A Technology Blog for Australian Businesses

Some interesting research just came out from McKinsey in their sixth annual technology survey. The key findings show that businesses are increasingly willing to invest in IT if it results in a more efficient and effective business process.

Since the late 1980s, businesses have increasingly been using spreadsheets for their critical business processes. People have become so familiar with spreadsheets that they are applied to almost every aspect of business - at times even to entirely unsuitable applications and business-critical processes.

A whitepaper produced by IBM last year entitled "The Risks of Using Spreadsheets for Statistical Analysis" revealed some scary facts:

• 90% of mission critical spreadsheets contained errors
• 30% of attempts at fixing these errors resulted in further errors  

Aussie companies are being increasingly pressured to allow employees to utilise their own mobile devices to access company information. Internet savvy staff who regularly access email, company databases, banking and social networks want to do so from any device, anywhere, at any time. There's a rapidly emerging trend that is being referred to as "BYOD" (bring-your-own-device), where employees are given the opportunity to access corporate information using their own mobile devices - typically smartphones and tablets. 

Are you tired of leaving messages, waiting for some PC guy to call you back? Or patching and cobbling together your IT infrastructure on your own? Or fed up with the never ending list of questions and requests from the staff? If so, the latest data from ZDNet shows, you're not alone - that's why there's such a rapid shift to remote IT support.

ZDNet have just released an interesting piece of research on IT priorities for Australian businesses called "The IT Services, Support & Management priorities of IT leaders and professionals in Australia and New Zealand."

A quick look at the slide below tells the story for 2011 and 2012. Mobile devices and access to company information "on the go," is the major focus area. Over 45% of organisations will have a tablet device strategy by the end of 2012, almost 55% will be making using of mobile applications and almost 58% of firms will be using web applications.

The implications for IT departments who have to manage this brave new world, master the skills to build, maintain and manage such an environment are significant. Some of the long list of challenges are:

What happened to an unfortunate teenage girl has lessons for all of us in both a personal and professional setting.  Don't let Identity Theft happen to you.

Some of you will be familiar with the term “being fraped”, it refers to “Facebook Rape” where a mischief making friend uses your PC or mobile phone when you are out of the room and posts an amusing or rude comment on your Facebook page ( masquerading as you).

Posting embarrassing comments is one thing, but recently I was asked to to help the teenage daughter of a friend who received the “full treatment” from an estranged partner and I feel compelled to explain how easy it was to completely hijack this person’s digital life.