News

Business applications

• August 11, 2011 11 Aug'11

  US woman sues Google over Gmail scanning

  A woman has filed a class action suit against Google for scanning all e-mail sent to Gmail account holders to use for targeted advertising campaigns.

• August 11, 2011 11 Aug'11

  Government moves Alpha.gov.uk one-stop website to beta phase for public testing

  The government has moved an alpha version of a pilot website - which could replace all .gov.uk URLs - to beta.

• August 10, 2011 10 Aug'11

  Insurance sector CIOs plan to increase IT spend on CRM and private clouds

  Almost half (47%) of insurance company CIOs are expecting to increase IT spending next year, focusing on investment in CRM and private cloud deployments, according to research.

• August 10, 2011 10 Aug'11

  Microsoft aims to make website pinning easy

  Microsoft is making its BuildMyPinnedSite.com website available to any developer wishing to use the pinning functionality in Internet Explorer 9 to improve the stickiness of their websites.

• August 10, 2011 10 Aug'11

  Computacenter gags Bristol City Council over anti-open source 'bias'

  Computacenter has prevented Bristol City Council from publishing details of a consulting project that has been overshadowed by allegations of anti-open source bias.

• August 09, 2011 09 Aug'11

  Amazon outage update: Software bug deletes customers' AWS data

  A software error has caused further problems for Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers after data was accidently deleted as part of a storage back-up.

• August 09, 2011 09 Aug'11

  Windows 7 deployments delayed by economic uncertainties, says Gartner

  Economic uncertainty may cause a slowdown in Windows 7 operating system (OS) deployments in Western Europe, according to research firm Gartner.

• August 09, 2011 09 Aug'11

  Binley’s wins landmark ruling on database infringement

  Healthcare information provider Binley's has won a landmark court decision against pharmaceutical mailing services and marketing business Precision Marketing Group for infringing its database rights.

• August 08, 2011 08 Aug'11

  Anonymous hacker group publishes data stolen from US police departments

  Hacktivist group Anonymous and its offshoot LulzSec have published information stolen from rural US police departments in revenge for recent law enforcement actions.

• August 08, 2011 08 Aug'11

  Lightning takes down Amazon and Microsoft cloud services

  Amazon and Microsoft European cloud services were down at the weekend after a lightning strike caused power failures at their datacentres in Dublin.

• August 08, 2011 08 Aug'11

  Royal Pharmaceutical Society outsources to cope with restructure

  The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain has outsourced the management of e-mail and storage to support a major restructure.

• August 08, 2011 08 Aug'11

  CA Technologies aims to help mainframe administrators become Linux gurus

  CA Technologies has updated its management tool for Linux on the mainframe.

• August 08, 2011 08 Aug'11

  Hampshire school data breach highlights need for multiple passwords

  A data breach at Bay House School in Hampshire has highlighted the importance of not using the same password for different websites and applications, say experts.

• August 05, 2011 05 Aug'11

  SAP success leads to job losses at Premier Foods

  The UK's largest food producer Premier Foods said its SAP system will be a key part of a cost-saving programme which will include redundancies.

• August 05, 2011 05 Aug'11

  CIOs must reassess their data analytics strategy, says Accenture

  Gavin Michael, global chief technology officer at Accenture believes CIOs need to rethink their data analytics and BI strategy.

• August 05, 2011 05 Aug'11

  Case Study: Data encryption at the Salvation Army

  The Salvation Army in the UK supports flexible working from home using laptops owned by the charity, but says finding a good way of protecting data was a challenge.

• August 04, 2011 04 Aug'11

  Government seeks public opinion on open data policy

  The government has launched a public consultation on its open data policy.

• August 04, 2011 04 Aug'11

  Amazon gives users control over geographic location of cloud services

  Amazon has introduced the concept of regions to its cloud platform, allowing IT departments to restrict where on the Amazon infrastructure their applications run.

• August 04, 2011 04 Aug'11

  The cost of cyber attacks is up 56%, study reveals

  The average cost of cyber attacks is up 56% on last year's figures, according to the second annual Cost of Cyber Crime Study by the Ponemon Institutute.

• August 04, 2011 04 Aug'11

  Cost of cyber crime study shows need for security planning, says ISACA

  Global IT security association ISACA has welcomed the findings of the Ponemon Institute's latest Cost of Cybercrime report.

• August 04, 2011 04 Aug'11

  Microsoft puts up $250,000 reward for new security ideas

  Microsoft is offering more than $250,000 in prizes for developing new computer protection technologies.

