Analyst firm Gartner, Inc. releases two new reports, Hybrid Cloud: The Shift from IT Control to IT Coordination and Private Cloud Matures, Hybrid Cloud Is Next, that bode well for the future of hybrid cloud in the enterprise market. By the end of 2017, Gartner estimates that nearly half of large organizations would have resorted to hybrid cloud implementations.
At the recent ITExpo in Las Vegas, one thing that surprised me was the number of hosted VoIP and UCaaS Service Providers in the exhibit hall and I am sure there will be many more at the upcoming Channel Partners Conference in Chicago. Most of them I had never heard of and they all appeared to be pursuing channel partner programs of their own. Their primary channel is the traditional telecom agent, but they all are pursuing the IT VAR channel, as well, with the two channels converging.
It is expected that the U.S. Federal government will begin spending more on technology from around 2016, according to the research firm Gartner.
The vice president of government at Gartner, Rishi Sood, stated that in the next two years, government spending on Federal IT will continue to decrease from $74.4 billion this year to $70 billion and $68.2 billion in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
Gartner has noted that in Q2, 225 million units of smartphone shipments were recorded, surpassing the shipment number of feature phones for the first time.
There was a 46.5 percent year-over-year increase in smartphone sales, with a 21 percent year-over-year drop for feature phones, according to Gartner.
Slalom Consulting is a Boston, Massachusetts-based solution provider. The national director of research and development at that firm, David Uhler, commented that the new information from Gartner supports the increasing significance of mobility practices.
Wireless provider Leap Wireless is set to be purchased by AT&T, which will mean that the latter can develop its 4G LTE deployments and provide more support to the increasing number of Internet-enabled devices using its network.
$15 a share ($1.2 billion) will be paid by AT&T in the acquisition of San Diego, California-based Lear Wireless. All of Leap's stock and wireless properties, such as its network assets, retail stores and five million subscribers will be included in the purchase.
Michael Silver and Stephen Kleynhans, vice presidents of client computing team at Gartner, Inc., offer several preliminary recommendations to business organizations about looking into deploying the forthcoming Windows 8.1 update.
"Based on information currently available, Gartner believes Windows 8.1 features could quiet most of its detractors," wrote Silver and Kleynhans in a recent guest post.
IT research firm Gartner, Inc. says that in 2012, BYOD has fueled the growth of the worldwide security software market by 7.9 percent per year. This year, Gartner predicts the growth to reach 8.7 percent and will be worth $67.2 billion compared to $61.8 billion in 2012. And in four years, Gartner estimates that the global security software market will be worth $86 billion.
Analysts from the IT research firm announced their forecast during Gartner's Security and Risk Management Summit on June 10-13, 2013 in National Harbor, Maryland.
The Gartner Q1 report for mobile phone/smartphone shipments shows that Google's Android operating system has demonstrated a strong growth rate, and it looks like this is set to continue for the rest of the year. Google's mobile operating system has extended its lead in the smartphone OS market, as the global market share for Android increased from 56.9 percent to 74.4 percent year over year.
Gartner, Inc. has released device shipment estimates that predict the fading technological era marked by the use of conventional laptops and desktops. According to the analyst firm, from 2012 to 2017, the shipments of conventional desktop and notebook computers will plunge 21 percent, while smartphone sales will jump 25 percent and tablet sales will increase fourfold.
Last week I got into some debates about the death or evolution of the PBX. Some people insist the PBX is dead, but I believe it just continues to evolve. Admit it or not, Microsoft Lync has 100 years of telephony evolution under its hood.
The bigger point though is how complex things are becoming to define in communications. It is a far bigger issue than "PBX." What is Unified Communications? What is Cloud? What is open? What's the point of all this communications technology if we can't agree on language and terminology?