Take almost a million developers, motivate them with tricky problems, the sense of community, and a decentralised system, and you will get working software.

Many firms are looking beyond the enterprise resource planning market for human resources (HR) solutions, heralding a new direction in HR product selection.

Gone are the days in which an employee only needed one skill in the workplace. The trend now is towards the understanding of many disciplines in order for a job to be done efficiently.

This week: Hackers find their way into Microsoft`s Holiest of Holies, demand for Sun`s StarOffice code causes major server crash, and dot-com start-ups are a ready-made market for fraudsters.

The announcement that AT&T is to split up into four units, as well as a plethora of quarterly results dominated international IT news headlines last week.

Now, more than ever before, our country needs a new generation of managers and exceptional leaders who can take the established companies of yesterday into the future of tomorrow.

Some readers responded to last week`s Double Take with varying levels of outrage at my marginalisation of Java as a serious enterprise contender. Is it ready to challenge Cobol?

This week: Banks must up systems security, SMEs are likely targets for Internet attacks, the kakworm is still on the rampage, and an extortion attempt gets man 18 months in jail.

A host of financial results dominated local and international IT news headlines last week, with even more to follow this week.

Polished personal communication and interpersonal skills can prove invaluable when facing conflict in the workplace, allowing problems to be overcome as soon as possible and ensuring a happy workforce.

Cobol is like concrete - it forms great foundations, you can build high-capacity constructions from it, but man, is it ugly!

This week: Militant hacker causes damage beyond repair, Interpol "overwhelmed" by wave of cybercrime, giving criminals ulterior-motive cellphones, and a young Canadian may not even phone home.

Major local IT news during the past two weeks included Accord Technologies` VAT woes and the formal news of the "merger" of MGX Holdings and CCH.