• August 03, 2011 03 Aug'11

  NHS Scotland signs £1.8m deal for single sign-on system

  NHS Scotland has signed £1.8m contract for a single a single sign-on and password reset system to improve access to health systems.

• August 03, 2011 03 Aug'11

  NATS to roll out cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure

  NATS, the UK's air traffic control organisation, is to implement a multi-million pound project to transfer all its desktop IT services to a cloud-based infrastructure to make savings of £9m.

• August 02, 2011 02 Aug'11

  Malware volumes grow 60% in first half of 2011, says Sophos

  Security firm Sophos has identified an average of 150,000 malware samples a day in the first half of the year, a 60% increase since 2010.

• August 02, 2011 02 Aug'11

  Anonymous hacking group hits law enforcement agencies in ongoing AntiSec campaign

  Hackers have stolen data from over 70 websites of various law enforcement agencies in the ongoing AntiSec campaign led by hacktivist group Anonymous.

• August 02, 2011 02 Aug'11

  Amazon closes Android appstore submissions in Germany after Apple lawsuit

  Amazon has closed submissions for its Android app store in Germany following a lawsuit from Apple.

• August 02, 2011 02 Aug'11

  Tesco signs eight-year deal to use Microsoft products and services

  Tesco has signed a software licensing and services deal with Microsoft aimed at helping improve the retail giant's global productivity and international growth.

• August 01, 2011 01 Aug'11

  LibreOffice releases version 3.4.2 for enterprise users

  The "enterprise ready" version of open source office productivity suite LibreOffice is available to download.

• August 01, 2011 01 Aug'11

  Suspected LulzSec hacker named and charged

  UK police have named the teenager they arrested last week in connection with the LulzSec and Anonymous hacktivist groups.

• August 01, 2011 01 Aug'11

  CIO interview: Michael Foster, European vice-president of IT, FedEx Express

  What role should IT play in business? This is the question Michael Foster, vice-president of IT at Fedex Europe, tackles at the global courier. Cliff Saran reports.

• July 29, 2011 29 Jul'11

  Zeus Trojan distribution campaign targets RSA SecurID customers

  Security researchers are warning about a new e-mail-based malware distribution campaign targeting customers of RSA's SecurID tokens.

• July 29, 2011 29 Jul'11

  Google Apps meets US federal security standards, says Unisys

  Google Apps for Government exceeds US federal information security requirements, according to IT services firm Unisys.

• July 29, 2011 29 Jul'11

  Google takes two-step authentication global in 40 languages

  Google has rolled out its two-step verification sign-in system to more than 150 countries.

• July 29, 2011 29 Jul'11

  Oracle releases Java Standard Edition 7

  Oracle has released its first major update to the Java platform since acquiring Sun Microsystems.

• July 28, 2011 28 Jul'11

  RIM updates Blackberry Messenger to provide third-party app integration

  Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has made Blackberry Messenger (BBM) available to developers to embed within third-party apps in its update to version 6.

• July 28, 2011 28 Jul'11

  Citrix profit leaps 72% but disappoints investors

  Citrix Systems has reported second quarter revenue of $531m, up 16% on a year ago, with a 72% increase in net profit to $82m...

• July 28, 2011 28 Jul'11

  Hackers raid 35 million South Korean website accounts

  Hackers have stolen personal data from 35 million accounts at a South Korean social networking site and a web services portal, in the latest of a series...

• July 28, 2011 28 Jul'11

  ElasticStack delivers cloud with SAN-resilient storage on commodity hardware

  Cloud platform provider ElasticStack has refined its software to deliver a cloud platform with resilient storage using low-cost commodity hardware...

• July 28, 2011 28 Jul'11

  LogMeIn opens free public trial for secure smartphone access to corporate IT

  Remote access specialist LogMeIn has announced a public beta trial of a service that helps organisations enable and manage secure access to corporate computers...

• July 27, 2011 27 Jul'11

  SAP’s strong second quarter boosts outlook for 2011

  SAP has improved its financial outlook for the year after reporting 35% growth in software sales and 20% growth in services revenue for the second quarter...

• July 27, 2011 27 Jul'11

  UK second on SpyEye banking Trojan hit list, study shows

  The UK is second only to the US on the hit list of cyber criminals targeting financial institutions with the personal and banking information-stealing Trojan

• July 27, 2011 27 Jul'11

  UK business failing to address risk of insider threats, survey shows

  Many UK businesses are ignorant of the level of access their IT staff have to systems that may contain highly sensitive data, a survey shows ...

