Here is your weekly update on the latest IT news stories. You can comment on these stories if you are logged on. Windows Blue (8.1) release date, price and features Renegade business execs driving IT strategy, report says Government pumps 7.5m ... read more..

From IT Pro Windows Blue is the codename for Microsoft's first major upgrade to the Windows 8 desktop operating system. The launch of Blue will mark a change in strategy for Microsoft. Instead of releasing new editions of Windows after lengthy development cycles, going forward Redmond is expected to refresh its OS ... read more..

From CIO Business executives are increasingly bypassing the IT department and spending their own budgets on technology as 'it's too important for their business to leave to IT', according to analysts Forrester. The report Tracking the Renegade Technology Buyer uncovers the motivations and technology spending priorities of over 1,000 North American and ... read more..

From TechWeekEurope The UK government has announced 7.5 million funding for two Centres for Doctoral Training that it hopes will fill the skills gap damaging the nation's cyber security industry. The centres will be based in London's Royal Holloway and the University of Oxford. The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) ... read more..

From TechRepublic Having a higher rate of IT project failures could be good for your organisation, making it more efficient more rapidly. Businesses that experience a larger percentage of schemes that go wrong are likely to develop a culture of experimentation and should become more adept at identifying the likely success or ... read more..

From Techworld Hewlett-Packard is barely holding on to the top spot in the laptop and desktop market, but hopes a renewed vigour regarding product design will help reverse the fortunes of its PC business. The company is standardising the design and features in its laptops and tablets to help customers identify its ... read more..

From Computerworld UK Enterprises are running on average at least five instances of SAP and should be using the introduction of HANA as a catalyst to consolidate into one global platform and save billions of dollars, according to the latest research from HCL Technologies. HCL interviewed 225 CIOs at enterprises that achieve ... read more..

From InformationWeek As new technologies continue to enter the marketplace, many enterprise IT managers say they are ill-prepared to implement the growing number of application and infrastructure options now available. Some blame lack of funding. Others blame lack of interest among senior management. Some blame business units implementing new technologies without ... read more..

From ComputerWeekly.com IT consultancy Purple Frog Systems believes its gold certification to the IASME information assurance standard for small to medium enterprises gives it a competitive edge. Many of the firm's customers are large corporations looking for help in data warehousing, data mining and building business intelligence dashboards. But clients such as ... read more..

From IT Adviser For the past decade, there has been a serious problem affecting storage systems, a problem which has become progressively more pronounced over time. The cause? The relentless increase in demand for data and in application performance and drive capacities has not been matched by storage system ... read more..

From Computerworld.com It's 2005, and this pilot fish is working a third-shift IT support for a hospital when he gets a call from what's obviously an older nurse. 'Someone has shut down this dedicated work station, and now I can't access the terminal,' nurse says. 'I know that someone has shut it ... read more..

Here is your weekly update on the latest IT news stories. You can comment on these stories if you are logged on. Tech start-up jobs up 22% this year BlackBerry CEO: tablets have no future Top 10 Samsung Galaxy S4: best ... read more..

From Information Age The number of jobs available at technology start-ups has grown 22% since last year, according to a new study by recruitment event organiser Silicon Milkroundabout. By analysing job ads on online recruitment site Adzuna, it found that the number of positions open at technology start-ups reached 3,229 in April ... read more..

From InformationWeek BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins recently offered a baffling perspective on the tablet market: he thinks it is a dead-end business. In fact, he sees tablets going away entirely before the end of the decade. 'In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,' said ... read more..

From V3.co.uk When the Galaxy S4 was first unveiled, Samsung wowed the crowds in New York by showing off some of its fancy innovations such as eye-scroll technology and gesture control, as well as Knox support for businesses, which we collated in our top 10 for that week. Now the device has ... read more..

From TechCrunch Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched a certification programme to designate people who have the technical skills for building secure and reliable apps using AWS technology. The new Amazon Web Services Global Certification Programme is built around the three primary roles for engineering teams delivering cloud-based solutions: solutions architect, SysOps ... read more..

From ComputerWeekly.com IT departments will need to ramp up skills in developing for the cloud, to support mobile apps that make use of back-end services. According to Gartner, by 2016, 40% of mobile application development projects will leverage cloud back-end services. Gartner defines cloud mobile back-end services as a specialised form of platform ... read more..

From Computing.co.uk Organisations need to check their bills closely and look out for hidden charges when deploying their applications in the cloud and to check, especially, whether their cloud services include or exclude network services before they sign up. That is the warning of Bernhard Hammerlindl, channels director in global cloud ... read more..

From IT Pro Cyber security company Clearswift has claimed the most serious threats to businesses' data comes from inside the organisation itself. The research found that 83% of organisations had experienced a data security incident of some form in the past year, whether by accident or through malicious activity. While external threats are, ... read more..

From CIO The UK is lagging behind countries like India and Brazil when it comes to the adoption of machine-to-machine (M2M) technology, according to new research. In a global survey of over 750 IT decision makers, conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of SAP, 43% of UK respondents said that most of ... read more..

From IT Adviser The role of technology within businesses has completely changed over the past five years. In fact, it has grown significantly just in the last 12 months thanks to an increasingly competitive market mobile applications, for example, are now being developed and deployed on a much broader basis ... read more..

From Business Insider The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) has brought back the world's first web page to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the world wide web. You can visit the site here. Here's what it looked like. Read more at Business Insider NCC Weekly News Update 7 May 2013 Tech ... read more..

Here is your weekly update on the latest IT news stories. You can comment on these stories if you are logged on. Boston Marathon bombings hospital CIO shares IT lessons Top 10 insights from Infosec 2013 Dell unveils BYOD-friendly Mobility Solutions ... read more..

From CIO CIO at the hospital where Boston Marathon bombing patients and suspects have been treated since the April 15 blasts, Dr John Halamka, has shared the lessons learned from an IT and security management perspective. 'IT in general experiences more demands than supply,' Halamka said. 'Last week, we learned firsthand how ... read more..

From V3.co.uk Infosec Europe is always an interesting affair, drawing players big and small from the security community, government and wider industry to London's Earl's Court to talk security and issues affecting the sector. This year was as busy as ever, as the likes of security tycoon Eugene Kaspersky, Finnish white-hat Mikko ... read more..

From IT Pro Hardware vendor Dell has combined the fruits of its recent run of acquisitions to create a portfolio of enterprise-focused mobile device management tools. The Dell Mobility Solutions product line is designed to make it easier for IT admins to manage their mobile estate, regardless of whether the devices they ... read more..

From InformationWeek UK business and government organisations need to sharpen their act when it comes to making best use of modern IT, according to two new reports. The first, by the country's main professional HR association, the 100-year old Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), slams the private sector for not ... read more..

From TechRepublic You've likely heard about the kerfuffle over SendGrid's former developer evangelist Adria Richards. The short story is that Ms Richards overheard comments made in poor taste at a Python developers conference, most noteworthy of which were some puns on the word 'dongle', an unfortunately-named hardware 'key' of sorts used ... read more..

From Computerworld.com Big data is all the buzz in board rooms these days, but in security circles it's a mixed blessing. The technology allows tons of threat data to be analysed and used to thwart intruders. In the enterprise, it can be used to analyse volumes of network traffic to reveal insider ... read more..

From ComputerWeekly.com Information security professional body (ISC)2 and the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) have signed an agreement to collaborate on a new professional certification for information security. The initiative is aimed at addressing concern over the security of cloud-based services by establishing a common global understanding and best practices in design, implementation ... read more..