Enterprise IT news & views

• Bridgestone picks Lumias for smartphone fleet

  The Australian division of tyre manufacturer Bridgestone has picked Nokia’s Windows Phone7-based Lumia 800 smartphone as its platform of choice for its corporate smartphone fleet, with the Finnish company beating rival offerings from the likes of Research in Motion, Apple and Google to the work.

• SAP’s SuccessFactors deploys Aussie datacentre

  SAP subsidiary SuccessFactors has opened a datacentre located in Australia from which it will sell its software as a service-based human resource management and business execution software to local customers, in one of the first known deployments of such dedicated Australian infrastructure by a global SaaS vendor.

• Govt pushes ahead with cloud-sharing approach

  The Federal Government today revealed a standardised approach to sharing computing workloads between agencies, in a so-called ‘community cloud’ strategy that will attempt to leverage existing infrastructure operated by major departments such as the Department of Human Services to provide services to smaller agencies.

• The ABC didn’t sack Bitcoin miner

  The Australian Broadcasting Corporation didn’t fire an un-named IT worker who attempted to use the broadcaster’s vast server infrastructure to make himself a fortune through the Bitcoin virtual currency system, it has emerged, with the employee merely being disciplined and having their access to certain IT systems restricted.

• Victoria dumps HealthSMART e-health project

  The Victorian State Government has reportedly decided to walk away from its troubled central electronic health project HealthSMART, which has reached only a limited number of its goals over the past decade since it was initiated, despite soaking up several hundred million dollars worth of government funding.

• HP completes giant new NSW datacentre

  Global technology giant HP has finished building its colossal $119 million new datacentre in Western Sydney and will launch the “world-class” facility next month, with a speech slated to be given by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.

• Microsoft beats Salesforce to utility CRM deal

  Energy retailer Australian Power & Gas has picked Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM system over rivals Salesforce.com and Right CRM as the base platform for a customer relationship management overhaul to tackle incoming email complaints.

• NSW finalises colossal datacentre consolidation

  The New South Wales State Government this week announced the Leighton subsidiary Metronode as the winner of its long-running and wide-ranging datacentre overhaul project, with the company to construct two new substantial facilities which will allow the state to consolidate its IT operations drastically.