The news beat: IT spending is expected to rise this year, but more slowly than it did in 2006, according to AnalystPerspectives. Hewlett-Packard keeps its PC momentum and continues pulling ahead of Dell. And Microsoft details a forthcoming phone and software package for SMBs, the Microsoft Response Point, which Ephraim Schwartz suggests could be a stalking horse for bigger things to come. Special Report: Open source VoIP just might be enterprise-worthy. Plus, it brings considerable cost savings and flexibility. Summer Bay Resorts, for instance, found that “if the phone is the lifeblood of your business, Asterisk is more than up to the task,” as Paul Venezia reports in this case study. Venezia also undertakes his own open source VoIP quest — one that resulted in his whole lab and, ultimately, his whole house, running on a single Asterisk instance under VMware Server. Read the entire package. Or watch Venezia demonstrate Trixbox here. Best of the blogs: Leading from the trenches author John West is looking for offices that we can all be jealous of. As in, the kind where one might say, “if I worked here, I might not go home.” He’s got examples from Google, Red Bull London and others, too. Careers: A reader writes in to ask sage Bob Lewis to gauge whether a merger said reader is involved in will work, or not. Lewis offers up four cornerstones, beginning with cultural compatibility of course, that make for a good start. Another: personal opportunity for the employees. Technology Industry