Another confirmation of the heading IT departments are taking this year comes to us from tech giants Toshiba. After an extensive research into business practices in IT departments across Europe, it was found that cloud-based solutions (56 percent) and data security (50 percent) remain the biggest areas of investment for IT departments in the country this year.

The research shows results of a poll of 400 senior IT decision makers in the UK, France and Germany.

Businesses are under increasing pressure to replace legacy storage with cloud and hybrid options in order to modernize their infrastructure and cut costs.

Migrating data presents a number of challenges and IT teams are turning to automation in order to address them. We spoke to Jonathan Huberman, CEO of specialist in the hybrid enterprise file sync and share market, Syncplicity, to find out more about how enterprises can move their data smoothly and make it available across a number of devices.

Depending on the day, Apple or Alphabet is the world's most valuable company as measured by market cap, and both manage the two dominant computing platforms used anywhere: iOS/OS X and Android/Chrome OS, respectively. As I write, Alphabet-subsidiary Google holds its annual developer conference. Apple's event starts June 13.

During the opening keynote, Google CEO Sundar Pichai frames the conference and the company's direction by rightly focusing on two fundamentally future-forward concepts: Voice and context. Google gets what Apple likely won't present to its developers, and we'll know next month. But based on product priority to date, the fruit-logo company is unlikely to match its rival's commitment to the next user interface.

Security experts at McAfee have unveiled a new cyber-security education hub, aimed at making people stay safer online. It is called the Ultimate Guide to Security Threats.

The security firm decided to create the hub after realizing that many people are still fairly uneducated when it comes to cyber-security. At the same time, cyber-crime is growing at an unprecedented rate.

Industry predictions suggest that the world cloud market will exceed $250 billion by 2020, but a new report shows that as cloud investment grows so do security concerns.

Crowd Research Partners has released the results of its 2016 Cloud Security Spotlight Report, created in conjunction with leading cloud security vendors Alien Vault, Bitglass, Cato Networks, CloudPassage, Dell Software, Dome9 Security, IMMUNIO, (ISC)2 and Randtronics.

If you're a fan of keeping notes and lists then you really have two main choices -- Evernote and Microsoft's OneNote. Both can be good methods of keeping track of things. For instance, keep a tab open in your browser to add items to a grocery list as you think of them, then arrive at the store and the list is on your phone.

Now Evernote is teaming up with another powerhouse in business, Google. The company is announcing that it will work with the search giant's cloud storage service, Drive.

Businesses are under increasing pressure to improve their customer experiences and make more effective use of their digital communication channels.

Yet new research from apps, data development and integration company Progress shows that 62 percent of respondents believe their business is in denial about the need to transform digitally.

Switching to a cloud-based solution, either public, private or hybrid, can result in reduced cost, better data security and improve the overall bottom line, but only if it comes with a solid strategy, VMTurbo says.

The application performance control platform company says businesses will fail to realize the benefits of a cloud-based approach to business without a proper strategy. It has come to that conclusion following a poll of 1,368 organizations, where 57 percent said they had no multi-cloud strategy, 35 percent no private cloud strategy, and 28 percent no public cloud strategy.

It was reported on Friday morning that Microsoft has invested in Pivotal, a San Francisco-based cloud-computing company. Besides Microsoft, Ford was also announced as a major investor.

The media reported that Pivotal’s Series C funding round hit $253 million, with Ford contributing with $182.2 million. It is not known exactly how much money Microsoft poured into the company. We do know, however, that the company’s value now sits at $2.8 billion.

The fast-changing IT environment of today is forcing companies to reconsider their approach to IT, as they believe that can help them stand out in the crowd of their competitors.

However, the process is quite challenging. Those are the general conclusions of a new research released by managed services provider Claranet.

Microsoft has upgraded its Operations Management Suite and has made a new preview of System Center 2016 available, in an effort to aid system administrators in tackling the increasingly complex cloud environments and data center resources.

The company’s System Center is as a suite of systems management tools, that includes System Center Configuration Manager and System Center Operations Manage, all aiming to help companies manage on-premises data centers. Operations Management Suite on the other hand, is designed to aid companies in gaining control of hybrid cloud environments.

Just because your data is stored in the cloud is no reason to stop backing it up. While cloud service providers are responsible for making your data available, they’re not responsible for managing and protecting customers' data from accidental or malicious behavior.

As a recent survey showed accidental deletion by users is a major source of data loss from the cloud. Now the company behind that survey, Spanning, is launching a solution for Microsoft Office 365 OneDrive for Business users.

The idea of the cloud is finally starting to take off amongst the masses. No longer are consumers afraid of the security risks that could possibly lie within the cloud, for there are countless measures that can be taken, which actually make the cloud more secure than traditional systems. That being said, we can expect that a widespread adoption of cloud computing is just around the corner -- as it should be.

Backing up sensitive information to the cloud, data storage, cloud computing -- regardless of the use, the basic premise of the cloud remains the same: a system of virtualized network servers that combined create a centralized ecosystem which enables access to various resources and services, as well as data storage. At the heart of the cloud -- the ability to store, organize access and manage data in an effortless fashion.

At the top end of the smartphone market the likes of Apple and Samsung are competing to offer the latest technology. But down at the lower priced end of things, for people who want a smartphone on a budget, there are a swathe of Chinese makers competing for your cash.

Set aside your techno-snobbery and many of these phones turn out to be surprisingly good for the price. The latest to come our way is the Oukitel K4000 Pro. It's a 64-bit, quad-core, 4G phone with a five-inch screen, running last-but-one Android 5.1 Lollipop and costing less that $150. Its key selling point though is that it's designed to be tough. On paper the spec looks impressive but how does it stack up in the real world?

Enterprises of all sizes have become increasingly reliant on file syncing and sharing services. But for smaller companies business focused services can be expensive, leaving them reliant on free consumer services that offer limited space and functions.

Backup and storage specialist Datto is launching a new inexpensive yet powerful file sync and share (FSS) service leveraging the low cost basis of the company's 200 petabyte (PB) private cloud, coupled with a global license agreement with ownCloud, an established open-source leader in the FSS industry.