• July 27, 2011 27 Jul'11

  Microsoft ships Windows Phone Mango and prepares handset updates

  Microsoft is preparing to release the "Mango" update to its Windows Phone operating system (OS) in October 2011 after releasing the latest version to mobile manufacturers...

• July 26, 2011 26 Jul'11

  UK police forces form high-tech regional surveillance units

  UK police forces are teaming up to form high-tech regional surveillance units to carry out covert and intrusive investigations...

• July 26, 2011 26 Jul'11

  Tate museum group chooses Drupal and cloud hosting for new website

  The Tate museum group is scrapping the use of HTML code in favour of open source content management platform Drupal...

• July 26, 2011 26 Jul'11

  Mozilla plans mobile operating system for phones and tablets

  Mozilla plans to create a new mobile operating system, aiming to use web technologies to deliver all applications and functions on phones and tablets...

• July 26, 2011 26 Jul'11

  Eric Pickles launches online search engine for local government ‘armchair auditors’

  An online search engine has been launched to enable the public to inspect their local financial spending.

• July 25, 2011 25 Jul'11

  SecurEnvoy tackles trojan-based cookie hack

  SecurEnvoy has developed a security technique to protect a secure web session that it claims solves the problem of hacking session cookies.

• July 25, 2011 25 Jul'11

  Anonymous and Lulzsec hackers hit Italian cyber crime unit

  Hacker group Anonymous and offshoot Lulzsec have started releasing secret information they claim to have stolen from servers of the Italian cyber crime unit...

• July 25, 2011 25 Jul'11

  Automated web application attacks are the top security threat, study reveals

  Websites are attacked about 27 times an hour or once every two minutes on average, peaking at 25,000 attacks a minute or seven a second, according to research...

• July 25, 2011 25 Jul'11

  Merton Borough Council moves to self–service technical support system

  Merton Borough Council has set up a technical support programme to cut costs by enabling more staff to use self-service problem resolution...

• July 25, 2011 25 Jul'11

  CA Technologies offers professional services training for IT graduates

  CA Technologies has unveiled a training scheme for new computer science graduates aimed at broadening their knowledge in professional services...

• July 25, 2011 25 Jul'11

  SAP must do more to show value of products and services, says user group

  Low adoption of SAP BusinessObjects and processes for the continuing improvement of SAP operations shows SAP must do more to show the value of its products and services, according to the UK & Ireland SAP User Group.

• July 22, 2011 22 Jul'11

  Red Hat updates Enterprise Linux 5.7

  Red Hat has updated Enterprise Linux 5.7, which now includes several features from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

• July 22, 2011 22 Jul'11

  Oracle buys Ksplice for zero-downtime Linux technology to bolster enterprise updates

  Oracle has acquired security update technology company Ksplice to increase security, reliability and availability of Oracle Linux by allowing customers to apply security updates, patches and bug fixes without rebooting.

• July 22, 2011 22 Jul'11

  Microsoft posts record Q4 and annual results despite falling Windows sales and share price

  Microsoft has posted record fourth-quarter revenues of $17.37bn for the quarter ended June 30, 2011, an 8% increase from the same period of the prior year and ahead of analyst expectations of $17.25bn, despite weak sales of its Windows operating ...

• July 22, 2011 22 Jul'11

  DfT to spend £750m on move to shared services

  The Department for Transport (DfT) is to spend up to £750m in a shared services move.

• July 21, 2011 21 Jul'11

  Huddle and FCO Services to take UK civil servants into the cloud

  UK civil servants are to be among the first in the world to use cloud computing to work on classified documents due to a partnership between UK start-up Huddle and government security chiefs.

• July 20, 2011 20 Jul'11

  VMware posts profit and sales increase driven by record licence sales in Q2 2011

  VMware's latest results reflect increasing adoption of virtualisation as more businesses switch physical servers and desktops to virtual infrastructure. Sales increased 37% to $921m while profits more than doubled in the second quarter of 2011, ...

• July 20, 2011 20 Jul'11

  Apple releases Mac OS X Lion 10.7 through Mac App Store

  Apple has released the latest version of its Macintosh operating system (OS), Mac OS X Lion, via its Mac App Store.

• July 20, 2011 20 Jul'11

  Avast launches business security line

  Czech security software supplier Avast Software has unveiled a product line aimed at the business market.

• July 20, 2011 20 Jul'11

  Forrester: Seven trends to shape the future of enterprise applications and ERP

  Over the next five years, technology changes will disrupt our long-held beliefs about the ownership and value of core enterprise application, writes Paul D. Hamerman, vice-president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.

