Brisbane-based specialist business software provider, Markinson, has been acquired by international software and services group, Constellation Software, part of the Friedman group of companies.

It’s that time of the year when everyone has a prediction for the year ahead, and in one prediction that just landed on iTWire’s newsdesk, there’s a number of dire predictions about security, with the warning that organised criminals will leverage advanced malware techniques in targeted attacks against businesses and that a major cloud provider will suffer a significant security breach.

Green IT and concern for the environment are getting lots of attention in the IT industry but seemingly productivity and not environmental concerns are the biggest driver for Australia’s small business owners switching to high-grade video conferencing for meetings.

Lenovo has strengthened its Australian and New Zealand executive team with the appointment of a new director for its SMB business in the region.

Australian small businesses are increasingly looking to the online marketplace to find new ways of promoting and selling their products and services, but when it comes to leading the way it’s the women not their male counterparts, in greater number, who are biting the bullet and embracing the opportunities offered by the social media networks and other online channels.

Network security and data protection solutions vendor, SonicWALL, has introduced two high- performance, application-aware next-generation firewalls for branch offices and small to medium sized businesses (SMBs).

Reports on how Australian businesses are working towards being “digital ready” can often be contradictory, but there is one trend that comes across most studies, and that is Australian consumers are well ahead of businesses in the mobility revolution.

Australian ISP, iiNet and global unified communications vendor, Polycom have teamed up to offer small and medium businesses a new, hosted telephony solution called Business Voice which the two companies say enables a business to easily adapt to its ever-changing needs without the hassles and cost of maintaining a physical telephone infrastructure.

Small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) in Australia and New Zealand reckon they are being overlooked when it comes to technology solutions, believing they have often been disregarded in favour of larger enterprise businesses when it came to better pricing, understanding and product design.

Online accounting system vendor, Xero is to acquire Australian payroll company, Paycycle, for A$1.5 million in a deal comprising half a million dollars in cash and $1 million in Xero shares.