HP has updated several of its automation lines in a bid to improve IT and service management for customers.

The company said that it would be adding new capabilities and features to its Server Automation, Operations Orchestrator, Database and Middleware Automation, and Cloud Service Automation lines. The updates will include new components for managing virtualised servers as well as improved components for the distribution of patching. Additionally, the company will release tools for automating database and middleware.

A fourth platform, Cloud Service Automation, will allow administrators to automate day-to-day tasks associated with running cloud services.

Manoj Raisinghani, senior director of worldwide product marketing for HP cloud automation software and software as a service (SaaS), told V3 that the aim of the platform was to give administrators a single management system for running automation practices and policies.

“IT has started to become a broker of services. There needs to be consistency in the way IT is driving tools to the market,” he said.

Likewise, the update of the Server Automation platform is designed to help companies cope with the heightened demand for server virtualisation and provisioning as well as server lifecycle management. By helping to streamline many of the day-to-day processes associated with server management, HP aims to help administrators better handle growing demand.

“They are taking a 30 to 40 percent virtualisation and going to 80 to 90,” Raisinghani explained. “And the amount of time they are giving themselves is six months to one year.”

Microsoft has added integration for Google’s Chat platform into Outlook.com, in a rare co-operative effort between two firms vying for search and web application dominance.

Redmond said on Tuesday that it would be allowing users to access Google Chat directly from their Outlook.com and SkyDrive pages. The platform will use the OAuth syncing protocol to connect with Google Chat and pull contact information to the Microsoft communications platform.

Once synced, users will be able to connect with and message friends on Google Chat through their Outlook.com homepages.

The move marks a rarely-seen gesture of co-operation between what has become one of the web’s most heated corporate rivalries. With Microsoft’s move into the search market with Bing and cloud application space with Office 365, the two firms find themselves directly competing on platforms ranging from communications apps to productivity suites.

That competition has been heated in the past, and Microsoft’s ‘Scroogled’ campaign essentially accused Google of selling off user data wholesale to third-party advertisers.

According to Microsoft, however, the Google Chat integration was less about outreach to Google than an effort to accommodate new users who have fled Gmail for Outlook.com. In a company blog post, Microsoft’s group program manager for connected services Douglas Pearce said that the company has similar integration components with other social networking platforms.

“You see this in the People experience, where you connect to your contact lists from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more,” he explained. “And you can already chat with your Facebook and Skype friends. But we heard that some of you who switched over from Gmail still want to chat with friends stuck on Gmail.”

The city of Boston has announced that it will ditch Microsoft’s communication software by moving its school and government workers to Google Apps.

Boston’s chief operating officer Bill Oates says the move will allow the city to modernise and reduce total overhead. However, Microsoft representatives say the switch will leave Boston with a poorly secured infrastructure.

“This decision represents an important step forward for the City,” said Oates.

“We want to equip all city employees with easy-to-use tools that allow them be more productive and innovative in their jobs, as well as a system that can scale to keep up with the city’s demands.”

The switch to Google will see Boston city workers start to use Gmail, Hangouts, Drive, and Docs. Workers will be migrated from previous on-site solutions such as Microsoft Exchange and Symantec Vault.

City officials predict that the move to Google’s cloud will reduce annual expenses by over 30 percent. The city’s current Microsoft services cost Boston an average of $8.25 per user each month.

However, Microsoft said the decision to go with Google could lead to future security and privacy concerns.

“We believe the citizens of Boston deserve cloud productivity tools that protect the security and privacy of their data,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement sent into V3.

“Google’s investments in these areas are inadequate and they lack the proper protections most organizations require.”

Microsoft’s harsh words continue its lengthy PR battle with the search giant. Last Month, Redmond went after Google Apps. During one of its ‘Scroogled’ ad campaigns, the firm accused its competitor of sharing user’s personal information with developers.

Earlier this year, Microsoft also shot barbs at Gmail. Last February, Microsoft accused Google of skimming through its users email in a bid to offer up improved targeted ads.

V3 contacted Google for a statement on the news. However, the search giant had no comment at the time of publication.

While businesses are increasingly taking to the public cloud in an effort to lower costs, Transport for London (TfL) has said it has no plans to follow suit.

In an interview with V3, TfL chief information officer Steve Townsend said moving IT services or infrastructure to the public cloud was strictly off the IT agenda for the foreseeable future.

“The public cloud is not something we’re considering,” said Townsend. “When you want the public cloud to have certain limitations, then the service becomes less flexible and there is more cost associated with it.”

Townsend suggested that complying with data regulations would mean that opting for a cloud service would not cut costs for TfL.

