With the unified communications market already hard at work digesting the significance of Microsoft’s recently announced strategic pact with Polycom, rumours are emerging that Cisco is preparing to spring a surprise bid for Internet phone operator Skype.

According to TechCrunch, Cisco made a formal offer to acquire Skype just before the company’s recent SEC filing of its intent to make an initial public offering (IPO). Read the full story

Dell’s attempt to establish itself as a go-to supplier of cloud storage infrastructure is hanging in the balance this morning as the market waits to see if it will continue to bid against HP for control of 3PAR. Dell must decide today if it will counter HP’s latest bid $30 per share offer for 3PAR, but financial analysts expect it to back down in the face of HP’s deeper financial resources. Read the full story

There still seems little chance that the UK will see 4G wireless services launched anytime soon, but anyone planning to travel down under for the Ashes will get the chance to see live HSPA+ – courtesy of Telstra.

The Australian Telco (and former national PTO) switched on the world’s first commercially available High Speed Packet Access + services on Monday, and claimed that early users could expect to enjoy wireless downloads at speeds of “upto 20 Mbps.” Read the full story

In what is almost certain to be the biggest IT security announcement of the year, Intel has announced plans to acquire McAfee in a $7.6 billion move designed to harden the security of the mobile Internet.

The deal is expected to lead to the widespread deployment of embedded security features in smartphones and other handheld Internet terminals. Intel says this will prevent the mobile Internet falling victim to the same levels of malware penetration that have afflicted the PC world. Read the full story

Microsoft has announced a multi-year strategic partnership with Polycom, the unified communications and video-conferencing pioneer, which promises to intensify both companies’ already fierce competition with Cisco.

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The growing corporate interest in application security products and testing services has prompted HP to step in and acquire its former partner in the market, Fortify Software. HP has paid an undisclosed sum for Fortify which has been working with HP to integrate its static app’ testing systems with HP’s dynamic, web-based app’ vulnerability testing services since last June. Read the full story

As the UK’s premier IT infrastructure technology conference and exhibition IP EXPO has always been the ‘go to’ event for state-of-the-art virtualization technology. This year’s show will be no exception, not least because IP EXPO 2010 is set to be the first UK event to showcase VMware’s latest infrastructure technology – a network hypervisor. Read the full story

Sean Kelley, global CIO of Deutsche Bank, has been elected chairman of the Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council (ECLC), a cross-industry body created by the TM Forum, an international association of cloud infrastructure and services providers whose membership includes AT&T, BT, Cisco, IBM and Microsoft.

The TM Forum has so far done little to raise its profile outside of its tight-knit community of major networked service and technology vendors, but its creation of the ECLC, and the appointment of such as senior figure from the user community to lead it, is evidence that it plans to take a leading role in creating a structured market for cloud services.

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O2 has signaled its intent to cash in on its market leading position in mobile data services market, and withdrawn unlimited data bundling from its service portfolio. The move is a shock for the 3% of O2 customers whose unlimited data access became a premium service on July 12^th, and its impact is likely to be monitored closely but the company’s competitors who are also keen the raise the profitability of their costly wireless data infrastructure.

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A storage industry breakthrough was unveiled today after four storage vendors came together to collaborate on a common mission: to promote active archives and simplify online access to all archived data.

I’m proud to join executives from QStar, Compellent, FileTek and my own organization, Spectra Logic, in announcing the formation of the Active Archive Alliance. Read the full story