, is scrapping all its in-house IT systems and moving to a cloud-based solution from ASX-listed property management software company, Urbanise.
Oracle says with S7 it can offer SPARC performance at x86 prices
Computerworld Australia 05 July, 2016
Oracle has introduced a range of new hardware for in-cloud and on premises deployment based on a new SPARC chip, the S7, that it says offer SPARC processing power and features at a price point normally associated with x86 architecture.
Dodo founder’s network analytics investment paying off
Computerworld Australia 04 July, 2016
Network analytics startup Saisei, of which Dodo founder Larry Kestelman is the largest shareholder, has been recognised as a ‘Big50 Startup’ in the US. The accolade by Startup50 is the latest in a string of awards for the three-year-old Silicon Valley company that has close links to Australia, its CEO and head of sales both based here.
Cloudera: Riding an IoT-driven big data wave
Computerworld Australia 29 June, 2016
Cloudera, which provides a distribution of Apache Hadoop and associated services, says it is doubling business annually on the back of growth in the use of Hadoop to analyse the massive volumes of data being generated by connected ‘things’ of all kinds.
Ericsson will offer 5G features from next year
Computerworld Australia 17 June, 2016
Standards for the next generation of cellular technology that will support multigigabit bandwidths are yet to be finalised and commercial deployments in Australian networks are unlikely before 2021, but Ericsson has announced upgrades to 4G networks that will enable network operators to offer some 5G features from 2017.
ServiceNow looks beyond ITSM to customer service management
Computerworld Australia 14 June, 2016
ServiceNow started life as an IT service management (ITSM) company. Today it’s a company with a US$1 billion turnover whose cloud-based platform “provides service management for every department in the enterprise including IT, human resources, facilities, field service and more.” It is now becoming a customer service management company, and is aiming for $US4 billion annual revenue by 2020.
Software AG aims to be one-stop shop for digital transformation
Computerworld Australia 09 June, 2016
German software company, Software AG, was founded in the early days of the IT industry —1969 — but today is positioning itself as offering a solution to organisations facing today’s many challenges of ‘going digital’.
Former NBN CTO enjoys broadband challenge in Hong Kong
Computerworld Australia 08 June, 2016
Gary McLaren was chief technology officer at NBN Co and a member of its executive committee through its earliest and most turbulent times. He now holds the same title, but with another broadband network provider — a challenger that is poised to overtake the incumbent, and all without any regulatory ‘levelling’ of the playing field: Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN).
Bandwidth a big driver of economic success, says McKinsey & Co
Computerworld Australia 07 June, 2016
Gustav Grundin, an associate principle in McKinsey & Co’s Telecommunications, Media and Technology Practice in Asia, claims there is a very close correlation between a nation’s economic performance and its level of connectivity, and says that connectivity is the driver of economic performance.
Gold Coast startup sees IoT potential in wireless mesh network
Computerworld Australia 24 May, 2016
Gold Coast based startup Levaux is targeting the burgeoning Internet of Things market with a proprietary wireless mesh technology and associated software that it says provide considerable advantages over standards-based technologies.
Cisco bets big on open source
Computerworld Australia 12 May, 2016
Cisco is investing heavily in the open source software movement as it makes the transition from being primarily a networking company to an IT and services company.
Europe’s largest cloud company, OVH planning Australian data centre
Computerworld Australia 28 April, 2016
Europe’s largest hosting provider, France’s OVH, is planning to open a data centre in Australia. The move was revealed by OVH’s public cloud product lead, Maxim Hurtel, in a speech to the OpenStack Summit in Austin Texas this week, but he gave no details.
Why the world’s largest automaker is building future IT on OpenStack
Computerworld Australia 27 April, 2016
Volkswagen Group, the world’s largest motor vehicle manufacturer, whose 12 brands produce 41,000 vehicles per day from 119 plants worldwide, is implementing a new corporate private cloud IT infrastructure based on OpenStack to serve all group companies.
Telcos turn to OpenStack for network virtualization
Computerworld Australia 26 April, 2016
OpenStack — a collection of open source software projects that allow users to develop and manage a cloud infrastructure in a data centre — has emerged as a key technology underpinning the push by telcos to virtualize their networks.
Small businesses savvy about digital transformation
Computerworld Australia 14 April, 2016
A survey of the use of cloud services by Australian and New Zealand businesses undertaken by IDC and commissioned by Oracle has shown a surprising level of maturity in the understanding, and implementation of, digital transformation among smaller Australian businesses.
Dropbox names Ingram Micro as ANZ distributor
Computerworld Australia 12 April, 2016
Cloud file storage and collaboration company, Dropbox, has appointed Ingram Micro as its distribution partner for Australia and New Zealand, and says it plans to extend the agreement to a number of Asian countries.
