CIOs battle budget cuts

According to a report from local government association Socitm, looming budget cuts now prescribed by all UK parties spell more bad news for local government CIOs, who are doubtful about their ability to deliver the necessary services in the future, states Computing.co.uk.

Council IT departments are already under heavy pressure to reduce costs. The latest Socitm IT Trends Report forecasts that capital spending will fall by 20% in 2010, with central IT spend falling by 8% and staff numbers dropping 10% over the coming year - the largest decrease since Socitm began producing the report in 1986.

Services are already affected as strategic transformational programmes are being reined in through lack of money, according to John Serle, editor of the report.

UC4 Software GmbH has unveiled a product aimed at bringing Web services into an automated workload management framework, reports Virtualisation Review.

The UC4 Agent for Web Services supports WSDL and SOAP protocols and integrates with UC4's V8 automation engine, which was released in May 2009. The product supports legacy on-premises applications, virtualised applications and applications running in cloud-based environments.

It can also work with any service-oriented architecture software at the front end, according to company officials.

Quantum has released data management software, StorNext 4.0, which provides high-speed data sharing and management capabilities to data storage environments, says TechTarget.

Features in StorNext 4.0 include file system data deduplication, data replication, data tiering, timecode-based partial file retrieval and a Web services-based management console.

These features are designed for enterprises with a high rate of data growth and will be available in February.