In terms of managed services uptake in the Asia/Pacific region, excluding Japan, Australia and New Zealand is the most mature sector, according to Frost & Sullivan. At the same time, many of the large and medium-sized organisations are looking at how they can optimise their IT investments and become more effective in utilising IT with the help of managed and hosted services.

Job ads in the IT sector dropped 8.8 percent in June, the second weakest performing sector after Financial Services, to bring its overall decline to 1.3 percent over the past year.

Worldwide mobile gaming revenue is on pace to total $US4.5 billion in 2008, a 16.1 per cent increase from 2007 revenue of $US3.9 billion, according to Gartner. While mobile gaming revenue will continue to lag behind other value-added entertainment services -- such as music and adult content -- the market still has much potential.

In a recent survey of more than 1100 IT decision makers in the Asia/Pacific region, IDC measured the importance of 10 key solution areas touted by IT services vendors globally. Network infrastructure solutions came up as being most important, with more than 70 per cent of respondents in markets such as Australia, China, and India indicating that solutions pertaining to the network were either important or very important.

Changing economics and market drivers are shaking up the market for global delivery locations within Asia/Pacific. As the focus shifts away from costs, the differentiation between cities is being reduced while competition for lucrative offshore spending is increasing. These shifts have conversely impacted different segments of the market, with formerly low-cost destinations becoming less desirable and higher cost skills-based propositions becoming more popular.

It may look like Windows Vista. It shares the same code base as Vista. It even rolls in Vista's first Service Pack. But in terms of customer adoption plans, Windows Server 2008 is no Vista.

Don't say you weren't warned. Your 32-bit Windows applications are going the way of analog television: Unless they're upgraded, in the next few years they'll go dark.

The buzz about Hyper-V, Microsoft's entry into the world of serious server virtualization, has been building for quite some time. This past week at Microsoft's mammoth North America TechEd 2008 conference held in Orlando, Fla., there was a focus on what Hyper-V (in Server 2008) was really all about and how it compares with VMware's ESX Server.

Apple's launch of its new iPhone 3G will produce a flurry of spam and scams, a security company warned Thursday.

The marketing prowess of Apple is legendary, a reputation that was bolstered again Tuesday by a slick 30-minute online video that offers a guided tour of the iPhone 3G coming July 11.

I've used iPhones and I have an iPod Touch. I love the interface, and I dig the device. Initially, I had to resist the urge to just buy an iPhone and deal with these problems, but I didn't, opting to get a Nokia N95 instead. A year has passed, and I've realized that I definitely made the right choice -- the limitations of the original iPhone (and the iPhone 2.0) are simply too numerous. Perhaps I've been spoiled by my N95 (and truth be told, I'll be getting an N96 in the next few months), but no matter how you slice it, I've decided that the iPhone just isn't my cup of tea. Here's why:

It turns out the reports of XP's death may be slightly exaggerated.

Despite an outpouring of demand -- including more than 210,000 people who signed InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition, Microsoft held firm and Monday discontinued sales of XP in most cases. So, we bid adieu to Windows XP.

Yesterday was the day. That's it for Windows XP.