Despite the economic recession that started in 2008, many IT service providers didn't see the expected boon to business in 2009. Some outsourcers struggled to a degree alongside the rest of the high-tech industry, but IT services experts say they started to see a return to growth toward the end of 2009. That means 2010 could find many outsourcing providers taking advantage of hot technology trends such as cloud computing to sell their services into smaller IT shops. Mike Slavin, partner and practice leader for Global IT Advisory Services at outsourcing industry advisory and consulting firm TPI, shares his take on the coming year and the outsourcing industry with Network World Senior Editor Denise Dubie.

Last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said during the company's earnings call that Google had implemented about 120 search quality improvements during the third quarter as it moves toward its ultimate goal: "We want to get to the perfect search engine."

Earlier this year, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak accepted the position of chief scientist at start-up solid state drive company Fusion-io. It's the first time since 1972, when he worked in Hewlett-Packard Co's calculator division, that he's held a technologist's position for a company that wasn't his own.

During his keynote speech at the Society for Information Management's SIMposium 08 conference in the US, author Nicholas Carr drew an analogy between cloud computing and the transition that manufacturers made from generating their own power to relying on utilities in the early 20th century.

Now that EMC has purchased deduplication technology leader Data Domain, its reseller agreements with the likes of FalconStor Software Inc. and Quantum Corp. for the same type of single-instancing technology could be in jeopardy. Quantum resells both its tape libraries and dedupe software through EMC, sales that amount to less than 10% of its revenue.

CIOs think of Symantec as a company that buys its way into new markets. Over the past decade the Cupertino, California, vendor has snatched up about 30 companies as it's evolved from an antivirus and tools seller to an aspiring enterprise infrastructure vendor.

Do you love Microsoft Corp.'s recent TV ads? Hate its "Apple Tax" marketing campaign? Then meet Brad Brooks. As Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows consumer product marketing, Brooks approved both campaigns as part of his goal of burnishing Windows 7's image in advance of its October launch (and tarnishing Apple's).

Security experts say it all the time: If a company thinks it has suffered a data security breach, the key to getting at the truth unscathed is to have a response plan in place for what needs to be done and who needs to be in charge of certain tasks. And, as SANS Institute instructor Lenny Zeltser advised in CSOonline's recent How to Respond to an Unexpected IT Security Incident article, "ask lots and lots of questions" before making rash decisions.

Computerworld's investigations into the most widely-used programming languages continues as we chat with Giancarlo Niccolai the creator of the Falcon programming language.

The DataPortability Project tasted early fame in January 2008 when an indignant Robert Scoble joined the group after Facebook canceled the tech celebrity's account for exporting his friends list to Plaxo.

Linus Torvalds is a regular visitor to Australia in January. He comes out for some sunshine and to attend the annual linux.conf.au organised by Linux Australia. He took some time out to speak to Rodney Gedda about a host of topics including point releases, filesystems, what it is like switching to GNOME, and puts Windows 7 in perspective.

Australian Geoff Huston is one of the foremost authorities on Internet routing and scaling issues. We sent Huston, a former Chief Scientist, Telstra Internet, a few questions about the U.S. government's plan to bolster R&D to secure the Internet's core routing protocol, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Here are excerpts of from what Huston had to say:

Craig Barrett spent decades using his business skills to make Intel the world's most powerful semiconductor company. He has now turned his attention to an even bigger challenge -- spreading computers and education throughout the developing world.

We recently got the opportunity to interview Eugene Kaspersky, the man behind Kaspersky Anti Virus. Here's what he had to say about the evolution of malware, the future of cybersecurity, the problems with the internet, and more.