“When I have conversations with public cloud providers, I find that I need to know, for instance, where congestion charging data is being stored, how it is backed up and who has access to it. Often then the cost becomes prohibitive as you are essentially turning what is a public cloud back into a prohibitive private cloud,” he said.

However Townsend said TfL is making increasing use of the private cloud within its IT infrastructure. “There is definitely room for cloud-based services in the organisation. We are already using the Microsoft Azure platform for predictive services,” he noted.

“We provision train data so [outside] developers can take it and create apps that tell people when the next train is. We provision that data through the cloud so developers can easily reuse it.”

Townsend also spoke to V3 about TfL’s increasing use of big data analytics to improve transport services for Londoners. “TfL has always held the view that data is valuable but it has not always been called big data. Since the Olympic Games, we have been using big data more than ever before to look at how we can further improve business processes,” he said.

For example Townsend said analysing past data on escalator upgrades in tube and train stations may mean TfL can carry out similar projects in the future more efficiently, without the need for closing whole stations for long periods of time.

Townsend also said TfL is using big data analytics in order to run more trains per hour. “Train lines used to run 25 trains per hour as standard but now some lines, like the Jubilee and Victoria, are running 30 trains per hour,” he explained.

“Increasing the number of trains is a complex process and we have to analyse a wide range of data from dispatches information, to the number of drivers we have available on one day, to the maintenance work there is planned. Also too many trains per hour can mean the trains cannot move as fast, so this correlation also has to be analysed.

“We know we have to move more people around London on a daily basis. As we continue to upgrade, we will further use big data techniques to increase the trains per hour.”

IT departments are engaging more with the rest of their businesses, but there is still room for improvement on delivering the resources required to meet objectives, according to findings published by Cisco.

The results are from a global survey of 1,300 IT decision makers across 13 countries and paint a mixed picture for IT professionals.

Although 63 percent of respondents said they are confident that IT can respond to business needs, 76 percent said that companies sometimes worked around the IT department to roll out new applications without its involvement.

The survey also appears to show that the corporate network is holding back progress in many cases, with many IT professionals claiming that their network is not ready for data centre consolidation or moving work to the cloud. Reasons given for holding up the successful rollout of new applications included not enough budget (34 percent of respondents), not enough staff (25 percent) and network limitations (26 percent).

Despite this (or perhaps because of it), 71 percent of IT decision makers indicated that they planned to deploy software-defined networking (SDN) solutions this year. Chief reasons for doing so are to enable automated provisioning, while 33 percent said they expected SDN to deliver savings.

The growth in importance of the cloud can be seen by the fact that one in five respondents said that none of their applications were cloud-based a year ago, while two thirds indicated that up to 20 percent of their applications were cloud-based within the same timeframe.

About half of respondents pointed to data protection or availability and reliability of cloud services as the major roadblocks to successful implementation of a cloud strategy.

Overall, Cisco’s report concludes that greater alignment is needed between IT planning and business requirements. This being Cisco, network transformation is also highlighted as a key need to deliver application and business transformation, with any plans for growth and innovation being tied to network readiness and adoption of new technologies.

The survey included IT decision makers from companies in the UK and other major European economies, the US, China, Russia, Brazil, India Australia and Japan.

The May issue of the V3 Tablet App is now available for download for the iPad via the Apple App Store, with this edition focusing on cloud computing and its impact on the world of enterprise IT.

You can get your hands on it by simply registering free on the V3 website and using your login details to download the issue when prompted. And best of all, there’s no charge for the app if you’re a V3 subscriber.

This issue includes an in-depth feature on OpenStack based on an interview with Rackspace chief technology officer John Engates, discussing why he believes the technology is posing a serious threat to the likes of VMware in the cloud space.

Looking to the past, and the IT history section focuses on the instrumental role the Hotmail email service played in helping the world embrace the concept of cloud computing by making us comfortable with accessing services through the web.

Elsewhere, we spoke exclusively to the chief operating officer of HP, Bill Veghte, to discuss the future strategies for HP as it seeks to haul itself out of the mire that has blighted the company over the past few years.

After the huge outpouring of love for Windows XP after its one-year support cut-off date passed, we also assess some of the options open to firms considering life beyond the platform in our top 10 section.

Lastly, but by no means least, there’s the head-to-head review the world has been waiting for: the iPhone 5 against the Samsung Galaxy S4. We compare both phones based on a number of criteria to see which deserves the smartphone crown – you’ll have to download it to find out the winner.

As if all this wasn’t enough, there’s also the usual mix of our news analysis from the past month, a light-hearted look at some of the more silly stories that hit the headlines and views from our maverick guest CEO writer – all delivered in a rich, interactive format.

You can get the issue free if you have registered on the V3 website. Registering is free and only takes two minutes. Simply use the same website login details to get the app when prompted to download it.