Gartner

Hard times attract cybercrime boom

Judi Hasson — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 16:51:58 -0500

As the economy struggles, some online crime watchers see signs that a portion of newly unemployed skilled tech workers are turning to the theft of sensitive data. This is taking place even as the existing cyber criminal economy is seeking new ways to exploit consumer confusion stemming from the banking meltdown, according to Forbes.com. Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan said that in recent months, banking clients have been warning her of a spike in the use of stolen financial data.

"There's been a marked increase in the number of attacks and the number of successful fraud attempts," said Litan. She blamed the attacks on the thousands of IT workers who have been laid off and who have the technical abilities needed to steal data.

Scott Borg, director and chief economist at the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit organization, said that as the financial crisis spreads from the U.S. to other parts of the world, it will likely drive more laid-off employees into the Eastern European and Russian cybercriminal economy.

"These are talented computer scientists, people who expected to be in positions of prestige but are now unemployed without prospects, basically let down by their system," said Borg.

While the trend is difficult to quantify, security researchers at McAfee report an explosion in the number of different strains of malicious software plaguing the Internet in recent months.

For more on this likely crime development
- see this Forbes.com article

Gartner: 85 percent of companies using open source

Paul Mah — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:21:20 -0500

The analysts at Gartner say that 85 percent of 274 companies surveyed are already using open-source software, with the remaining 15 percent expected to do so by next year. The companies surveyed are end-user organizations from around the world; cost is consistently identified as the primary motivator for switching to open source (so much for the freedom of choice, though to be fair, some did mention OSS as a balance against vendor lock-in).

More revealing from the survey though, is the revelation that very few organizations have formal policies in place to protect against intellectual property violations, inadvertent or otherwise. As a result, Gartner says that the biggest barrier preventing the adoption of OSS has to do with area of governance. This includes issues like deciding which applications will be supported by OSS, as well as identifying risks in terms of supportability of OSS. This is important, as an increasing number of companies such as Google to Nokia are releasing open-source software.

To read more about this story:
- check out this article at ZDNet

Eight reasons tech will survive the meltdown

Judi Hasson — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:46:04 -0500

While the global economy is dismal and layoffs are all around, experts believe that the sales of computer hardware, software and services will be growing again within 18 months. Here are some predictions from IDC, reported in an article this week in CIO.com:

The slowest IT markets will be the U.S., Japan and Western Europe, with about 1 percent growth expected.
The healthiest economies will be in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
Gartner predicts global IT spending will reach $3.8 trillion in 2008, up from $3.15 in 2007.

"We expect a gradual recovery throughout 2010, and by 2011 we should be back into a more normal kind of environment," said IDC Analyst Stephen Minton.

If the recession turns out to be deeper, or last longer than four quarters, as most economic experts expect, "it could turn into a contraction in IT spending," Minton added. "In that case, the IT market would still be weak in 2010 but we'd see a gradual recovery in 2011, and we'd be back to normal by 2012."

It's hard to believe, but these predictions are not nearly as severe as the declines in the tech industry between 2001 and 2003, and that should provide a sense of relief for the IT industry.

"Global economic problems are impacting IT budgets, however the IT industry will not see the dramatic reductions that were seen during the dot.com bust...At that time, budgets were slashed from mid-double-digit growth to low-single-digit growth," Gartner said in a statement.

For more on tech in this downturn:
- see this CIO.com article

AMD unveils Shanghai server chip

Paul Mah — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:57:06 -0500

Beleaguered Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has unveiled its next Opteron quad-core processor--code named Shanghai--yesterday. The 45nm Shanghai was released ahead of time, while the ill-fated Barcelona processor, announced in September 2007, was delayed by a bug that pushed volume shipments until April 2008. AMD says Shanghai performs 35 percent better than Barcelona, as well as a decreased power requirement of 35 percent. In addition, the processor comes with enhancements that are touted to benefit customers implementing virtualization. Engineers have managed to reduce the time it takes for the CPU to shift control from one virtual machine to another by 25 percent.

Customers who had the chance to try out Shanghai on their machines gave it rave reviews, though Gartner analyst Martin Reynold remains unconvinced that Shanghai will steal the market. He notes that Shanghai's likely customers will be those shopping for a good price/performance ratio.

