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. 

<p>Despite increased storage budgets, customers are still struggling to manage the proliferation of data. This expert e-guide takes a closer look at the evolving storage landscape and discusses emerging data management tools and predictions for the future.</p> 

Read about how Mayflex used IBM Cognos Express to replace a complex spreadsheet system, improve time-consuming budgeting and forecasting processes, compare actuals against budgets at various levels and save time for end-users through automatic system updates. 

Your Microsoft SQL Server databases keep growing, but your storage hardware – and budget – aren’t. Check out this free trial download of powerful, easy to use backup and recovery software that gets the maximum from your current hardware – and does it all under budget. 

Measuring, monitoring and maintaining a data centre has often been viewed as a purely technical project. Business value can be significant - and explaining this can unlock budget for DCIM investments. 

<p>While network monitoring might not be at the top of your to-do list, it should be. Network monitoring is vital to implement before any problems occur, not after. Read now to learn why. </p> 

As budgets stay tight and finance professionals become more involved in technology buying decisions, be better prepared to defend your business case through the use of financial metrics and Return on Investment (ROI) calculators. 

Storage capacity utilization metrics provide a framework you can use to analyze and manage SAN storage use across a diverse IT environment. Check out this white paper to explore how capacity metrics can help your organization with efficiency, capacity management, and risk management. 

The cost and time associated with managing desktops is rising at a time when budgets are being tightened and IT staffing is strained. This is driving interest in the use of desktop virtualization, where virtual desktop machines run on servers within the data center. Access this white paper to learn more about the benefits of desktop virtualization. 

Read this case study and learn how Mitsubishi Corporation's European subsidiaries sought a system capable of automating planning and providing managers with the required information to make better-informed decisions. Discover how IBM Cognos offers them access to a centralised system, creates budget plans, reports and individual analysis. 

View this webcast to discover how to combine the portability and agility of the Spring framework for Java EE with a lightweight application server that gives you the flexibility to virtualize Java applications and workloads for the cloud while improving developer productivity, control and manageability and staying within budget constraints.