Ian Barker

As businesses shift more of their operations to the cloud so the demand for reliable, scalable services and platforms increases.

To address these needs HP is launching a new portfolio of cloud products and services called HP Helion. This incorporates existing HP cloud offerings with new OpenStack technology-based products, professional and support services in a single portfolio to help meet customers' specific business needs.

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Research specialist IDC has released the latest results of its Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker showing that the software market grew by 5.5 percent in 2013, reaching a total size of $369 billion.

IDC divides the market into three segments: Applications; Application Development and Deployment (AD&D); and Systems Infrastructure Software. These segments all grew between 5.4 and 5.6 percent, meaning that none of them had a significantly better performance in 2013.

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With targeted attacks on the rise and cybercriminals becoming more ruthless, traditional security solutions are struggling to cope with the number of incidents and false positives, leaving organizations vulnerable.

In a bid to provide improved security Symantec has announced a roadmap of solutions aimed at providing what it calls Advanced Threat Protection.

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We all know that technology is changing the way we shop through the ability to buy more of our needs online.

But a new study of millennial shoppers by point of sale technology specialist Merchant Warehouse shows that this particular generation has higher expectations from the shopping experience and is more likely to use mobiles in the process.

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The recent Heartbleed bug, in addition to a general rise in cybercrime activity, has led to companies scrambling to re-evaluate their online security. But how can organizations ensure that have a consistent and reliable approach to protecting themselves?

We spoke to Tanya Bragin the principal product manager at ExtraHop Networks, a global leader in real-time wire data analytics for IT operational intelligence, to find out.

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It looks like the growth of the tablet market may be starting to slow down according to a new study carried out by research specialist IDC.

Tablets and 2-in-1 shipments slipped to 50.4 million units worldwide in the first quarter of 2014 according to IDC's Quarterly Tablet Tracker. This represents a decline of 35.7 percent from the high-volume holiday quarter and just 3.9 percent growth over the same period last year.

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We're hearing more and more about the internet of things at the moment, but what are the technologies that are doing most to make it a reality?

Entrepreneur’s group TiE Global has produced an infographic highlighting industry insights and predictions for the top internet of things technologies for this year.

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The average private user PC in the UK has 76 different programs from 26 different vendors, which leaves users struggling to keep everything up to date.

Vulnerability management specialist Secunia has published a report on the state of security among PC users in the UK based on scans from Secunia Personal Software Inspector between January and March 2014.

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As networks become larger, faster and more complex, they become harder to monitor. This presents a security risk as it's more difficult to capture behavior for incident analysis and to spot suspicious behavior.

Network specialist Emulex has released the results of a survey which looks at the impact of growing networks on visibility and monitoring, network and application performance, security, and compliance.

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A majority of enterprises are using software that they've unintentionally failed to pay for according to a new report by Flexera Software prepared in conjunction with IDC.

The report reveals, among other things, that 85 percent of organizations are out of compliance with their software license agreements. In addition 63 percent were audited by their software vendors in the last 18-24 months (58 percent by Microsoft, the most aggressive auditor), and 56 percent were handed bills to regularize their licenses.

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UK media regulator Ofcom has published the results of its latest Adults' Media Use and Attitudes report studying the media habits of people aged 16 and over.

Among the findings are that younger people spend more time online and that the number of over 65s accessing the web has increased by 27 percent between 2012 and 2013.

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Coding applications in the traditional way is starting to look very 20th century, as in recent months we've seen more and more platforms launched with the aim of streamlining the development process.

Texas-based Backendless is the latest to enter the fray with a backend-as-a-service offering for desktop and mobile developers that's now leaving its beta phase.

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Developing for in-house mobile platforms can sometimes be a bit of a poor relation in the allocation of resources, as it may be important to front-line departments like sales but is less so for IT.

A solution could be at hand from Irish tech company FeedHenry which has launched the latest version of its cloud platform, allowing companies to simplify the building of mobile apps for their employees.

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Thanks to mobile devices, the cloud and the internet of things Cisco reckons that by 2020 there will be 50 billion digital endpoints.

This volume of connected devices offers huge potential for business. But as 85 percent of enterprise data still sits on in-house systems like ERP packages and secure databases its potential is hard to release.

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Much reporting of business metrics is still rooted in the era of static graphs and infrequent use. It's cumbersome and the information gets out of date fast.

Business planning and performance management specialist Tidemark is looking to bring reporting into the mobile and cloud era with the launch of its new Playbooks product.

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