While mobile devices are proving essential tools for tracking and reporting Covid-19 infection and in keeping those in unusual isolation to keep in touch, buying new ones has been proved to be less important during the economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic. Read more »
Cloud services in the past were sometimes criticised for being nothing more than a IT delivery method. Things have changed dramatically in 2020, when delivery methods have become very important for so many other things. Cloud services are certainly more important during a pandemic, but we saw no exemptional overall growth in Q1 2020; however by the end of the year I expect it to be one of only a few ITC areas which will have grown as other areas fall foul of the deep recession many countries are entering. Read more »
With the introduction of 2 new air-cooled single-frame mainframes on April 14th – smaller configurations than the machines launched in September 2019, it’s a good time to have another look at the DS8900F and TS7770 storage systems which are built to complement the capabilities of the new IBM mainframes. Read more »
Following the introduction of its first z15 mainframe T01 in September last year IBM is introduced the smaller single-frame air-cooled z15 T02 and matching LinuxONE III LT2 models on April 14th. Since moving away from producing x86 servers it has continued to invest in its Power and mainframe lines, enhancing their status as the most secure servers and making sure they can be used for advanced, modern applications fully integrated with cloud resources for a set of very demanding (mainly large) customers. Read more »
Supercomputers are key tools in searching for responses, defence, treatments and antidotes for COVID-19. In this post I look at the publicised pandemic research activities associated with these high performance systems. Read more »
Earlier this year I reviewed the development of the top 12 ITC suppliers worldwide. Convinced that our industry can do a lot to help in a time of crisis I’ve had a look at each company’s response to COVID-19, which I outline below. Read more »
Computer networks are vital in connecting people during the current pandemic whether using PCs or mobile devices. The market is split between products used by service providers (mainly Telcos) and enterprises. My Figure above shows the development of spending by each since 2005. By the way my research is copyright and not free to reuse without permission – especially by Statista, who I will take legal action against if it continues by stealing data from this post. Read more »
Storage is a vital part of the ITC industry providing a resource for databases, analytics and record keeping. In the current world crisis it helps supports virtual contact where physical interaction between people is temporally impossible. In this post I look at what happened in 2019 with details about raw storage (disk and NAND drives, DRAM memory) and the storage systems which are used with servers and enterprise networks. Read more »
Servers (whether deployed by enterprise customers or cloud service providers) provide the backbone of the ITC industry and applications we use socially and for business, financial and citizen applications. They are vital to helping us survive the forced isolation introduced to try to halt the spread of the current pandemic. In this post I look at annual trends in spending, shipments and their installed base to the end of 2019. Read more »
The peripheral market has performed poorly over the last few years (see my Figure abovee) as physical processes have been replaced by digital ones. The area covers many different products and services, of which printers (both laser and ink jet) predominate. Nevertheless it also includes a number of products which can help us during the pandemic, such as web cams and 3D printers. Let’s look at how the market developed in 2019. Read more »
The PC market reached maturity a number of years ago and has overtaken by mobile devices in terms of spending, shipments and the number installed; nevertheless they have a vital role to play for those able to work from home during the pandemic. In 2019 244 million machines, worth $169b were shipped with the total installed base standing at 881 at the end of the year. Read more »
I looked recently at the advantage the large installed base of mobile devices give us to help avoid travel and keep people in touch when forced into isolating themselves socially. Today I’m thinking about entertainment and communities; facing months more of social isolation I’m already bored of watching my sports channel on TV telling me there is no sport! Japan has yet to announce the – almost inevitable – postponement of the 2020 Olympics, so I suggest we arrange a virtual Olympics to take its place using the millions of gaming platforms already in place using Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, which was launched in November by Nintendo last year. This post looks at the gaming console market in 2019 with a forecast for this year. Read more »
Following my publication of the 2019 market for cloud services and the help that can give us all during the COVID-19 pandemic, today I want to look at mobile devices, by which I mean basic and smart phones, tables, smart wearables and audio devices. I’ll be looking at 2019 market shares as well as a forecast for the global installed base (see my Figure above) and shipments. Read more »
I am convinced that the ITC industry can do lots to mitigate many of threats of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular providing the platform for travel avoidance and keeping the wheels of commerce going during what may be years of the need for social/physical distancing. It will also undergo a number of accelerated changes in its make up as it did as a result of the Credit Crunch in 2008-9. In order to investigate these issues I’ve decided to publish a series of posts giving findings for the sub-markets in 2019. I’m starting with cloud services (made up of Software, Infrastructure and Platform as a Service) here – spending on which grew 18% in 2019 to reach $253 billion. Read more »
Today’s SAP announced the certification of IBM’s Power9 E980 servers as part of its Enterprise Cloud infrastructure. IBM’s Power servers offer more memory than their (Intel or AMD based) x86 server competitors, currently stretching to a maximum of 24TB for each HANA 2.0 application. Read more »
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IBM has continued to drive its storage division with the aim of supporting the needs of enterprise customers including the largest, most regulated and security conscious users in the world. Today’s announcement, which I was able to run through as usual with Eric Herzog and his team, shows an increasing emphasis on making what it does and sells simpler. Its advanced software (especially its Spectrum Virtualize storage hypervisor) continues to help those trying to adopt hybrid multi-cloud storage, while using a common 2U chassis has enabled it to reduce its non-mainframe storage systems families to just one. Read more »
Our industry is full of smart analysts, who are often a complex mix of bravado and uncertainty. Always questioning the truth of an announcement or the introduction of new things creates the uncertainty, while demonstrating the way things will work out can seem like bravado to those who haven’t gone through the same thought processes.
One of my closest friends, Chris Christiansen, passed away last week – he was the greatest of analysts and showed these characteristics. While our industry will be poorer for the loss of his insight, I’ll miss most his constant support in helping me celebrate success and cope with disappointment and tragedy. Read more »
Having made my predictions for the year, I wanted to follow up with the long-term vendor share developments in the ITC industry. In the Figure above I show market shares for the top 12 suppliers in the years to then of September in 2009 and 2019. There have been a lot of changes of course such as the rise of Apple and Samsung and the decline of HP (now split between Inc. and Enterprise) and IBM. Over the years Apple and Microsoft have replaced France Telecom and Nokia in the list. Read more »
PRESS RELEASE – Didcot, December 31st, 2021
ITCandor has published its 12th set of annual predictions. These are the 10 ideas for the ITC industry in 2022: Read more »
Encouraged by the accuracy of my last year’s predictions, I’m keen to share with you my vision for the ITC industry in 2020. This is a summary of my predictions:
1. The overall ITC market will grow by 0.8% to $6.849 trillion
2. The Americas will lead regional ITC spending growth
3. Spending on software will grow most, while hardware spending will decline
4. The business market grows; the consumer market continues to fall
5. IT Services spending grows most on IaaS and PaaS cloud services, while other offerings ‘flat line’
6. The only hardware spending growth will be on solid state disks and processors
7. Wider adoption of 5G allows spending on mobile telecom service to grow
8. SaaS and Infrastructure will lead the software market
9. Raw storage shipments exceed 2 Zetabytes
10. Governments move against those trading data from social networking
The ITC market is so large – and mature in many countries – that it will show little overall change in 2020; however, like a swan gliding on a lake, its passage may look smooth, but there’ll be a lot of paddling under the water.