This week’s Computer Weekly asks what chancellor George Osborne's Budget means for the UK IT community and if he can deliver his goal to make Britain "the technology centre of Europe". Also you'll find the final part of our private cloud Buyer's Guide and we examine the options for choosing the right WAN optimisation strategy. 

Between 25% and 50% of most companies’ revenue goes toward purchasing goods and services, so the ability to keep these costs down is paramount. Applying strategic sourcing methodologies to pinpoint spend categories and select qualified suppliers allows organizations to reduce expenses and positively impact the bottom line. 

Emerging markets offer huge potential for technology companies to expand. This report from Grant Thornton assess the opportunities in a range of emerging markets. 

The inaugural issue of BI Trends & Strategies offers sound advice to help you in ensuring your organization is on track to keep up with the rapidly changing landscape of BI and analytics. In this issue, readers will learn about a big data definition and the impact it will have on BI and data warehousing, agile development methodology and more. 

This report from Accenture looks at the challenges facing the public sector in offering digital services. 

In this case study, explore how Sportif, a leading outdoors clothing innovator, reduced email management costs and increased data protection for their users with Metalogix Archive Manager for Exchange. 

Query performance three times faster is just one item in this top-10 list from the analysts at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). Download this article to read the full top 10 and learn why Cognos 10 holds "strong value for upgrading customers and prospects." 

This chapter from the SearchDataBackup.com Backup best practices guide explores the key backup technologies in today’s storage environment. This article identifies specific points of interest for disk backup. Download this chapter to learn all about disk storage as well as specific considerations of enterprise-class disk arrays to keep in mind. 

Are you going to upgrade to SQL Server 2012? This edition of SQL Server Insider sets out to help you decide whether the investment is worth it or not. Read this edition to learn if several IT pros are going to upgrade and why, how this release will affect the database marketplace and pros and cons of actually upgrading. 

This paper examines the different types of cloud services available, the potential benefits of private clouds for SMBs, specific solutions for companies building private clouds and much more! 

If you're a small or mid-sized business thinking about virtualization, particularly in the world of Microsoft, it makes sense to upgrade your database servers as well. This article explains why to upgrade and provides several examples of companies that have successfully made the move. 

This first issue of Cloud Development Digest, geared for Java developers, features the following three articles: "Java Platform as a Service Providers Vie for Developers’ Affection," "Cloud Architecture Key to Leveraging Cloud-Based Services," and "IaaS Management Tools and Test Cycles in the Cloud." 

This resource demonstrates how a buy-and-hold strategy can add data center costs that many of today’s enterprises simply can’t afford. Read on to learn more about server replacement cycles and the ongoing operational costs of holding on to legacy hardware platforms long past their recommended life-cycle.