Quotes of the Week - 10 Dec 2010

The week in IT, captured in quotes from some of the most influential figures

[Google Chrome operating system] is a viable, third choice in real operating systems."

Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, believes the company's new operating system can stand alongside Microsoft and Apple PCs.

"We have been absolutely clear about the need for forces to ensure that the cuts are made to the back office, procurement, IT provision and so forth. Forces must focus on frontline policing and visible community work which is of benefit not only to forces in terms of catching criminals, but of course to local communities."

Home secretary Theresa May tells police forces that they need to make cuts to their IT and plough their resources into frontline policing.

"If you are looking for a CRM system that will deliver productivity for your people, offer flexibility to your business and work with your existing IT investments, you should consider Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online."

And if that's not a good enough reason to switch from one of its competitors, Microsoft will also give you cash, explained Michael Park, corporate vice president in sales, marketing and operations for Microsoft Business Solutions.

"The prime minister's national security adviser has written to all departments to ask them to look again at their information security and to provide him with assurance about the level of that information security."

Home secretary Theresa May once again makes her voice heard, revealing that the national security adviser to David Cameron has ordered all government departments to review their computer security in the wake of ongoing disclosures by whistle-blowing web site Wikileaks.

"BT's range of measures would, on top of the £830m the government is investing, go a huge way to delivering our ambition for the UK to have the best broadband system in Europe by 2015."

Jeremy Hunt, secretary of state for culture, Olympics, media and sport, is optimistic about the future of the UK's internet services after BT said that if it wins the backing of public money to extend broadband to rural areas, it will match this funding with its own cash.

"A difficult economy has seen skilled IT professionals applying for roles that would usually be considered too junior for them. Although many employers set out with the intention of taking on fresh talent, they often find it hard to resist these more experienced applicants - especially if they are available at a similar salary level."

Stephen Riley, director of IntaPeople, voices his concerns that, despite the IT job market picking up, seasoned employees are being offered graduate roles, leaving entry-level candidates with few options.

"The next era of cloud computing is social, mobile and real time. I call it Cloud 2."

Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, explains his rationale behind acquiring Ruby application platform-as-a-service Heroku for £134m. He added that Ruby is the language of Cloud 2, and Heroku is the leading Ruby application platform-as-a-service for Cloud 2 that is fuelling the growing community.

"Companies such as Google and Yahoo Inc. use Telefonica's networks for free, which is good news for them and a tragedy for us. It can't continue."

France Telecom's CEO Cesar Alierta wants to see service providers such as Apple, Google and Facebook contribute towards the cost of network investments required to deal with the increase of data traffic.

Reader comments

One Computing reader, Sam, is doubtful that there is space for Google in the operating system market.

"There is no way Chrome OS will stand alongside Microsoft and Apple."

Another reader, D., says that employers in the sector need to provide training and take a gamble on candidates with potential.

"Employers are always moaning that they cannot get staff with the skills they want. This is because absolutely none of them are prepared to train people. They expect to cherry-pick people with the exact skillset they need, and the chances of anyone having all the required skills is incredibly slim."

And Ian Davin says that public sector bodies are already doing all they can to secure data, in light of government's call to enhance security after the Wikileaks furore.

"Of course it is prudent to ask all government departments to review their security in light of the Wikileaks disclosures, but my experience of working with government departments is that they know this already and are doing their best with significant restraints."