• July 20, 2011 20 Jul'11

  The five software licensing tricks CIOs hate

  Businesses should reject unfair licensing terms, according to Forrester analyst Duncan Jones in a report on licensing best practices.

• July 20, 2011 20 Jul'11

  DWP loses £800m in overpayments due to faulty IT systems

  Faulty IT systems at the Department for Work and Pensions have led to £800m in overpayments in 2010-11, a National Audit Office (NAO) report has found.

• July 20, 2011 20 Jul'11

  Barclays Bank deploys Infoblox IP address management to reduce network downtime

  The investment division of Barclays Bank has deployed network infrastructure automation firm Infoblox's IP address management platform across its global network to reduce network downtime.

• July 20, 2011 20 Jul'11

  Desktop virtualisation accounts for only 3% of business PC market, says Ovum

  Desktop virtualisation only accounts for 3% of the overall business PC market, according to the latest figures from analyst firm Ovum.

• July 19, 2011 19 Jul'11

  Carphone Warehouse uses business process management to increase customer satisfaction

  Retailer Carphone Warehouse is claiming a 25% jump in its customer satisfaction ratings after investing in BPM software to help staff deal with sales, queries and complaints.

• July 19, 2011 19 Jul'11

  NPIA rolls out mobile fingerprint technology to the police service

  The soon-to-be-axed National Police Improvement Agency has rolled out mobile fingerprinting devices enabling police officers to check an individual's identity on the beat.

• July 18, 2011 18 Jul'11

  Government shelves Co-ordinated Online Record of Electors database to save £11m

  The government has shelved plans to create a database of electoral information, in a move estimated to save £11m.

• July 18, 2011 18 Jul'11

  Over a third of enterprise servers virtual, claims virtualisation penetration index

  Over a third of all enterprise servers are virtual, according to the virtualisation penetration index or V-index launched by virtualisation management software firm Veeam.

• July 18, 2011 18 Jul'11

  Microsoft outlines plans for single ecosystem across mobile, PC, tablet and TV platforms

  Microsoft intends to create a single ecosystem for mobile phones, PCs and tablet devices.

• July 15, 2011 15 Jul'11

  Google reports strong second quarter results under Larry Page with revenues up 32%

  Google has reported a strong financial quarter under the leadership of chief executive Larry Page with revenues of $9.03bn, an increase of 32% compared with the second quarter of 2010.

• July 15, 2011 15 Jul'11

  HP releases Touchpad tablet in UK

  Running on HP's webOS operating system, the tablet device starts at £399 and aims to take on the growing number of tablets available for consumers and business...

• July 15, 2011 15 Jul'11

  Oracle customers face rising support costs following Fusion application roll-out delay

  Oracle remains tight-lipped over a planned price hike in support fees.

• July 15, 2011 15 Jul'11

  Microsoft IE9 scores highest in socially engineered malware blocking tests

  Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 has achieved top scores in blocking socially engineered malware, according to comparative tests conducted by security research analyst NSS Labs.

• July 15, 2011 15 Jul'11

  Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust improves performance with Zeus Technology

  Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust has signed a £10,000 three-year contract with Zeus Technology to manage its virtualised medical applications...

• July 15, 2011 15 Jul'11

  Tesco uses Kenshoo to boost digital marketing

  Tesco, has deployed the Kenshoo digital marketing platform to support its digital marketing strategy across retail promotions and e-commerce initiatives.

• July 15, 2011 15 Jul'11

  Local authorities wanted for agile development pilot programme

  Public sector user group Socitm is launching a programme to test agile methodologies in IT projects for local government...

• July 14, 2011 14 Jul'11

  Gartner urges IT departments to support end-user application development

  Business IT users are increasingly looking outside the IT department for application development and in many cases are building applications themselves,...

• July 14, 2011 14 Jul'11

  Majority of Adobe Reader users are running vulnerable versions, says Avast

  Six out of every ten users of Adobe Reader are running unpatched versions of the software, leaving them vulnerable to a variety of malware attacks, according to researchers at security firm Avast.

• July 14, 2011 14 Jul'11

  Microsoft says Windows Phone 7 mobile OS should not be used on tablet format

  Microsoft has said its Windows Phone 7 mobile phone operating system is not appropriate for tablets.

• July 14, 2011 14 Jul'11

  Facebook launches Every Phone app to boost growth in developing world

  Facebook has made a new push for growth of the social networking site in the developing world by releasing an app that does not require a sophisticated smartphone.

