In the latest Q1, 2012 CIO Confidence Poll Longhaus found that there is a median of 7.5 DBAs working away inside Australian enterprises doing such a good job that no latent demand exists for any level of improvement. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” and “leave well enough alone” are two colloquialisms readily applicable to database administrators (DBA) working inside large organisations today. However Longhaus believes that it will be the CIOs that are looking towards emerging service models in the DBA market including selectively sourcing the DBA function, seeking enhanced follow-the-sun-support or complimenting internal teams with –as-a-service options will be those most likely to meet the increasing business demands for big data support...

Longhaus believes that an expanding API economy represents one of the significant trends of 2012. Enterprises with established and mature processes will be compelled to make business applications available through APIs to drive business growth and expose new opportunities. Also, businesses seeking new capabilities will purchase access to APIs instead of investing in the building of capabilities in-house. APIs will move from playing a strong role to a fundamental role in the way that businesses interact with other businesses, end-users, customers and in reaching new markets.

By the end of the third quarter of 2011 the Longhaus Australian Tech Index had seen a dip of 2.2% (or 3.6 points) to finish at 155.9. This is the first drop in the index since the same quarter period in 2010 and marks the first significant decline since the global financial crisis back in Q2 2009. However, the latest CIO Confidence Poll revealed that in Q4 2011, Australia’s ICT decision makers are still holding a positive outlook over the coming quarter...The Longhaus Australian Tech Index is a quarterly index based on a propriety model developed to measure the health of the Australian ICT industry. The model measures the Australian ICT industry from the following four (4) dimensions: a) demand forces including ICT spending and ICT importing, b) supply factors including influx volume of venture capital (VC) funding, c) strength of vendors indicated by market value, and employment capacity, and d) consumer factors including internet subscription rates. Collectively, these four (4) dimensions and their accompanying factors indicate the health of the Australian ICT industry. Finally by providing calculated weightings to these indicators and including heuristic views from Australian CIOs, the index provides important insights into lag, lead and predictive indicators of the Australian technology economy.

In being asked for tablet access to board papers, CIOs face seemingly conflicting goals: one for improving access to the most sensitive corporate information, and the other for improving its security. For the CIO of the ANZ bank, this conflict was resolved by banning the tablet completely from the boardroom on grounds of security. However mobility security solutions are moving fast to assist the CIO allay enterprise fears.Not only this, recent mobile development projects have delivered with low cost, and ease of implementation. More business problems will be solved in short time by adopting agile mobile application development, thereby abandoning slower and more costly traditional methods.

Reports of the cloud computing market measuring $160 billion by 2015 were extremely well received by vendors following the global financial crisis. These market sizing estimations not only included end-user payments but also expected sales of hardware, software and services within the cloud service provider market. To fully exploit the industry hype around cloud, the marketing machines of the vendors have been in overdrive, piling more ‘cloud’ messages on top of an already over-inflated market expectation. As a result of all this, enterprise benefits from cloud computing have been over-promoted in a concerted effort to win market share and sell more volumes of technology, licences, and services.But despite vendor efforts the enterprise adoption of true cloud computing is slowing, and there continues to be a growing disconnect between marketing promise and what is realistically achievable.