This week’s Computer Weekly kicks off our Buyer's Guide to data security by looking at the changing role of the IT security chief. We also examine why flexible working is proving so slow to roll out and we talk to the UK's air traffic control operator about its ambitious desktop virtualisation project. 

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. 

Increasing numbers of companies are evaluating a two-tier enterprise resource planning (ERP) strategy; running separate lower-cost regional solutions for small-tomidsize subsidiaries, despite, in many cases, already rolling out a global ERP system. 

Gartner analysts, William Clark, David W Cearley and Avivah Litan, explain how business can exploit context-aware computing and social media. 

Gartner research director, Valdis Filks, offers tips to help businesses get to grips with escalating storage costs. 

This article from Gartner offers advice to public sector organisations thinking of deploying cloud computing and assess the progress made by governments in their use of the cloud. 

This tip e-guide from SearchCRM.com features insight from Gartner's 2011 Magic Quadrant for social customer relationship management (CRM). Read this now to learn what challenges are cropping up in CRM, how social media is affecting CRM strategies and what the future of social CRM looks like. 

Most organizations with application performance issues haven't developed the process and organization to take advantage of application delivery technologies many already own. Gartner outlines three phases to help IT organizations deliver better application performance. 

The demand for greater ecommerce capabilities is growing leading CIOs and IT professionals concerned with choosing the perfect vendor. Through this in-depth vendor analysis by Gartner, uncover the top 6 questions you should ask and the strengths and weaknesses of the top 20 e-commerce vendors. 

<p>Take a look at this Gartner Magic Quadrant for an in-depth comparison of numerous employee performance management (EPM) systems. Learn about the strengths and weaknesses of each and uncover who comes out on top.</p> 

Secure Sockets Layer virtual private networks compose a mature market segment, serving a variety of VPN use cases for workstations and mobile-device remote access. In this Magic Quadrant, Gartner examines the role of SSL VPNs in remote access and the state of the market. 

Deep inspection network-based intrusion prevention continues to be a due-diligence security control. The near-term future of the intrusion prevention system market will be determined by the pace of innovation of another market: next-generation firewalls. Explore Gartner's evaluation of network IPS that places McAfee in the leaders' quadrant.