UK businesses’ number one technology priority is security, according to a new survey by EACS. The IT solutions and managed services provider polled CIOs, IT directors and IT managers, and released the results in a whitepaper entitled Business & Technology Priorities 2016 survey.

Among the top priorities for them are better efficiency, operating results, increased productivity and cutting costs. The study also found one interesting thing -- all IT decision makers agree that no company can be 100 percent safe. That is why disaster recovery is in second place on the list of tech priorities.

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Whilst the popular view of hackers tends to be of outsiders, there's been increasing emphasis in recent years on the threat to enterprise data posed by those inside the organization.

Behavior analytics company RedOwl carried out a survey at last month's Black Hat conference, asking almost 300 security professionals for their views on insider threats, and the results are released today.

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Microsoft has announced that it will be bringing Azure Service Fabric, which allows developers to run and manage microservices, to Linux.

Azure's CTO Mark Russinovich is very enthusiastic about microservices, which the company has been using internally for seven years. Russinovich believes that the vast majority of apps even including enterprise apps will soon be built using this technology.

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The Jenkins open-source automation server is popular with businesses, and is easily extended by community contributions.

But these contributions don't always receive the rigorous testing that enterprises require. Until now that is, Jenkins specialist CloudBees is launching CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise, a verified Jenkins distribution aimed directly at enterprise users.

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Many large enterprises use Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) as their identity platform for managing users and providing secure access to thousands of cloud SaaS and on-premises applications.

Secure access company Ping Identity is announcing a collaboration with Microsoft to deliver integrations that will expand secure remote access and single sign-on (SSO) from any device to more on-premises web applications for Microsoft Azure AD customers.

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Dell EMC continues to offload unwanted divisions within the new company, and the latest victim is its Enterprise Content Division (ECD), including Documentum. They have been acquired by enterprise information management company Opentext.com, for $1.62 billion (£1.22bn).

The transaction is still subject to regulatory approvals, and is expected to close within 90 to 120 days. All software, associated services, and employees of ECD will be integrated into OpenText. OpenText hopes to "further strengthen its vertical offerings, customer base, managed services, and geographical coverage".

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Many businesses don't carry out frequent security testing despite believing that it's critically important to securing their systems and data, according to a new survey.

The study from managed security services company Trustwave and Osterman Research finds that one in five businesses surveyed don't do any security testing, despite the fact that 95 percent of respondents reported encountering common security issues associated with security vulnerabilities.

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IBM introduced a series of new servers dubbed "x86 killers". The devices, designed to give a significant boost to artificial intelligence, deep learning and advanced data analytics, were picked up by the Chinese telecommunications company Tencent, and IBM claims the results are basically out of this world.

"A large cluster of the new IBM OpenPOWER servers was able to run a data-intensive workload three times faster than its former x86-based infrastructure", IBM says in a press release. "While reducing the total number of servers used by two-thirds".

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HP is turning away from Salesforce and Oracle software to run its sales processes and now plans to use Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) software exclusively in its sales and support departments.

The two companies have entered into a six-year contract and plan to roll out Dynamics CRM to 6,500 of HP's sales staff and 20,000 of its support personnel. Though the dollar amount of this deal is still unknown, around 50 percent of the company's workforce will now use Microsoft's software and services to manage their relationships with customers.

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As our world becomes more digital by the day, IT leaders are under ever-increasing pressure to perform in a measurable way. From the demands of cutting costs and modernizing workflows to bolstering security and optimizing cloud migration, their strategic and technical priorities extend into every aspect of the business. On a more comprehensive level, 70 percent of IT leaders regard digital transformation as a top priority within their organization. With so many initiatives demanding their attention, CIOs and IT managers must allocate their time and resources wisely.

Yet there are several challenges that can obstruct the path to modern IT success. In Gartner’s 2016 CIO Agenda Report, the technology research company asked 2,994 CIOs from 84 countries to identify their main barrier as an IT leader. Twenty-two percent of participants responded with skills and resources, while 15 percent pinpointed funding and budgets as their biggest obstacle. The fact of the matter is that IT departments don’t always have the funds and resources they need to truly drive digital transformation and stay on the cutting edge of technology. A company’s available budget reflects an abundance of tireless work and careful strategy, making the question of how to save and maximize hard-earned revenue one of the most pressing issues to affect enterprises across the globe.

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Microsoft keeps adding new features to its Office 365 suite, and now it has made easier for people outside a group to collaborate on files. A new feature, for Office 365 groups, allows people who aren't staff members, or members of a particular group, to join in and collaborate.

Group owners can now use the web version of Outlook to invite non-staff members in.

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The problem with many security solutions is that the number of alerts they generate leads to a good deal of time in investigations, some of which will turn out to be false positives.

Real-time analytics company Corvil is partnering with endpoint security specialist Carbon Black to offer customers unified cyber threat detection, analysis, and response.

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The pressure to move towards using big data can often lead to management practices lagging behind. While storage is managed often data flows aren't, which leads to breakdowns and corruption of the data.

The bigger and more complex the data, the greater the problem becomes. To address this, San Francisco-based StreamSets is launching its Dataflow Performance Manager (DPM), a solution that makes it possible to manage the operations of a company's end-to-end dataflows within a single pane.

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When contracts need to be reviewed, renewed or revised, the process tends to be labor intensive and time consuming.

Contract delivery and analytics specialist Seal Software is launching version 5.0 of its contract analysis software, which uses machine learning to speed up the process. It also includes a new add-in which allows contract data extraction and review capabilities to be used within Microsoft Word.

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They may seem like technology from the days of old, but make no mistake -- desktop printers still can hold an important place in British businesses today. Not only do they help create efficient and flexible printing management, but they also can help keep British office workers at their most productive, rendering them potentially one of the most important products for IT managers in 2016.

The value of desktop printers is often overlooked due to advancements of new printer technology services, including an array of enterprise-orientated features, however, the traditional role of the printer mustn’t be forgotten. Desktop printers intertwined within a multi-device print and document management strategy, whilst also combining bigger multi-function devices with smaller devices, should arguably become commonplace for all managers responsible for their company’s printing activities.

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