In the face of IBM’s breakup later this year I want to look at how HP’s disaggregated businesses have done after its decision to do the same back in 2015. In this article I’ll look at the changes in revenues, profit, profitability and headcount before seeing how IBM could learn from what happened. Read more »
IBM intends to spin off its Managed Infrastructure Services business by the end of the year into a new company yet to be named (see my Figure above) and dependent on certification by the usual regulators. Accounting for a third of its current business, this is a drastic, yet logical, move in line with both IBM’s business and long-term market developments (see my Figure below). Read more »
This is dedicated to my friend and colleague Chis Christiansen, who is sadly is no longer with us. It would have been better with his help. Read more »
Timing the release of a new console is the most strategic decision for the three suppliers. Read more »
In 2020 there was a mass movement of workers from offices to their homes, especially during the most restrictive lockdowns designed to slow the transmission of the Corona virus; Read more »
Towards the end of December Microsoft announced that it had discovered a major cyber attack, which had infected 40 government organizations, non-profit organizations, government contractors and IT companies (80% in the USA). Read more »
In 2020 there were five suppliers whose annual net income was above $10 billion (see my Figure in which I’ve included the year to the end of September 2020 values). Read more »
Part of my research process is to collect information on and break the whole market by customer type (see my Figure above for my forecast). Read more »
My Figure shows annual growth and absolute spending forecasts for the largest ITC offerings in 2021 (here the bubble sizes also show the spending total). Read more »
In terms of the four categories, spending will decline in all areas apart from Software; even here the growth (1,7% to $1,2 trillion) will be far less than in 2020 (8.0%). Read more »
ITC spending in China will grow the most (1% to $474 billion), the USA will remain the largest market ($2 trillion), but drop by 1.1%. The UK will drop the furthest (-4.0% to $275 billion) of the major markets. Read more »
The OECD forecasts GDP growth at –4.2%in 2020, +4.2% in 2021and +3.7% and 2022. The ITC market in my forecasts most likely grew in 2020 by 0.4% and has proved vital in allowing individuals and companies keep in touch digitally at a time when social distancing was the norm. Read more »
Massive storms, extensive flooding, forests burning for months, melting glaziers… there will be fewer people in 2021 who can deny the activities of a growing world population is a major cause.
The ITC industry itself accounts for as much as 5% of carbon emissions (including manufacturing and distribution of hardware and the operation of IT and communication data centers, and other devices), but it has the ability to influence 95% of it.
2021 will not be the first year in which we address the issue of course, but there has never been a time when it has been more important. I’ve argued for years that the environment is a stakeholder in corporate and social responsibility strategies and it is positive that reporting and reducing carbon emissions is being legislated for. My hope for the year is that our industry can take the lead in going further to address the issues and make a difference. We need to think holistically. For instance:
One of the few positives of the pandemic has been a short pause in the constant pollution of modern society. When it’s finally overcome we shouldn’t aspire for things to return to normal, but use it as an opportunity to adopt cleaner activities. I will be involved in projects around this issue in the year – so please connect with me if you plan to as well.
Happy New Year!
Navigate our predictions – intro 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Its time to make predictions for 2021; but before I need to appraise those made for this year – which proved to be one of the most disrupted due to the pandemic. As always, I’ve marked each between 1 and 10 based on their accuracy.
| No. | My top 10 predictions | Score | Comment |
| 1 | The overall ITC market will grow by 0.8% to $6.849 trillion | 10 | I was spot on on the absolute value. ITC has proved a vital aid during the pandemic |
| 2 | The Americas will lead regional ITC spending growth | 10 | Growth in the Americas was 2%; Asia Pacific was -2%, EMEA was 0% (at current $ exchange rates) |
| 3 | Spending on software will grow most, while hardware spending will decline | 10 | Software grew 8%, hardware decline 4%; IT services grew 3%, Telecom services declines 3% |
| 4 | The business market grows; the consumer market continues to fall | 4 | Consumer spending grew by 0.8%, business by 0.9%. The pandemic changed demand |
| 5 | IT Services spending grows most on IaaS and PaaS cloud services, while other offerings ‘flat line’ | 8 | IaaS grew by 27%, PaaS by 25%; other IT service spending grew by 3%; again the pandemic raised demand |
| 6 | The only hardware spending growth will be on solid state disks and processors | 7 | Processor sales grew 2%, but so did gaming consoles (22%) and PCs (3%); everything else declined |
| 7 | Wider adoption of 5G allows spending on mobile telecom service to grow | 4 | Despite its vital role in the pandemic, telecom mservices declined; wireless was down 3%, while broadbandwas stable v 2019 |
| 8 | SaaS and Infrastructure will lead the software market | 7 | SaaS saw the strongest growth (14%), but Infrastructure (6%) was outgrown byOS (11%), application (8%) and database (7%) software |
| 9 | Raw storage shipments exceed 2 Zetabytes | 10 | The number was exceeded in the first 3quarters |
| 10 | Governments move against those trading data from social networking | 7 | The EU Digital Markets Act will address some concerns; on the whole governments were too busy with the pandemic to do much |
Overall I claim an 77% accuracy for the year – worse than last year hardly surprisingly.
The ITC industry has been a boon at a time when lock-downs and social distancing have virtually put an end to physical meeting people in business or in the pub. It’s more boring of course, but just imagine how difficult it would have been in 2018 when we only had fixed-line phones and the post office to help us keep in touch. One area of the industry that had reached maturity with little growth potential was the PC market before the pandemic. The new growth in Q2 2020 sales (see my Figure above) is partially due to the mass movement of business staff to homeworking. In this post I’m going to look at the opportunities and challenges facing this market in coming years, while sharing my latest stats with you. Please get in touch if you need more detail. Read more »
IBM continues to add features and functions to its storage offerings, both software and systems, to address the latest trends in enterprise computing… and doing its best to make it simpler to understand and implement. In today’s announcement it covers a lot of ground with a strong emphasis on supporting container application deployments.
Its support for Red Hat started well before IBM acquired it, but today it shows it’s integrating as fully as it can, while covering a lot of other ground as well. Read more »
The IT and Communications (ITC) market has held up well during the pandemic to date; total spending worldwide grew by 1% in Q1 and declined by 1% in Q2 2020 (see my Figure above, which includes my current forecast to 2022 for spending on a rolling 4-quarter basis). In this research post I look in more detail at the movements in hardware, IT service, software and telecoms, look back for comparisons to the effects of the Credit Crunch and make some predictions for how the coming economic recession is likely to hit us in the next few years. Read more »
Service Provider and Enterprise Networks have been extremely important during the pandemic; nevertheless most Telcos and organizations have been relying on those already installed to keep people, governments and businesses connected. In total the market grew by 1% to $187 billion in the year to the end of March, but shrunk by 4% to $45.2 billion in Q1 due to the suspension of activity during the lockdown in most affected countries. Read more »
The last few years have not been great for hardware sales; gamers are waiting for new consoles from Sony and Microsoft later this year and even Nintendo’s Switch is reaching its peak. In the year to the end off March total console sales were 46m – down 9% from the 50m of they year before. Read more »
I very much enjoyed a briefing on IBM’s latest storage announcements ahead of today’s launch. As usual we listen to and asked questions of Eric Herzog, IBM’s CMO and VP of Worldwide Storage Channels. I also had a briefing from Sam Werner, VP of Storage Offering Management. Read more »