Cause of Telstra’s mobile outages ‘common to all networks’, telco says
Computerworld Australia 04 April, 2016
Telstra this morning defended the performance of its mobile network following outages in February and March. The telco said that, despite different primary causes for each of its recent outages, the large scale disruptions were the result of multiple devices trying to simultaneously re-establish connection to the network, overloading key components of the end-to-end system and exacerbating the impact of the initial outage.
Security market disrupter Cylance picks Australia as Asian launch pad
Computerworld Australia 04 April, 2016
US-based IT security company Cylance has opened an office in Australia to tackle the Asian market, promising a radical new approach to endpoint security, and has appointed the former head of Telstra’s security business, Andy Solterbeck, as regional director with responsibility for South-East Asia and Greater China.
HP bets on ‘bimodal IT’ with Synergy
Computerworld Australia 18 March, 2016
Gartner calls it ‘bimodal IT’: the need for enterprises to simultaneously operate traditional, highly structured, slow-moving IT environments with new agile environments that can cater for the business needs created by digital transformation and digital disruption. Hewlett Packard Enterprise believes it can enable enterprise to implement bimodal IT with a new IT architecture it calls ‘composable infrastructure’, embodied in its new product Synergy.
NBN to trial fibre to the pit technology
Computerworld Australia 18 March, 2016
NBN has announced plans for a three-month trial, starting next month, of fibre to the distribution point (FttDP) technology, a cheaper alternative to fibre to the premises, but one that it does not expect to be commercially available until at least 2017.
Cellular competition could kill nbn by 2020, says MyNetFone founder
Computerworld Australia 14 March, 2016
MyNetFone cofounder and CEO, Rene Sugo, has delivered a stinging attack on the NBN warning that its business model will be unsustainable in the face of competition from cellular and from TPG’s fibre to the basement offering, and that smaller telcos — dependent on the NBN to connect customers – will be driven out of the market.
Cisco targets in-building network convergence
Computerworld Australia 14 March, 2016
Cisco ANZ’s recently appointed IoT Solutions head wants to converge the different networks used to manage systems within commercial buildings into a single network, ideally implemented during construction.
Deakin University gets Cisco DNA
Computerworld Australia 10 March, 2016
Cisco has revealed Deakin University as one of the first customers globally for the Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA), the networking company’s application of software-defined networking and network functions virtualization for the enterprise, announced at its partner summit in San Diego on 2 March.
Making litter bins smart would be a smart idea
ZDNet 09 March 2016
Corio Waste Management, based in Moolap Victoria, has contracts with three Victorian councils — Surf Coast Shire, Casey City (the state’s largest by population), and Glen Eira — to service council-owned litter bins in parks, recreation areas, and high street shopping strips. That’s a total of about 2,700 bins spread over an area of 2,000 square km, almost 1,600 square km in the Surf Coast Council area alone.
Telstra launches ‘transformative’ SDN/NFV service
Computerworld Australia 08 March, 2016
Telstra, using technology from Cisco, has launched a service based on software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) technology that will enable business and enterprise customers to set up bandwidth on demand between data centres, their own premises and into public cloud services, as well as provision virtual network appliances such as firewalls.
CSC completes UXC acquisition
Computerworld Australia 02 March, 2016
New York Stock Exchange listed CSC has completed its $428 million acquisition of ASX listed IT services provider UXC, announced in October 2015. The combined company has annual revenues of about $1.4 billion and employs about 6000 people across Australia and New Zealand — about half from each of CSC and UXC – and has about 2500 customers.
Global Cloud Xchange launches Cloud X SDN in Australia
Computerworld Australia 23 February, 2016
Global Cloud Xchange, a subsidiary of India’s Reliance Communications, has ramped up competition in wide area software defined networking services in Australia and New Zealand with the launch of its Cloud X service, to be delivered from new PoPs in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and Auckland.
Australian agriculture looks to IoT to drive growth
Computerworld Australia 16 February, 2016
The Australian agricultural industry is looking to digital technologies, and the Internet of Things in particular, to double output by 2030. Speaking at the launch of Innovation Central, a Cisco-led collaborative research centre focussed on IoT, Matt Brand, CEO of NSW Farmers, said that Australian agriculture was a $57 billion industry today and would double in value by 2030.
Treat data like capital: Accumulate it, and invest it
Computerworld Australia 16 February, 2016
Data is a capital asset, as essential to the growth of a digital business as financial capital, according to a senior Oracle executive. And, by recognising this, he argues that established players can better counter outside-the-box disruptors such as Uber.
Aussie company Higgns formed to take care of IoT
Computerworld Australia 09 February, 2016
Australian software developer Two Bulls is spinning out a new company, Higgns, to exploit its software of the same name, which uses the AllJoyn open software framework for Internet of Things devices.