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In 2008, a UK-based Adobe Acrobat engineer remarked, "I believe in striving to minimize the use of paper, but I do believe that we will probably never reach a position where paper is eliminated from our workplaces." This morning, his predictions were clearly confirmed by a study published by the information professionals organization AIIM.

The study shows that while the exchange of PDF files as e-mail attachments has reduced the volume of paperwork traded between IT professionals, that reduction is not only minimal, but quite possibly made up for. Over three-quarters of IT professionals surveyed say one of the first things they do with a PDF-based invoice... is print it out.

Ever since human beings landed on the moon, the state of technology in government appeared to be on a downward slope. Never mind that it was really the U.S. Government that facilitated the original Internet; in public sector offices, the state of computing started lagging behind the private sector ever since IBM mass-produced the microcomputer.

That slope may have bottomed out two years ago, with the urgent need to cut costs, reform practices and save jobs leading to an extraordinarily rapid adoption by federal and state governments of private cloud infrastructure. Now a government IT survey commissioned by MeriTalk, and funded by Microsoft and NetApp, reveals the extent of progress: Among just the agencies whose IT managers were surveyed, federal, state and local governments report saving a total of about $15 billion from their fiscal year 2011 budgets.

The rise of mobile commerce is going to give traditional retail stores a headache. Results from a survey done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that 25% of cellphone owners used their phone to look up the price of a product before buying it at a store. More than half of cellphone owners used their phones to determine what product to buy while in a retail store.

In perhaps one of the more counter-intuitive surveys to be published this year, commissioned by developer tools maker Apigee, a majority of businesses interviewed whose IT departments are currently managing API-intensive development projects say that integration with social networking sites is the least of their concerns.

Though the interview was limited to only 24 companies (leaving some doubt as to whether the sample size is adequate enough), the Web API study published by Hurwitz & Associates shows only 12% (3 firms) registering "expanding to social networking sites" as an important motivating factor for adopting APIs in applications.

The fact that cloud services and virtualization are making it feasible for executives to oversee the administration of their enterprise networks from devices like smartphones and tablets, has boosted the power of the cloud like no single innovation before. But a new survey commissioned by application performance management tools maker Compuware reveals a possible backlash: CIOs tell the survey they're afraid of everyday consumers having the same potential for access and power that they have.

What does this mean for their technology plans? Nearly two-thirds of CIOs surveyed say that now, their IT mobility tools and services rollout plans have been rendered impossible. Their fear plays out quite literally like this: Consumer trends have driven demand for more bandwidth on public wireless networks, and for public cloud services. Because the public cloud exists, businesses are compelled to adopt it. Adopting public cloud exposes businesses to new dangers. For which consumers are to blame.

One of the drivers of the current cloud computing revolution was supposed to be cost reduction. Even private cloud implementers are supposed to be spending considerably less on storage and computing power, by virtue of greater utilization and tolerance for commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) components.

But a global survey of some 3,645 enterprise cloud computing users over the last two months, conducted by TNS for professional business services provider CSC reveals a pair of startling discoveries: First, while most businesses are saving money, the amount in most cases ranges from slim to none. Second, businesses aren't really put off too much by that fact.

Okay, you know that the cloud and better mobility management are going to be two of the top tech trends in just about anyone's survey. And IBM's latest report verifies this. But what you probably didn't know is how important analytics will play. IBM interviewed more than 4,000 IT pros from around the world and consolidated its results here.

ClickFox has put together an infographic on the effectiveness of mobile apps for customer engagement. If you're deciding whether your business need a mobile app, you might want to take a look at this as additional data. If you're in dining, maybe not. If you're in mobile banking, and looking at an iOS app, maybe so.

The numbers for the infographic are taken from ClickFox's "Mobile Apps Consumer Survey" from October 2011.

Growing demand for Infrastructure-as-a-Service in the enterprise market is creating opportunities for a new breed of cloud-based IT infrastructure providers to deliver innovative private cloud services, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report, "Infrastructure-as-a-Service: New providers innovate to win enterprise cloud business." According to the results, 77 percent of respondents already have a plan and 64 percent said some type of cloud, including private and public, would be the best way to manage IT infrastructure in three years.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), telecom executives are "overconfident in the effectiveness of their information security practices." That's the interpretation of the data from the 2012 Global State of Information Security Survey, which gathered the responses of more than 640 respondents in the telecommunications industry.

The survey was conducted by PwC, CIO Magazine and CSO Magazine reached more than 9,600 execs from 138 countries. 647 of the more than 9,600 respondents identified themselves as members of the telecommunications industry.