4.5% growth, according to Gartner

Doom and gloom in the world economy, unless you work in IT. Gartner has suggested that Worldwide IT spending could increase by nearly five per cent from last year’s figures.

Two of reasons for this predicted growth centre around emerging regions of world prosperity and the shelving of obsolete systems.

According to Gartner analyst Jim Tully, “Organisations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models,” - now you can see why SaaS is such a big thing.

Software and IT services will probably account for the largest amount of IT spend. Hardware sales growth is highest in the PC market,  representing around 60 per cent of the total hardware spend.Guess it’s time to get your learning cap on and buy into the whole IT thing!

Popularity: 15% [?]

Not a scratch on Google…

…but what do you really expect? Ok, the founders of Cuil are ex-Google employees but remember ther early days of Google search results? I do - they were crap!

I’ve had a look at Cuil and all I can say right now is that it’s ‘ok’ - not great but I’m sure that a little more time and money may just make this a real competitor for the Goog!

As a search technology, the Cuil results don’t really match up to Google or even Yahoo in some respects - there’s no image search for a start and I REALLY like pictures, so much easier than reading! However, Cuil do state that they have indexed over 120 billion web pages which leaves Google trailing on a paltry 40 billion. I’ve done some testing here and I would like to know where those pages are coming from as I searched for a couple of well known sites that have a high number of inbound links using a specific anchor text….err, nothing! I’m not suggesting that the Cuil front page is lying but I’d expect to see at least a couple of hits for the searches I entered.

Ok, so Cuil could eventually knock Google of the search top spot but they some serious cash injections if they are to catch up in other areas i.e GMail, Google Apps, YouTube, Knol…. the list goes on.

All interesting news, I’ll leave you with a well thought out and deliverd quote echoed by many of the search engine users community, “…it’s crap.”

Popularity: 32% [?]

Monster rising from the depths!

About 6 years ago I used to get excited about 2Gb hard disks. Talk about the dark ages! Seagate have announced a beast of a hard disk -  the Barrcuda 7200 1.5Tb, aimed at the desktop market.

The 1.5TB capacity Barracuda 7200.11 drive has four platters and uses a Sata 3Gbps interface with a sustained data rate of up to 120MBps. The 3.5-inch drive is also offered in capacities of 1TB, 750GB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB and 160GB with cache options of 32MB and 16MB.

Expect to this beast ripping up the tarmac sometime next month.

Popularity: 47% [?]

Platters are so 2007!

I like Solid State Disks - robust if a little pricey. But deeper adoption of the technology should force prices down. So it’s good news from Sun, who are planning to introduce SSD’s to a large proportion of its server range.

There is one issue; reliability. Analysts suggest that the technology is not mature enough saying that about 5 years worth of development is necessary before mass adoption is considered. I don’t think Apple are listening.

Companies such as Lenovo and Seagate see SSD as the future and with Sun onboard expect to see rapid advances.

Sun haven’t released any pricing as yet but an initial offering should be available by the end of 2008.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Looming crisis.

There’s no denying that the population of the UK is, on average, getting older every year.  The aging population is producing concerns of pressure on the labour market at a time when demand IT workers is increasing. The Work Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation, has called on politicians and policy makers to do more to address the issue.

The Work Foundation has produced a report, Towards a Global Labour Market?, which states that soaring demand for highly skilled workers, along with existing skills shortages and the UK’s ageing population, means businesses must look to source workers from abroad if Britain is to remain competitive.

The report suggests that a points-based immigration system will not be sufficient and politicians must actively make the case for highly skilled migrants.

The report also points out that companies base themselves where there’s a readily available source of skilled workers can influence - especially for companies working at the cutting edge of R&D. A further statement suggests that the hostile view of immigration could harm the hi-tech sector as foreign workers are discouraged from coming to Britain.

It’s an interesting read. Here’s my ‘finger in the pie’: the aging population could be retrained. There are plenty of tech savvy members of the older generation who would love to get some real hands on the IT industry. The government should be doing more to promote technology and sciences in higher education rather than pushing students into useless learning paths - “I want a degree in ‘bed testing!”

One final thought;  recent reports show that a large number of Indian workers are upping sticks and going home. Why? Because they see India as the ‘next big thing’ offering greater opportunities and wealth than Europe or America. Hmm, how are we going to deal with that? Over to you.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Time for the gloves to come off.

