It was just one of twenty panels on a graphic celebrating the 20th anniversary of TechEd in Australia. But it made my blood boil. "'00: Y2K does not happen. Life goes on." I expect that kind of uninformed trolling on forums. I don't expect it at a technical conference.

Shifting apps to the cloud has many advantages, but there's one obvious challenge that keeps some managers wary: how can you get any work done if your internet provider has an outage? As Cash Converters' recent shift to a cloud-based system demonstrates, that's not an insurmountable problem, but it does require careful planning.

Forget leisurely three-year product cycles; the release of Windows Server 2012 R2 next month comes barely a year after the original version. Microsoft is heavily pushing the idea that all its products will be on much faster upgrade cycles, but how are IT pros supposed to manage that process?

The usual reasons for wanting cloud services such as Microsoft Azure to operate Australian data centres are improved latency and the need for data to be on-shore for legal purposes. But if you ask current customers what the best aspect of those plans are, the answer often turns out to be a different issue: geo-redundancy.

Your career as a developer often comes down to simple economics. A presentation during the opening developer keynote at TechEd Australia highlights just how challenging it can be to make money, especially with games.

At TechEd North America back in June, Microsoft created multi-hour queues and an eBay glut by offering the Surface RT for $US99 dollars and the Surface Pro for $US399. Attendees at TechEd Australia this week get a rather less impressive discount: the 64GB Surface RT for $299.