• Wall Street Beat: After Facebook fiasco, don't write off tech IPOs

  The Facebook IPO may have been a fiasco, but don't put the nail in the coffin just yet for other tech offerings this year.

• Qualcomm to sell Indian broadband operation to Bharti Airtel by 2014

  Bharti Airtel has invested about US$165 million to acquire a 49 percent stake in Qualcomm's Indian entities that hold broadband wireless licenses, with the Indian mobile operator eventually taking full ownership, the companies said Thursday.

• Ellison, Phillips, McDermott to take stand in Oracle-SAP retrial

  During the upcoming retrial of Oracle's corporate-theft lawsuit against SAP, the companies plan to call a star-studded array of tech executives as witnesses including CEO Larry Ellison, former Oracle co-president and current Infor CEO Charles Phillips and SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott, according to court documents filed Thursday.

• Sony pulls out of LCD JV with Sharp, gets US$126 million investment back

  Sony said Thursday it will pull out of its over three-year LCD TV panel joint venture with Sharp, part of Sony's ongoing attempts to reform its foundering TV business.

• UPDATED: HP slashes 27,000 jobs as part of restructuring program

  It's official. Hewlett-Packard will cut 27,000 employees as part of its long-term restructuring plan, the company said when it announced quarterly financial results.

• Catching the eye of Google

  Google's man in charge of acquisitions - vice-president of corporate development David Lawee - was in Auckland recently, but he was keeping quiet on whether any Kiwi businesses were on his radar.

• 9 hot technology startups to watch in 2012

  While there are sure to be a lot of new networking and IT companies that emerge in 2012, these nine stood out for their potential to deliver game-changing innovations in a wide array of fields, including Cloud computing, enterprise search, and mobile application development. (These are in addition to seven hot Cloud companies and seven storage companies to watch that we highlighted last year.)

• Can Apple survive without Steve Jobs?

  Stop me if you've heard this one: Steve Jobs is taking another medical leave from Apple.

• The world according to Michael Arrington

  Ah, AOL -- just when it looked like you were about to slip into boring mediocrity, you surprise us yet again with your antics.

• AOL swallows TechCrunch -- but can they keep it down?

  What do you get when you mix a tottering giant from the InterWebs' formative years with the new breed of post-first-ask-questions-later news blogs? We're about to find out, now that AOL has swallowed up TechCrunch.

Whitepapers about business issues

• 

  How will CIOs meet growing Security Threats?

  The growing complexity and prevalence of security threats, enabled by consumer IT and mobility, sets the stage for ever more sophisticated attacks. Security must be proactively front and center in all IT deliverables, but CIOs and CSOs must work in concert to succeed in these efforts. In this interactive white paper from CIO Magazine and EMC, learn how tightening the relationship between CIOs and CSOs will help create trust, the foundation of business relationships today. Embedded videos feature Art Coviello, Sanjay Mirchandani, and Dave Martin, and a quick survey provides benchmarking between CIO peers.

• 

  Learning To Compete: IT’s Next Transformation

• 

  Application Performance Management - The end user is king

• 

  Customer Success Story - RWWA safeguards wagering revenues with IT service assurance