Digital Lifescapes

Cloud service providers continue to drive computing server investment. Meanwhile, vendor revenue in the worldwide server market increased 26.4 percent year-over-year to $20.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017 (4Q17), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). The server market continues to gain momentum, as traction for newer Purley- and EPYC-based offerings grows. While demand from cloud service providers has propped up overall market performance, other areas of the server market continue to show growth now as well. Global Server Market Development According to the IDC assessment, worldwide server shipments increased 10.8 percent year-over-year to 2.84 million units in 4Q17. Volume server revenue increased by 21.9 percent to $15.8 billion, while midrange server revenue grew 48.5 percent to $1.9 billion. High-end systems grew 41.1 percent to $2.9 billion, driven by IBM's z14 launch in the last quarter of 2017. However, IDC expects co...

Global cloud computing service providers are well known in China and India, but they're clearly not alone. According to the latest market study by 451 Research, there are nearly 200 vendors in both nations that are providing cloud services -- such as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. 451 Research analysts believe that China and India will become major cloud computing markets within the Asia-Pacific region, generating revenue of $1.59 billion and $851 million respectively, with a CAGR of 27 percent and 24 percent through 2020. Combined, these two countries will account for about 30 percent of the total Asia-Pacific cloud computing market. Market Development in China and India The majority of revenue comes from compute use cases within the IaaS segment today, but the evolution of big data analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) applications will likely accelerate the future adoption of cloud storage in both markets. Government-led cloud initiatives are helping to drive growth. Govern...

IT Security is going to be top-of-mind for many CIOs during 2016 -- most will seek the help of leading vendors. More than 32 percent of the enterprises surveyed name Splunk as their primary Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platform provider, according to the latest market study by 451 Research. Responding enterprises rated Splunk highest especially for querying capability and the ease of integrating new data feeds. Intel Security is the second highest rated vendor based on evaluations from its 380 existing customers. Spending on IT security remains strong, with 44 percent of enterprise security managers expecting to increase their budget in the next 90 days. Only 4 percent of enterprises are decreasing security spending. While security budgets are stable or increasing for almost all organizations, security managers reported significant obstacles in fully realizing the benefits of SIEM solutions because of lack of staff expertise (44.4 percent) and inadequate staff...

Cloud service brokerage market development is still in the early stages. A recent survey of enterprise cloud adopters showed a near even three-way split between adopting, considering or not planning to adopt brokerage services, according to the latest market study by Technology Business Research (TBR). TBR believes that as things stand today in the marketplace, there is a global lack of education pertaining to the solutions available and benefits or outcomes of cloud computing brokerage adoption by forward-looking IT organizations. Moreover, as vendors are still making decisions regarding their participation within the cloud brokerage market, TBR anticipates it will be a few years before the brokerage concept reaches mainstream status within the typical IT organization globally. "It seems enterprises are adopting brokerage services mostly to have a third-party perform their cloud integration and management tasks, either because they want their IT departments to focus on high...