The Roman satirist Juvenal included the line ‘quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ in a poem (Satire VI, lines 347–348), which translates as ‘who guards the guardians?’ While this has been used in recent times to criticise dictatorial governments, it is equally a question we should ask about anti-virus software companies.
Last week Crowdstrike posted a regular update for its enterprise customers’ IT staff to install on around 8.5 million* (according to Microsoft) Windows PCs and client devices. Unfortunately a bug in the software, described by Crowdstrike as a ‘defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts’, caused all of these machines to crash, leaving their users with a ‘blue screen of death’. Read more »
The ITC market in first quarter 2024 – moving on up
As the year goes on my smile gets wider. The positive signs at the end of last year turned into measurable growth in the first quarter of 2024, as my Figure above suggests. My research process for the period complete, I want to share my findings on the spending/revenue and net profit changes and some opinions on what they mean.
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Storage systems 2023 – the continuous disaggregation of a stable market
Data storage is an essential component of the ITC market. While the annual spend on storage systems hardware has been steady at around $40b over the last 20 years, there are a number of key trends for suppliers to adopt to succeed. Read more »
Infinidat launches fourth generation InfiniBoxes and InfuzeOS V8
Infinidat launched new hardware, software and services yesterday. I’m grateful to Eric Herzog and others for briefing me ahead of time to prepare this post. For my earlier assessment of Infinidat click here. Read more »
IBM’s new Power10 S1012 server – the beginnings of AI at the edge
Last IBM announced a new entry-level server to its S-line first introduced in July 2022. The S1012’s features include: Read more »
Server market 2023 – a virtualized, x86, Windows driven world
The broad-brush shape of the server market was drawn up many years ago:
- x86 processors took over from vendor-designed (and sometimes manufactured) RISC ones, which themselves had overtaken CISC types;
- Microsoft’s Windows operating system took over from vendor specific Unix variants tied to their dedicated RISC processors;
- Dell EMC overtook HPE as the world’s largest server vendor in 2017; IBM’s revenues declined as a result of its decision to exit the x86 server market in 2014;
- The proportion of servers that are virtualized (i.e. able to run multiple operating sessions simultaneously) increased dramatically once Vmware had produced viable virtualization solutions for x86 servers from 2003 onwards.
IBM introduces FlashSystem 5300, Storage Assurance and Flash Grid – a more coherent strategy
IBM’s storage division has been busy again announcing a new storage system, a storage acquisition and management approach, and an advanced architecture. Read more »
IBM’s new FlashCore Module 4 – ransomware attack detection cut from minutes to seconds
In February IBM announced an upgraded FlashCore Module (FCM) – FCM4 now includes features to prevent and/or recover quickly from ransomware attack, following last year’s announcement that its storage controllers could sample I/Os for detection. In the past users have found it very hard to protect block storage devices, which is one reason why so many large organizations have fallen victim to serious ransomware attacks. Read more »
The raw storage market returns to growth… will it be ‘exponential’?
Raw storage (hard disk drives, NAND flash and DRAM memory components) is an essential and intriguing market. Like a ducks legs under water these parts work really hard to keep the ITC market moving – they are not top of mind for most end-users. They are mostly bought by only the very largest organizations, most of whom are suppliers, integrators of distributors. Computers, tablets, phones, cloud services and IoT devices cannot work without them. They are so important that they are also victim to large government legislation restricting the countries to which they can be sold. Read more »
ITC regional and category forecasts – the small growth of a massive, but disaggregating, market
In this post I summarize my findings to Q4 2023 and provide forecasts to 2025 for the ITC market by offering category and region. Overall there’s been good growth in spending since the on-set of the COVID-19 pandemic in Q2 2020 and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022; worldwide market growth was 10% in 2021, but just 1% and 2% in 2022 and 2023 respectively.
