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Year in review: October 2011

Year in review: October 2011

By:  Howard Solomon  On: 06 Jan 2012 For: Network World Canada Creator
 

The loss of Steve Jobs was arguably the biggest IT news story of the year, but the month also saw Research In Motion's biggest network failure

The world was saddened to hear that Apple CEO Steve Jobs, a founder of the first successful personal computer company who went on to dominate the industry, died from pancreatic cancer. 
 
Toronto’s Platform Computing, which manages “grids” of computing workloads, was bought by IBM to expand its cloud computing offerings.
 
BlackBerry users were red-faced with anger as problems with Research In Motion’s service expanded to many countries ….
... forcing RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis to publicly apologize to customers and shareholders. 

The Harper government has vowed for several years to give police and public safety agencies more lawful access to subscriber information held by Internet providers. Now that it has a majority, that day is closer. We wrote a backgrounder about the issues and why some carriers and ISPs are worried. 
 
The editors of CIO Canada surveyed more than 200 Canadian IT leaders to find out what they really think about cloud computing. We showed the results graphically, as well as offering a Webcast and a summary of the report. 
 
A satellite funded in part by Canada’s Xplornet Communications was kicked into space on Oct. 19 promising to bring 4G broadband speeds to rural parts of the country. Launch into our coverage.
 
Are bureaucrats rock stars? Yes, if they’re with Shared Services Canada, the new organization that is tasked with taking over large parts of the federal government’s IT infrastructure. At the GTEC conference, IT vendors paid close attention to them.

Cisco Systems Inc. continued to pull companies into its orbit, paying US$99 million for video delivery software manufacturer BNI Video.  Meanwhile Oracle Corp. shelled out US$1.5 billion for RightNow Technologies, which makes cloud-based applications.
 
We got a chance to toot our horn when IT World Canada won honours at the annual Canadian Online Publishing Awards. Thank you for reading our publications.
 
Sam Palmisano steered IBM for almost 10 years, turning the company into a services goliath. On Oct. 25th the board of directors said a new era will start in 2012 when vice-president Virginia Rometty takes over. Palmisano continues as chairman.
 
Computerworld Canada honoured six people in several categories for its annual IT Leader of the Year awards. You can meet them here.
 
Will Hewlett-Packard continue to make desktop PCs? Yes, new CEO Marge Whitman said a month after her appointment to clear up the confusion made by earlier decisions ratified by the board.
 
The takeover battle for Ottawa's Mosaid Technologies ends with cross-town rival WiLAN refusing to match the offer of an American private equity firm. It would not be the only company in the capital this year to see new foreign ownership. 
 
 
 
 

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Howard Solomon Howard Solomon I'm assistant editor of ComputerWorld Canada covering network infrastructure, communications and government IT issues. An IT journalist  since 1997, I've written ... more

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