• July 13, 2011 13 Jul'11

  Firefox 5 update for Mac users could have security links, says Sophos

  Mozilla's update to Firefox 5 for Mac users, version 5.0.1, aimed at eliminating crashes when using a downloadable font in OS X 10.7 and fixing the Java plug-in in OS X 10.5, could have security links, says Sophos.

• July 13, 2011 13 Jul'11

  Unified communications to push mobile cloud sales to $39bn in next five years

  Mobile cloud services sales are expected to reach $39bn by 2016 as businesses increase spending on cloud-based unified communications, according to Juniper Research.

• July 13, 2011 13 Jul'11

  Microsoft urges businesses to upgrade to Windows 7 as XP faces end of support

  Microsoft has warned businesses to begin Windows 7 deployments as support for Windows XP will end in less than 1,000 days.

• July 12, 2011 12 Jul'11

  Citrix boosts cloud infrastructure offering with Cloud.com acquisition

  Citrix has announced its acquisition of open source cloud computing platform Cloud.com to help customers build and manage private and public clouds.

• July 12, 2011 12 Jul'11

  Twitter uses Acquia to provide Drupal-based development community site

  Twitter has launched a new developer community site using open source content management system (CMS) Drupal, provided by Acquia.

• July 11, 2011 11 Jul'11

  Universities offered high-performance computing cloud via Janet

  Universities can now run cloud-based research on Janet, the joint academic network.

• July 11, 2011 11 Jul'11

  Google+ users hit by spam glitch as social network announces business feature

  Early adopters of Google+ have been hit by an avalanche of e-mail notifications, due to a glitch in the system. News of the accidental spamming came as Google revealed it is working on a business-focused feature for the Google+ social networking ...

• July 11, 2011 11 Jul'11

  Mozilla releases Firefox 5 fix for Mac OS X downloadable font crash bug

  Mozilla plans to release an update to Firefox 5 to fix a bug affecting users of Apple's Macintosh operating system, OS X 10.7.

• July 11, 2011 11 Jul'11

  Microsoft packs a lot into July’s four Patch Tuesday security updates

  Microsoft is to release only four security updates in this month's Patch Tuesday security update, but these will cover 22 vulnerabilities in Windows and Office.

• July 11, 2011 11 Jul'11

  Camwood debuts cloud-based application lifecycle management

  Camwood has launched Application Lifecycle Manager, a cloud-based service to help application teams monitor application usage.

• July 11, 2011 11 Jul'11

  Law firm uses RES Software to manage desktop transfer in office move

  UK-based international law firm Stephenson Harwood used RES Software to retain and manage user desktop settings as well as upgrade desktop software during an office move.

• July 08, 2011 08 Jul'11

  Apple promises to fix critical iOS flaws in iPhone, iPad and iPod – but won't say when

  Apple has promised to fix a security flaw in its iOS operating system used by iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices that criminals could exploit, but refuses to say when it will release the necessary patches.

• July 08, 2011 08 Jul'11

  Google+ capitalises on privacy concerns to compete with social network rival Facebook

  Google is aiming to compete against social networking rivals by adopting a tougher line on privacy, which has long been one of the most controversial aspects of the service provided by Facebook.

• July 08, 2011 08 Jul'11

  Traditional payment platforms could face competition from Google and Apple

  Secure mobile internet and regulation will force traditional payment platforms to change as competition grows in the European payments.

• July 07, 2011 07 Jul'11

  SAP releases SaaS sales tool for Blackberry, iPhone and iPad platforms

  SAP has released Sales OnDemand, its software-as-a-service product for salespeople, with prices starting at $40 per user per month.

• July 07, 2011 07 Jul'11

  Worldwide SaaS sales to grow 21% in 2011 driven by CRM purchases, says Gartner

  Software-as-a-service (SaaS) sales are expected to reach $12.1bn in 2011, an increase of 21% compared to $10bn in 2010, according to research firm, Gartner.

• July 07, 2011 07 Jul'11

  Oracle releases iPad app for virtual desktop client

  Oracle has released a virtual desktop client app for the Apple iPad to provide mobile access to server-hosted desktops and enterprise applications.

• July 07, 2011 07 Jul'11

  Microsoft Office 365: Could security be the differentiator?

  Since the release of Microsoft's Office 365 cloud-based service, the pros and cons of how it stacks up against its competitors in terms of cost and usability have been hotly debated, but it is Office 365's security credentials that really sets it ...