Sony denies report it will promote No. 2 Kazuo Hirai to run company from April

The company was responding to an article in Japan's main business newspaper, the Nikkei, that Hirai would replace current President Howard Stringer. Sony issued a terse press release that it had made no official announcement or decision.

The leadership of Sony

Questions over the leadership of Sony, viewed domestically as a barometer for Japan's tech industry, have surfaced as the company struggles with deep financial losses. The firm said in November it was on course to lose over a billion dollars for the current fiscal year, weighed down by its TV business and the strong yen, afterwards predicting just months previously it would make a hefty profit.

Hirai, 51, who led a turnaround in Sony's PlayStation video game business, is widely seen as then in line to lead the company. The charismatic executive, who is fluent in English, would become its youngest leader since the late founder, Akio Morita, according to the Nikkei.

C-level executive

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Like a large number of businesses in New Zealand and around the world, BNZ was close to reaching capacity in its datacenter and needed to determine how to maximise space during keeping costs down. "BNZ had defined two important goals for the future, both of which relied heavily on IT. The first was for the organisation to become carbon neutral by 2010 and the second was to explore open source opportunities even though the adoption of Linux." Another challenge BNZ faced was to create a disaster recovery solution. Its datacentres - one in Auckland, New Zealand and the other in East Melbourne, Australia are separated by the Tasman Sea.