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. 

While some larger organizations continue to manage internal data center, many business managers are able to increase service levels, cover more users, and lower response times by outsourcing their out-dated server farms to third-party data centers and cloud computing providers. This white paper will define data centers and explore cloud networking. 

In this week's special issue of Computer Weekly, we reveal the UKtech50 - our list of the 50 most influential people in UK IT. This year's winner is Mike Lynch, CEO of Autonomy, who talks in an exclusive interview about his hopes for the UK technology industry, and life at HP since the company's 7bn GBP acquisition. Download the new issue now. 

This white paper reviews the results from a survey of 200 IT professionals that can help you optimize your cloud’s security. Key findings suggest that security plays a foundational role in the decision to implement a private cloud, protecting platform and infrastructure resources are top concerns and security drives outsourcing decisions. 

Nearly 95 percent of organisations buy, provide or both buy and provide outsourced services and functions, in which they face inherent risks created by new and unforeseen challenges. 

Cloud computing is one of the latest computer and business industry buzz words. This paper will discuss the definition of cloud computing, the public or external cloud, the private or internal cloud, the evolution of cloud computing and more. 

Check out this E-Guide for key considerations when drawing up a DR plan and to learn how the cloud can work into such a strategy. You'll also learn what types of organizations can most benefit from DR in the cloud. Read on to learn more. 

Consolidating infrastructure servers across several business locations can reduce management costs, improve availability and help you transition towards a greener IT environment.  This white paper examines how one IT organisation accomplished this goal by deploying Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 Datacenter Edition across all 12 of its locations. 

Content provided by Google. This paper examines whether cloud computing makes good business sense for your company. Ultimately, you may find that moving your data to the cloud actually improves security, scalability, access, and disaster recovery. 

The Corporate Executive Board IT Budget Benchmarking Survey assess IT spending,  staffing, and outsourcing levels at more than 175 organizations globally, representing roughly US$38 billion in IT spend. Download for the latest IT budget trends. 

Consolidation, outsourcing and cloud computing are just a few of the business initiatives driving IT organizations to focus on data security. Companies have moved beyond securing the network perimeter and made strengthening security controls around data a top priority. Read this whitepaper to learn more. 

In this week's Computer Weekly, we hear from Visa Europe CIO Steve Chambers on the technology behind the credit card transactions that retailers rely on. We examine the challenges facing the government's G-Cloud project; and we ask how Microsoft will cope when customers no longer want to purchase software licences. Download the new issue now.