It is an everlasting problem for IT market researchers that we h Read more »
IBM Launches the LinuxONE 4 Express – a powerful entry-level mainframe
On February 6th IBM announced its latest z16 mainframe. The LinuxONE 4 Express is an entry level z16 server aimed at Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). Read more »
IBM Storage Ceph at 20 – a storage platform of choice for AI
IBM Storage Ceph is an open source Software Defined Storage (SDS) platform for block, file and object storage. It has a key role is as persistent storage for containerized environments. Read more »
Nexsan – a UK hardware storage systems vendor
I had the opportunity to talk with Nexsan’s Andy Hill (VP Sales) recently to look at the company’s introduction of its Unity NV6000 as well as its success, strategy and values. Read more »
StorPool adds erasure-coding to its software-defined storage
I had the fortune to speak with Boyan Ivanov, CEO and Founder of StorPool recently about his company’s strategy and success, including the new features of its version 21 software. Read more »
HPE to acquire Juniper Neworks for $14b
HPE announced last week that it is acquiring Juniper Networks for $14 billion. The deal will double HPE’s market share in the overall network market, but will do little to dent those of either Huawei or Cisco – the stand-out leaders of the ‘Service Provide’ and ‘Enterprise’ sub-divisions of the network market. Read more »
ITCandor ITC Predictions 2024 – good and evil
It’s that time of year again…. actually it’s well past that time of year…. for me to be making predictions for the worldwide IT and communications market in 2024. 2023 proved to be a difficult year as the market continued to be affected by the global pandemic and Russia’s unjustified attack on the Ukraine, and made worse by Hamas’s grotesque terrorist attack on Israel and Israel’s devastating retaliations in Gaza. We dreamt of autonomous vehicles, only to be rudely awaked to the murderous reality of drones.
These are my predictions:
- The total ITC market will see zero spending growth, remaining level at $7.1 trillion
- ITC spending growth will be bigger in Asia Pacific; EMEA will perform better than the Americas
- Of the major country markets Japan will see the strongest spending growth in 2024
- Software spending growth will be stronger than in IT Services; Telecommunications and hardware sales will decline
- Sales by offering – Software as a Service spending will grow most; Implementation IT services will be the largest
- Spending on raw storage will begin to grow again, following two years of dramatic decline
- Generative AI – especially from large public cloud suppliers will continue to grow at tremendous rates
- Cyber criminals will continue to influence/interrupt/ disrupt national elections in the USA and UK
- Quantum computing will come of age, creating analytic breakthroughs in HPC
- War and terrorism will drive up oil prices, slow the move to green energy and negatively affect ITC supply chains
9. Quantum computing will come of age, creating analytic breakthroughs in HPC
Like AI, quantum computing has promised to deliver big benefits to society over the last few years. I believe we will see substantial improvements in its use for scientific and mathematical analytics in 2024 – benefiting its developers (IBM, Google and others). I hope that its legitimate use outstrips the cyber criminals’ involvement – especially when applied to cracking previously-secure AES encryption. Whether or not this happens, large organizations will need to invest large sums in quantum-safe cryptography in 2024.
10. War and terrorism will keep gas and oil prices high, slow the move to green energy and negatively affect ITC supply chains
The ITC market was once new, offering potential savings in automation and productivity enhancement for early adopters. By 2024 it has become an essential part of almost every product and service we purchase. The market is so large that its size and growth is bound to be tied to the success or failure of the overall world economy. It is also subject to global war and terrorism, which unfortunately will continue to make headlines throughout the year. 2024 will see a delay in the full use of ITC to help us move away from our over-reliance on fossil fuels. War and terrorism will have a direct effect on the availability of certain ITC solutions, as affected countries and regions can no longer be counted on to provide the rare earth metals, manufacturing and (in some cases) developers to maintain a fast conversion from ideas to exploitation.
Whether my predictions come true or not over the coming year I wish all of my readers every success in the ITC markets of 2024. Please let me know your own thoughts and reactions.
Martin Hingley, Didcot, the UK, January 2024
1. The total ITC market will see zero spending growth, remaining level at $7.1 trillion
The 2021-2023 flat-line growth in spending of the ITC industry looks likely to continue. My first prediction (see my Figure above) is for total spending to remain at its current $7.1 trillion level for another year. Although inflation in many markets has been successfully reduced, we have yet to see a significant up-turn in the world economy and, although the creation of ITC products remains global, their deployment within countries is increasingly being limited by legislation, regulation and international politics.
2. ITC spending growth will be bigger in Asia Pacific; EMEA will perform better than the Americas
At a regional level I expect ITC sales in 2024 to grow by 2% in Asia Pacific. I expect sales to very slightly in both the Americas and EMEA since, although there are many immature markets in both, they are dominated by the USA and Western European countries respectively which are extremely saturated. In terms of total spending the Americas will remain the largest (40% of the total), followed by EMEA (31%) and Asia Pacific (39%).