At least eight agencies to benefit initially from infrastructure on-demand.
The New Zealand Government has appointed Datacom and Revera to underpin an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) product available to at least eight agencies.

The two IT services firms were selected from a shortlist of four announced in April that also included IBM and Gen-i...

The double-edged data sword.
Smartphones have given New York's Occupy Wall Street protesters a useful tool to document and deter potential police misconduct, but Australian protesters should think twice about their use.

Whether documenting action on Wall Street or Martin Place, protesters face the risk that police demand they hand over their smartphones...

Backs away from speedy takedown powers.
VeriSign has withdrawn its controversial request to be granted the power to take down offending websites without a court order.

The proposal to internet regulator ICANN lodged this month argued VeriSign’s new anti-abuse policy would help it comply with “court orders, laws, government rules, requests of law enforcement or other governmental or quasi-governmental agency, or any dispute resolution process...

Recession to hurt enterprise IT spending.
Gartner has cut its global forecast for enterprise IT spending to $US2.7 trillion ($A2.63 trillion) in 2012.

The analyst firm’s previous growth forecast for the year of 5.9 percent had dropped back to 3...

US$10 a year and a cut in council rates.
Microsoft has agreed to lease the water treatment plant attached to one of its United States data centres to the area's municipal council.

The company said that the City of Quincy would pay an annual lease fee of $US10 ($A9...

Long-running subject of takeover rumours.
Shares of Akamai Technologies jumped more than 11 percent following a report that it was close to being acquired by Google.

Akamai, whose service improves the performance of websites, is nearing a deal with search giant Google, according to the late Wednesday report by technology blog Business Insider citing "multiple ad tech sources" who were not identified...

Auto failover bombs, too.
BlackBerry maker RIM has finally explained to users why its service has been broken for the past two days.

The company has come under fire for failing to keep millions of users informed after the service collapsed on Monday, went offline again yesterday and remains down for many users today...

US law's long arm may grow cross-border tentacles.
Top level domain registrar VeriSign has sought permission from global internet regulator ICANN to take down “illegal” websites under a new anti-abuse policy.

“The need to combat illegal domain name use is well-known and is not controversial,” it argues in the proposal to expedite domain suspensions...

Infrastructure-as-a-service to boom.
The Asia Pacific region is set to adopt public cloud computing services at a faster rate than the rest of the world over the next six years, according to predictions from analyst group Ovum.

The region’s cloud computing industry will grow at a compound annual rate of 34...

Providers asked to become legally liable for any data offences.
The European Union plans to introduce new data protection laws in November designed to ensure cloud providers are offering a safe service.

The Binding Safe Processor Rules (BSPR) will ask cloud service providers working in the EU to agree to be legally liable for any data breaches or losses that occur at their data centres, lawyers said yesterday...

Pumps at least $US200 million into region.
Google said on Wednesday that it will begin building data centres in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which will be operational within one-to-two years once construction begins.

Investment in the data centres in Hong Kong and Taiwan would exceed $US100 million each, the Internet search company said in a statement...

Access to thousands of potential customers.
Australian cloud services pioneer Ultra Serve has gained access to thousands of potential small business customers after signing a deal with Australia’s largest IT product distributor, Ingram Micro.

Ingram Micro’s new Services Group has announced it has white-labelled services from Ultra Serve’s cloud platform for its trove of resellers to take to the SMB market...

Problems for hosting customers.
Web host NetRegistry has been hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack that caused outages across its hosting and VPS cloud services.

The outages began around 10.15am AEST, according to users who converged on Twitter and internet forums seeking help from the service provider...

Area 9 becomes VMware Australia's third vCloud Powered certified partner.
Darwin managed service provider Area 9 has become the third VMware vCloud Powered provider of infrastructure-as-a-service in Australia.

The company’s Darwin-based data centre, whilst small in scale, services businesses throughout the Northern Territory using the latest virtual server technology from VMware...

Data centre scoping study reveals preference for 'physical private cloud'.
The Department of Defence has been advised to consider cloud computing as it moves to cut costs and rationalise its data processing environment.

In a newly released report "Initial Scoping Study of Defence Data Centre Service Delivery", PricewaterhouseCoopers consultants recommended that Defence opt for a "physical private cloud"...

Opinion: SoftLayer's approach is a breath of fresh air.
Transparency has long been considered a core tenet of what defines a hosted service as “cloud computing”.

The first place we usually seek transparency relates to price. A genuine pay-per-use model should be granular, easy to understand and clearly documented for customers...

I'm looking at you, Bob Brown.
As the ACCC consults on Telstra’s Structural Separation Undertaking and the Definitive Agreement reached with NBN Co, the NBN’s fixed line monopoly has been called into question.  David Havyatt responds to the critics, with a fine serve for Bob Brown as well...

On eve of opening Singapore facility.

US company SoftLayer is building a pod data centre in a Digital Trust Realty facility in ...

HP too, but remains cautious on Huawei.
Cisco CEO John Chambers has come out swinging at the troubled company’s annual investor conference on Tuesday where he sledged US rivals and outlined video and mobility as the vendor's key focuses.

“You’re going to see us go after Juniper...

Active-active, end-to-end services now possible.
The Federal Government has added eight ‘greenfield’ data centres to a burgeoning list of options available to agencies under whole-of-government arrangements.

Data centre operators Fujitsu, Metronode, Enterprise Data Corporation, Global Switch and Macquarie Telecom all had under-construction facilities added to the panel...