Rodney Gedda

The next time Bill Gates sends an e-mail through Microsoft's shiny new Wireless LAN it will be passed through a behind-the-scenes Linux-based network appliance. Earlier this year Microsoft and Aruba Networks jointly announced the two companies will work to replace Microsoft's existing Cisco wireless network with Aruba's centrally-managed infrastructure, which eliminates the need for individual changes on the access points.

A critical skills shortage is holding back the widespread use of service oriented architectures (SOA) and the promise of a new era of interoperability, according Tony Clement, the Australian Wheat Board's (AWB) enterprise architecture and planning manager.

Ford Australia is racing to migrate off its MCP-based mainframes by the end of next year in a bid to standardize its global IT infrastructure.

Goldmining giant Newmont Mines is migrating its Australia and New Zealand SAP applications to software from Brisbane-based Mincom. The migration follows the merger of Newmont USA, which was an established Mincom customer, and Normandy Gold in Australia, a SAP user.

A group of Australian technology providers has banded together to launch a new service that aims to help detect and deal with emergencies, including disasters on a scale of last year's Asian Tsunami.

In a sign that the long-running battle between IBM Corp. and the SCO Group Inc. over alleged copyright infringement may be winding down, U.S. district court judge Dale Kimball has labelled SCO's ability to provide evidence to support its case as astonishing and has denied the company's motion to dismiss a key counterclaim by IBM. The latest court ruling filed by Kimball contains a lengthy discussion as to why SCO's motion has been dismissed and is related to nonaction by the company.

Despite trumpeting a significant migration from Unix to Linux as part of 10-year IBM Corp. global services outsourcing agreement inked last year, Qantas Airways Ltd. is reluctant to disclose details about the scale of the project.

The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) is to clamp down on businesses using public telephone directories for marketing purposes and will release new privacy guidelines next month.