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.

There’s a big hole in Australian IT spending with 15 per cent of businesses admitting that they don’t spend a red cent on disaster recovery or business continuity services. It’s even worse internationally where 22 per cent of companies spend zilch on the issue.

The challenges which enterprises are facing in terms of managing ballooning end user data stores, and information stored on virtual servers or in clouds, has prompted CommVault to update its Simpana suite of information management tools, bringing forward the release of some functions originally slated for inclusion in Simpana 10 which isn’t expected to be released before 2013.

ICT services provider, Dimension Data, has appointed a new chief of its Queensland operation as the company sets itself for strong growth in the Queensland market this year.

VMware has got a tick of approval from one market analyst for its fourth quarter financial performance last year and the take-up of its core product offerings, including cloud-based products and services, but its also predicted that the company wil face increasing competition for marketshare from IBM and Microsoft.

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.

The Australian Open grand slam tennis tournament is underway in Melbourne, and IBM is leveraging a global private cloud computing system for this year’s event which allows organisers, Tennis Australia, to rapidly scale its data in real time, as well as guarantee continuous availability even in the event of a complete data centre outage.

Dell has chosen SUSE as the first Linux distribution available on its Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Service.

Cloud computing is one of the hot areas of the IT industry as the 2012 business year moves into top gear, and Bond University in Queensland has just introduced a specialist course in cloud computing in response to the market demand for graduates with skills in new technologies.

Australia will be among the first countries in the world to make the transition to the new, Citrix virtual desktop infrastructure under a “revolutionary” technology upgrade to be undertaken by global outsourcing provider, Aegis.