Stories by Rohan Pearce

Syntheo will hand construction of the National Broadband Network in the Northern Territory to NBN Co, the company announced this morning.

Lightweight Acer and Samsung notebooks running Google's 'cloud' operating system — Chrome OS — are available from today in Australian retailers.

Australian defence and national security organisations are "drowning in the data" they generate, Brenton Cooper from the Defence Systems Innovation Centre told a Canberra summit on big data today.

The Australian Antarctic Division is seeking to upgrade its network storage system. The scientific organisation, which is a division of the federal department of the environment, is grappling with an explosion of data, with production data growing at rate of 60 per cent per year since 2007.

Gartner is predicting that spending on public cloud services in Australia will grow 23.08 per cent this year, reaching US$3.2 billion.

headspace, a Melbourne-based government-funded foundation that offers mental health services for people aged 12-25, is seeking a chief information officer.

The Australian Internet service provider (ISP) market has continued to go through a process of consolidation. Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in October 2012 revealed that the number of 'medium'-sized ISPs — those with 1000-10,000 customers — dropped 25 per cent in the space of a year. ISPs with more than 100,000 customers dropped from 10 to eight in the same period.

Sydney's Mardi Gras is the highest profile annual event in Australia for members of the country's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex communities. And although the event has its origins as a political protest, and some parade participants still take aim at the inequalities and violence suffered by non-heterosexual people in Australia, it's also big business.

“Linux is here in the prime time,” according to IDC Australia research director Matt Oostveen. The analyst, speaking at the Sydney leg of SuseConf Australia, said that the operating system is “accelerating in the Australian marketplace”.

ACT Senator Kate Lundy, the minister assisting for industry and innovation, believes that the roll out of the National Broadband Network will help Gov 2.0 initiatives flourish.

Optus has issued a statement indicating that the telco's mobile network is operational in "major population centres" in Queensland and northern New South Wales.

Queensland's Friendly Society Private Hospital will go with Epicor's enterprise resource planning software, the vendor announced today.

Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet, which will be capable of running regular Windows 8 desktop applications, will be available in the US and Canada from 9 February. However, Microsoft is yet to reveal details of Surface Pro's Australian release.

Free Wi-Fi access points will be available for commuters at bus interchanges in Darwin and the suburbs of Palmerston and Casuarina in the Northern Territory under a program to begin in mid-February.

The chief of Zendesk's local operation, Michael Hansen, says the helpdesk software-as-a-service provider wants to "double everything" over the next 12 months. "We're going to double everything here in Australia," the company's Asia-Pacific managing director said. "Double the customers, double the development centre, double our revenue."