Market Analysis
Over half of UK SMBs to replace IT infrastructure in next 12 months
According to results from the annual Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) report into cloud adoption, 53% of small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) are currently running a Windows Server 2003 operating system. On 14th July 2015, one year today, Microsoft will be ending its extended support period for the operating system, meaning there will be no further patches, updates or fixes.PC sales beat analysts forecasts
Global PC sales in Q2 fell by less than previously forecast, down 1.7% yr/yr to 74.4 million, says IDC, which had predicted a 7.1% drop. This was smaller than the 4.4% and 5.6% declines respectively seen in Q1 and Q4. Gartner is even more positive, estimating shipments rose 0.1%, ending a long string of declines.Customer engagement systems tipped for growth
CRM and e-commerce are set to be the fastest growing enterprise applications claims Ovum, which says customer engagement systems will be the fastest growing enterprise application between 2013 and 2018.Ovum points to global wholesale revenue growth
Ovum expects wholesale revenue growth across the globe to reach $142bn in 2019, driven by intensified retail competition. Although the prices of many commodity wholesale services are falling, accelerating traffic volumes will ensure that wholesale revenues will continue to grow, says Ovum.Cyber security and data protection rank third on boardroom agenda
Cyber security and data protection have been ranked third in a list of Boardroom priorities, according to a survey by KPMG.Cloud management and security to be fastest sector
The global cloud services market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.6% from 2014 to 2020, reaching a market size of $555bn in 2020. In 2014, the overall cloud services market revenue will reach $209.9bn, led by public cloud services. The US is seen as the biggest market because of its technology lead in research from US-based Allied Market Research.Europe to lead on telco spend
Europe is expected to blaze a trail for telco spending in the next few years according to market research firm Infonetics Research. Software-defined networks (SDNs) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) have the attention of nearly all service providers who are on the long road to widespread deployments, it says.Fewer servers sold, but prices higher
There were fewer servers in EMEA in Q1 this year than last year, but the price was higher. HP remains top dog, with IBM and Dell falling back.High end storage loses to cloud
A 25% drop in high-end storage spending meant that external disk storage and total disk storage sales respectively fell 5.2% and 6.9% yr/yr in Q1, says IDC. IBM was a big loser, probably to cloud storage as the high end of the market dropped.Tablet sales move up-market
Tablet sales are moving up-market with modem connections becoming more popular and prices rising. Apple and Samsung combined for 71% of the 41.3 million branded tablets in the first calendar quarter of 2014, according to early vendor shipment share estimates from market intelligence firm ABI Research.