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. 

This week’s Computer Weekly examines the growing threat from smartphones being targeted by hackers and viruses as the devices are increasingly used for work. Hospitality giant Mitchells & Butlers talks about its migration to the cloud and the CIO of Airbus discusses his IT priorities and how he spends €500m a year on IT. 

This research from Freeform Dynamics, based on a survey of end users,  identifies the challenges faced by IT departments and suppliers on software licensing, and offers advice to organisations on dealing with software licensing. 

Many procurement organizations struggle to meet savings goals with an overworked staff using time-consuming, manual processes or outdated systems. Read this paper to learn how to better collaborate with key stakeholders, qualify suppliers, ensure a competitive bidding process, and negotiate contract terms with suppliers. 

Read this case study to learn how BancVue utilized Sugar Professional to optimize their customer’s business models and extend the base model contract module for improved contract management. Continue reading to learn how BancVue is winning the war against the big banks with the help of Sugar Professional. 

Outsourcing is the quest to offload either commodity or very specialized activities, so that staff can focus on work that truly adds value to the business. 

Read this paper to learn more about HP's business processes services for procurement. 

This whitepaper outlines a five step process that enterprises can apply to their third-party application portfolio to gain visibility into their security state and make informed purchase, integration, deployment and maintenance decisions. 

Sorting through smart phones, PDAs and ruggedized computers for business use is no easy task. Rather than trying to stay on top of all the new products, companies can follow five basic tips to find the best option. This white paper explains these tips and how they can be applied to assist the enterprise mobile computer selection process. 

Economies of scale, flexibility and costreduction – cloud advocates have made sure that we are familiar with these potential benefits, even if we have yet to agree on an exact definition of cloud computing. But doubters argue that none of these benefits will actually be available unless some fundamental security issues can be overcome. 

This global benchmarking study from ESI international identifies the key challenges and successes experienced by project and programme management offices (PMO) and draws recommendations for the future. 

This week’s Computer Weekly contains an exclusive interview with JP Morgan COO India Gary-Martin about juggling multiple legacy IT systems while keeping the merchant bank compliant. We also look at how near-field communications technology promises to revolutionise consumer spending and we ask whether 2012 could be the year that APM becomes vital?