Today’s economic climate means IT departments are under pressure to deliver both never-fail applications and service levels that meet business needs, while also reducing costs. 

In this week’s Computer Weekly, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude talks about releasing government datasets to the public and why open data will drive the next industrial revolution. We also review the latest test version of Windows 8 and see how it shapes up for tablet computers and business users and much more. 

In just a half hour, we can show you how the web-based QuickBase from Intuit offers a refreshingly powerful, flexible and affordable solution for busy teams to better manage projects, information and processes. 

Enterprises can take control of the burgeoning number of unsanctioned spreadsheets by adopting a policy of centralized master spreadsheet generation. Learn how WebFOCUS creates fully summarized, organized, and styled Excel spreadsheets with complex formulas already in place, lowering the potential for keystroke and logic error. 

The combination of the ever-changing compliance landscape, Web 2.0 and technologies such as mobile devices have made it increasingly more difficult to track where your confidential data resides and put mechanisms in place to protect it. 

This analyst report from Freeform Dynamics gives helpful advice for companies embarking on Desktop Virtualisation projects. 

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. 

This edition of BI Trends and Strategies opens with a piece by Lou Agosta on the need for data warehouses to adapt to new data types, innovation and big data. Alan R. Earls also offers advice for incorporating spreadsheets into your BI programs without problems and Richard Herschel calls for universities to step up their BI and analytics programs. 

Read this white paper and learn about the business challenges and risks in existing manual ‘last mile’ processes dependent on different version spreadsheets, word processing files and unsecured emails, and the benefits and the value of automating ‘last mile’ processes. 

If you’re like most midsize companies, the only way to grow the business is by being smarter and nimbler than the next guy. Watch this short video to see how you can be instantly executing your business strategy based on the latest, most accurate information, while the other guys are still trying to figure out exactly what just happened. 

This special eight-page indepent report from Computer Weekly, packed with graphs and diagrams, is essential reading for anyone doing business, or thinking of doing business with EMC.