New Zealand IT decision-makers are optimistic, but cautious, about their investment plans this year, and an analyst report just published suggests that businesses will just get on with business as usual and still spend on IT despite the prevailing caution.

The boom in Internet-enabled mobile devices (IEMDs) is reshaping the European printing industry, offering new challenges and opportunities for hardcopy vendors, with analysts predicting a slow decline in future demand in print volumes for the traditional hardcopy vendors.

According to a recent IDC survey of the intentions of CIOs in Australia, 20.6% of respondents were using a cloud solution. The same survey says that by 2015 the use of cloud services by Australian companies – from SMBs to enterprise-size organisations – is set to quadruple – so what does this mean for service providers and users?

IT services vendor and solutions provider, EMC, has taken a solid grip on the worldwide Purpose Built Backup Appliance (PBBA) market, according to a new report just released, which shows the company captured 62 percent share of the market in the first half of last year, more than three times the share of its nearest competitor. And, more Australian companies have been quicker to embrace PBBA solutions than their counterparts in other Asia-Pacific countries.

At work or at home, professional or personal? It seems more IT and business professionals than ever are now using their iPads for work communication than they are for personal communications.

The rapid adoption of cloud solutions will transform the traditional networking channel landscape in countries of the EMEA region -  Europe, the Middle East and Africa – as the market is fuelled by new technologies, changing customer demands, an alternate vendor landscape, and an uncertain regional economy.

The world’s mobile workforce is on its way towards eventually reaching half of the total global workforce as more and more employees and employers, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, take advantage of the benefits of flexibility and mobility.

Samsung has now overtaken Apple in the Australian and New Zealand mobile phone market, growing its business for a third consecutive quarter, despite an overall dip of 17 percent in the market shipments of smartphones and feature phones.

Cisco and Aruba have been placed in the 'leaders' category for this year and 2012 by IDC in its first report on the global enterprise wireless local area network market (WLAN), with the analyst firm reporting that the explosion of mobile devices within the enterprise is having a dramatic impact on the market, as it continues to gain momentum with vendors and end users discovering more possibilities and growth potential with mobile enterprise applications and cloud applications and services.

Despite continuing global macroeconomic problems, there’s a great deal of upside for the semiconductor market, with analysts forecasting growth this year will be in the order of 3.4 percent, bringing in revenues of $296 billion, and with growth in 2012 expected at 3.1 percent with revenues hitting $305 billion.