Don't look now but the IT economy might be starting to change for the better, even if most end users seem to be still pretty frustrated with IT.

Survey from CDW Finds IT Staffing and Spending on the Rise
After falling to lowest level in April, a monthly survey of IT customers conducted by CDW indicates that hiring and spending is now rising consistently thanks to mid-market customers. A similar survey conducted by CareerBuilder.com finds escalating demand for IT personnel, while JobFox.com recently identified what amounts to recession-proof IT jobs. This is likely to further exacerbate the current IT skills shortage and may even put some pressure on IT salaries that have been relatively stagnant of late. Of course, there are those people--especially older workers--that are finding it hard to find work for a multitude of reasons. That all said, don't be surprised if globalization continues to affect the supply and demand equation regardless of the current value of the dollar.

Research Finds that Most Users Think IT Resists Adoption of New Technology
There appears to be a growing rift between end users that want more access to new technologies and conservative IT organizations that basically equate new technology with risk. Of course, in these times cutting the IT budget starting with the acquisition of new technology is always something to be considered. But here's why managing the IT budget is a whole lot better idea than simply cutting it.

Green IT Gains Momentum
Driven largely by the need to cut costs more than saving the environment, IT organizations are taking more interest in green computing initiatives even as our ability to cut power consumption seems to be challenged. In the meantime, Hewlett-Packard has become the latest vendor to roll out a modular data center architecture that promises to be more energy-efficient.

Bevy of Applications Debut for the New Apple iPhone
A new wave of applications from companies such as Oracle, Salesforce.com and Google should propel that Apple iPhone into enterprise computing. For a list of some of the most compelling iPhone applications, click here, or go to the iPhone application store that is starting to look like a new model for software distribution. Of course, the iPhone configuration tool still needs some work, but you can always turn to new tools that promise to make it easier for IT to manage smart phones or connect the iPhone up to Microsoft Exchange servers.

Mud Flies during Congressional Testimony over Google-Yahoo Alliance
Anti-trust allegations seem to be flying every where during this week's testimony, but whether anything meaningful actually transpired is doubtful. The real news of the day is how Yahoo will keep users anonymous from Google so the whole issue seems to be increasingly moot. Meanwhile, the whole soap opera over Yahoo appears to be going no where as well.

The Sopranos Have Nothing on Cyber-Crime Families
As it is with any illicit set of organized activities, it's only a matter of time before an oligarchy emerges. Of course, once that happens it also becomes easier to infiltrate them because at least we now might know who these people are. Meanwhile, Microsoft is readying new versions of its Forefront security offering and Symantec opened up beta trials for its 2009 offerings.

Software-as-a-Service Creates Licensing Challenges for IT
Everybody seems to like the fewer up front hassles that this approach to delivering software provides, but experts are warning the licensing terms can prove to be expensive down the road. In the meantime, the general process of migrating to SaaS models is creating an opportunity for folks in the channel even as they wrangle with vendors such as Symantec over who should control the license renewal process.

Software Oriented Architecture Projects Top $52 Billion by 2012
After 25 years of effort, it looks like SOA is finally going main stream. But there are others that say that parallel processing is going to change our whole approach to building back office applications.