IT Week Insider, Volume 10, Number 11

Welcome to the IT Week Insider.

Amazingly the monkeys' urban camouflage – mentioned last week – seems to be working. This week we have not seen hide nor hair, nor hairy hide of the blighters.

Of course we don't miss them, but we did miss the work they do around the place. It turns out that it was them making the tea all this time (which accounts for all the hair in the cups) and – apparently - they had been contributing a lot of stories.

But we are not to be beaten – at least not in their absence. Like the time we all worked as guinea pigs at Pfizer to fund some Christmas drinks, we rose to the occasion. You can find the pick of our posts here, and because we weren't forced to spend half our week holding mountain apes off with one hand, a whole load of other stuff as well.

News:

Cisco outlines its plans for WebEx
Cisco has confirmed it is to take a "measured approach" to integrating WebEx, once its $3.2bn acquisition of the online conferencing firm is completed later this year. Yeah... we've all said we'll be gentle. In other news, it has also signalled there are areas where it could tie WebEx's technology together with its existing products. Which is a slightly more appropriate comment.

More news:

SAP pushes SOA but dodges SaaS questions
Maybe the monkeys did write one story then. Oh no, wait. That headline actually does make sense. This week SAP announced over 80 new additions to its All-in-One portfolio, which is designed to help customers make the best use of service orientated architecture (SOA) platforms. However, it refused to divulge pricing details or discuss any future plans for its A1S software as a service (SaaS) solutions for SMEs.

More, more news:

Second generation UMPC looks for business approval
Will IT managers be asking for one of Samsung's next gen ultra-mobile PCs the next time the purse strings are released? Or will their mum just get them another inappropriate egg for Easter? We suspect the latter. Oh well, Samsung will probably still struggle to shift more than a handful of the Q1 Ultra, whether it rolls it in chocolate or otherwise.

Comment:

Green ERP could be a winner
Phil Muncaster on what Lawson software is doing for ERP and corporate responsibility. A lot. Apparently.

Green IT can be a right turn-off
Martin Banks has been making IT managers giggle by telling them to turn their datacentres off at night. You sure that’s all you did Martin? There wasn't any tickling, was there?

Blogs and Pods:

IT Week Podcast
Audio analysis of the week’s events. This week Madeline Bennett talks about Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with Martin Veitch and considers what might happen at Novell's forthcoming BrainShare event.

IT Week Labs blog
Want to know why Dan Robinson has been fiddling in his pocket all week? What is wrong with you people?

Green Business News
A bamboo laptop? Does it have a panda instead of a mouse? Ha ha. Well it tickled us. Not the panda. We couldn't get him to do anything.

Lem Bingley blog
Lem on Viacom, Google Video and YouTube! Does this have anything to do with Diet Coke, Mentos, and his trip to the Diana memorial?

IT Sneak blog
Sneak is pursued by robots in helicopters with a message for him from Microsoft. Or something. Why can't Microsoft just send us free laptops like they do all the other bloggers?

Phil Muncaster blog
This week Phil is talking about breaches and leakage. Thankfully this has nothing to do with an extended visit to casualty, but data and privacy instead.