Via Technologies have release the Nano, a new energry efficient CPU, in a bid to enter the market currently dominated by Intels Atom processor.  The 64 bit CPU will, initially, power a range of mini-notebooks.

Via has claimed that the Nano will be capable of processing four times as much data per watt as its predecessor, the Via C7 (which powers the HP2133).

The Nano range will come in five flavours: from 1.0GHz (5W) to 1.8GHz (25W) with bus speeds of 800MHz. Via has staked a claim that the 1.8GHz Nano performs around two-and-a-half times faster on browser and standard office tasks compared with a C7 at the same clock speed.

Popularity: 37% [?]

Punched from all angles!

There’s yet another ‘Blu-ray killer’ on the loose. I’m starting to feel sorry for Blu-ray, it looks everyman and his dog is out to bludgeon the format! Enough. Toshiba is working on extending the DVD format in order to offer Blu-ray-like video quality. The new format should be available in Toshiba DVD products in about 6 months time - at a lower price than Blu-ray players (now there’s aggressive marketing!)

According to sources, the new DVD player will be backwards-compatible with standard DVD discs - yeah, if it isn’t expect to see ‘many rats jumping ship’! On top of this, there is a claim circulating that suggests that the new technology would be able produce much higher-resolution images from existing DVDs - hmm, we’ll see.

So, another attempt by a major manufacturers to extend the lifespan of its existing  technologies by adding additional data formats. Will it work? I suppose I’ll have to fork out some cash and let you know - in about 6 months time.

Popularity: 30% [?]

But doesn’t make up for the loss of the NHS!

As you may be aware, Fujitsu have had the NHS contract for the South and South East regions terminated - £800 million worth. Not a good start to the financial year!

Hot on the heels of this loss comes the announcement of a contract win. Fujitsu have picked up a further two year contract with the Environment Agency to continue to develop a managed service that protects the public from the riskof flooding. During this period, Fujitsu will assist the Environment Agency to evolve the system to meet the recommendations of the Pitt Review.

The system, Floodline Warnings Direct (FWD), was designed and developed by Fujitsu in association with the Environment Agency and was opened up to the public at the beginning of 2006. It is a map based application, hosted in Fujitsu. The map based app allows the Environment Agency to determine target areas for pre-defined warning messages.

So, as long as it works, you should have plenty of time to get out before you house slips beneath the waves!

Popularity: 32% [?]

Server hardware on steroids.

The latest additions to Sun’s range of64-bit and x86 servers has been announced. The Sun Fire and Sun Blade will be powered by AMD Opteron quad-core processors. And you get a choice of OS: Solaris 10, OpenSolaris, Linux AND Windows. Ok, nothing new on the MS announcement but it’s good to see Sun catering for all. Maybe some other companies should take a leaf out of Sun’s book.

The new x64 systems with quad-core AMD Opteron processors should offer increased performance, scalability and energy efficiency. All this adds up to - more value…theoretically. I haven’t seen the prices yet. That said, there are indications that consumers are already more than happy with Sun’s offerings with statistics showing that Opteron-based Sun Fire servers has been deployed by more than 12,000 customers at over 31,000 locations.

The quad-care Opteron Sun Fire X2200 M2, Sun Fire X4100 M2, Sun Fire X4140, Sun Fire X4200 M2, Sun Fire X4240 and Sun Fire X4440 servers are available now.

The quad-core Opteron Sun Fire X4600 M2 and Sun Blade X8440 servers are expected by the end of the quarter.

Popularity: 79% [?]

What?

Let’s be fair, the tech industry doesn’t have great ‘green’ credentials. Just consider these areas:  power consumption, the use of toxic ubstances, over-packaging, air conditioning and product life cycle. Dismal, eh? But times are changing. More and more, companies recognise the need to go ‘green’ to save the planet (and avoid being taxed to the hilt!).

Unified Threat Management.

What’s that got to do with the environment? More than you think. UTM places a number of security appliances into a single package. This reduces infrastructure requirements thereby reducing power consumption, hardware and all the other bits that go with it. The ability to add futher components to UTM increases its ‘greeness’. Just think, virtualised UTM - save yourself some big bucks.

Will companies ‘get it’?

Probably. The virtualisation of whole environments saves huge sums of money. Add UTM to the mix and any company/person specialising in these areas is onto a winner - time to brush up on your skillset?

Popularity: 38% [?]