Container DCs to slash costs

The island partly responsible for slashing the cost of personal computers has set its sights on the cloud, seeking to halve the price of the massive data centres required for the growing world of online services, writes PC World.

Taiwan's publicly funded Industrial Technology Research Institute aims to create standards for building data centres inside 6.1-meter shipping containers, an idea popularised by Sun Microsystems in 2006 with its Project Blackbox.

As the use of containerised data centres has gained ground, companies such as Microsoft have highlighted a need for standard components inside those standard containers. The Taiwanese researchers are responding to that need, and hope to end up with a standardised container data centre that costs around half of today's systems, is easier to use, and saves energy.

The revival of M&A activity is fuelling a growth in demand for business change and transformation specialists, a new jobs report has found, says Computerworld.

In its 'Professional talent spotlight, May 2010' report, recruitment consultancy Badenoch & Clark said the pick-up in M&A activity means more businesses are looking to consolidate existing systems, and are particularly seeking IT staff with SAP integrated planning skills.

However, business change skills are not the only ones seeing an increase in demand. Market data specialists and IT professionals' business intelligence skills are also seeing a rise in demand for reasons ranging from cost control to business growth.

A month after upgrading its field management and inventory planning software, ServiceCEO offers a Web-based version of the solution, with subscriptions starting at $99 a month, states eWeek.

ServiceCEO, a provider of field service management software, has released ServiceCEO Web Edition with features designed to improve scheduling efficiency and business planning.

Also new in ServiceCEO Web Edition is a job analysis tool, which provides detailed reports of completed and scheduled jobs by any number of criteria, such as type, zone, crew and parts. The solution is currently available worldwide with subscriptions starting at $99 per month.