One of the software giants slugging it out for prime position within NZ dairy cooperative Fonterra's ERP operations appears to have lost a significant advantage after the cooperative tipped SAP financials to replace its Oracle system.
A report on the problem of spam by Australia's National Office for the Information Economy may bring trans-Tasman cooperation on law concerning unsolicited bulk email.
After steering clear of an upgrade of its ERP software for almost five years, Toyota Financial Services has become the first Australasian user of SAP's R/3 Enterprise, the latest version of the company's core offering.
Melbourne-based Mid-Comp International has adopted an open-source approach to its Java-based Odyssey distribution and accounting product, but does not expect users to fiddle with the core software on a regular basis.
Weta Digital, the special effects company behind the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, got great value out of a switch to Linux but found support and memory problems a "can of worms".
Beyond the attraction of open source per se and the pricing of Linux, its popularity is building for one very conventional reason, says longtime Unix user Roger de Salis.
Rob Herries, IT manager at Housing New Zealand, sees a downside to the growing popularity of Linux among users and major applications vendors.
Agile software development techniques need to be complemented by a project management style that accommodates agility, says Sanjiv Augustine of Virginia-based developer CCPace Systems.
Virus writers are hardly ever good programmers, says David Perry, global director of education or "evangelist"* for US-based anti-virus company Trend Micro; and that works to the advantage of virus detectors and virus victims.
NZ Post is handling the "logistical challenges" of its Windows 2000 rollout on the principle that hard disks are less expensive than the time of IT experts.
Vint Cerf, head of the board of Icann, the body that oversees internet domain administration internationally, says the effort to come up with a structure for such a body was "in turmoil from day one".
Westpac New Zealand is considering Linux as a future operating system for back-end systems at branches and even its mainframes.
Jay Garden, the man charged with protecting New Zealand's critical infrastructure says a cyberterrorism threat by an al Qaeda associate last week is just the latest in a series since September 11 last year.
An Australian business fraud specialist advocates the setting up of special data marts devoted to the detection of dishonesty.
Publishers, online or hard-copy, should get into XML as early as possible in the production process, as it will ease the task of rendering the publication in a range of formats and media.