To read more about this story:
- check out this BusinessWeek article
- check out this Computerworld article

IDC: Slower IT spending expected for next four years

Paul Mah — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:30:34 -0500

IT spending will drop next year as a direct result of global financial problems. This is the latest word from analyst firm IDC, who slashed growth projections to less than half of its earlier predictions. In a move that mirrored IDC's forecast, chip giant Intel Corp has also sharply cut its fourth-quarter sales projection in another indication of just how severely technology spending is being affected in the midst of the current economic turmoil.

Despite the negative news, IDC analyst John Gantz said in a statement that IT is still in a "better position than ever to resist the downward pull of a slowing economy." This optimistic sentiment is not shared by the stock market however, as shares of computer makers Dell and Hewlett-Packard dropped in the wake of the latest prognosis from IDC. Shares of HP fell $1.69, or 5.1 percent to $31.56, while shares of Dell fell 60 cents, or 5.2 percent, to $10.73. On the other hand, both Gartner and IDC are predicting a bright future for SaaS over the next several years.

For more on this story:
- check out this article from ComputerWorld
- check out this article from Forbes
- check out this article from CNNMoney.com

Gartner: Slowdown spreading to electronics sector

Judi Hasson — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:01:56 -0400

If you work in the electronics industry, trouble may be on the horizon. Gartner analyst Richard Gordon reports that a weakening global economy will cause a "widespread slowdown" in the electronics sector as consumers stop spending. This will affect the chip industry, he said, and the fallout will not end until the second half of next year. Gordon said the credit crisis, the housing disaster and high energy prices are key to the bleak equation in the United States.

While sales of personal computers and mobile phones have held up so far because of demand in emerging markets, he says nations like China, India, Russia and several countries in South America eventually will feel the impact of the worsening global economy. When that happens, he says, "it seems inconceivable that we will not see a more significant reduction in spending on electronics, even in the most resilient of industry sectors and regional markets."

For more on the slowing economy:
- check out this PCWorld article

Gartner sees a future of limited blade server usage

Paul Mah — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:37:50 -0400

Even though blade servers currently represent the fastest growing segment of the server market, research firm Gartner says deployments will be limited in the next few years. Indeed, the expectation is that it will take about three years before blade servers will make up 20 percent of the market, which would be up from the 10 percent in 2007. This is a direct result of a lack of clear standards, incurred in part by rapid changes in the technology. Organizations that derive value from the deployment of blade servers should go ahead, though they need to be prepared for further changes as this market segment matures.

Another change to look for down the road will be the upscaling of input and output connectors beyond the current 10Gb bottleneck experienced by most solutions. Better technology and standards for more fine-grained management, as well as a prioritization of bandwidth and memory between individual blades running off the same chassis also should be expected.

For more about the report on blade server technology:
- check out this InformationWeek article

Companies are cautious about IT hires

Judi Hasson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:05:25 -0400

Research firm Gartner predicts that the depressed economy will make IT organizations careful about their hiring plans. A newly released survey of 285 U.S.-based IT organizations found that 57.9 percent projected an increase in IT staff levels, including full-time employees and contractors through February 2009.

While that doesn't seem so bad, Gartner said this was a "notable drop" from the 66.3 percent reported in the 2007 study. Even though the number of vacancies and turnover rates remain at similar levels as 2007, organizations are being cautious in their hiring practices, said Lily Mok, research vice president for Gartner's CIO workforce management group.

"We have not seen extreme measures being taken by IT organizations, such as hiring freezes, but we do expect to see enterprises take a more conservative and wait-and-see approach to staffing for the rest of 2008," Mok said.

On a positive note, the survey showed that current economic conditions have yet to have a material impact on compensation budgets. "Enterprises are continuing to budget for pay increases in 2008 at a level similar to previous years, with the reported median salary increase budget at 3.6 percent," Gartner said.

For more on the survey:
- see this Gartner announcement

Gartner: IT must adapt to changes faster

Judi Hasson — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:53:50 -0400

A survey by Gartner says IT departments should adapt more quickly to new technologies like social networking software, or end up with large numbers of company employees dissatisfied. The poll of IT professionals at 360 enterprise-sized companies found that as of today, nearly 20 percent believe their users felt the pace of change and the embrace of new technologies to be "too slow," and an additional 15 percent said it was "much too slow."

Gartner said one reason for the dissatisfaction is that IT departments tend to have a "universal, enterprise-wide deployment strategy" that means buying software suites that include many technologies at once instead of individual "best of breed" technologies. The report suggests that such a package strategy is too limiting, and may mean more dissatisfaction in the future.

For more on the survey:
- see this CIO.com article