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MS Oz Lifts Office 365 Pricing

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Remember the good old days when – in contrast to older industries – computing services got steadily cheaper, rather than more expensive? No more, it seems. The bottom, perhaps, has been reached. Microsoft Australia says it will raise the price of its Office 365 Home and Personal subscriptions from October 12. But at this stage … Read more

Microsoft Left Behind by AWS, What’s New?

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Amazon Web Services is totally dominating the global infrastructure-as-a-service market, with 44.2 percent of the action, according to a new Gartner survey. AWS is followed at a long distance behind by Microsoft Azure with just seven percent of the market, while in third place with three percent is Jack Ma’s Alibaba, which Gartner notes opened … Read more

CSIRO Hitches A Ride With Sophisticated New UK Satellite

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Australia’s CSIRO research outfit has paid a yet-to-be-revealed amount to be given access to the UK’s NovaSAR satellite, touted as one of the most sophisticated birds ever made. The NovaSAR, due to be launched later this year, has also been part-funded by the British Government in a joint venture with aviation company Airbus and manufacturer … Read more

Bloody Monday: New Tech Stocks Sell-Off Stokes Industry Fear

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Technology stocks including Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet went into free fall on Wall Street, over worries that the top-performing sector is falling out of favour and investors are looking elsewhere for cheaper opportunities. Facebook fell 4.6 percent, on track for its worst day in nearly a year and eliminating over US$20 billion of its market … Read more

Cloud Booms As Hardware Stalls

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Global quarterly spending on datacentre hardware and software has grown by just five percent during the past 24 months, while spending on the public cloud portion of that has grown by 35 percent, according to data from Reno-based Synergy Research. It says the private cloud infrastructure market has also grown, though not as strongly as … Read more

NBN Losses Reach $10 Billion – And That’s OK, Says Ziggy

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NBN Co has recorded a loss of $4.24 billion for the year to June 30, taking total losses over the last four years to $10.7 billion. It’s a major increase from last year’s $2.75 billion loss, but is within expectations for the NBN rollout, which has been geared up dramatically over the past year. The … Read more

Mobile Consumers Confused

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Most consumers don’t know how much mobile broadband data they need, with many spending more than they need, according to a broadband comparison site.

Some 1700 visitors to www.broadbandexpert.com.au were asked how much data they use each month – the majority (54 percent) admitted that they did not know.

Most mobile broadband contract users have a monthly data cap, which is typically between 1GB and 12GB.

Rob Webber, commercial director of Broadband Expert, says it is likely that many customers are spending much more than they need to on their monthly cap.

“The current range of mobile broadband plans is from around $20 per month for 1GB rising to $90 per month for 10GB+. Occasional users or those likely to keep to a very low monthly download (just sending e-mail and browsing the Web) would be better off with a prepaid plan so they aren’t paying for data they don’t need,” he says.

Microsoft Close To Fujitsu Cloud Deal

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Australia is expected to be one of the target markets for a new cloud computing alliance to be set up by Microsoft and Fujitsu.

The two companies this week are expected to announce plans for the alliance, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The tie-up would reportedly allow Microsoft to take advantage of Fujitsu’s datacentres and customer base. In turn Fujitsu would be able to offer Microsoft’s Windows Azure, which gives Internet-based access to Windows software stored at datacentres.
The WSJ says Fujitsu plans to set up platforms for cloud computing at existing datacentres in Australia, Singapore, Germany, the UK and the USA by the end of the current fiscal year.
Fujitsu has already said it plans to spend 100 billion yen (A$1.28 billion) on cloud computing-related businesses in its current fiscal year. The figure includes spending on R&D as well as capital expenditure.
= Fujitsu Australia was one of a number of companies that recently missed making the shortlist for tenders to build two giant datacentres for the NSW Government, aimed at taking the place of 130 existing centres.