Digital Lifescapes

Server virtualization was one of the key steps toward further IT infrastructure abstraction. Every enterprise CIO and CTO knows that managing a server farm is problematic. That's why the quest for container and serverless platforms is driving more organizations to reassess their data center. Cloud container management revenue will grow from a small base of $465.8 million in 2020, to reach $944 million in 2024, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. Among the various sub-segments, public cloud container orchestration and serverless container offerings will experience the most significant growth. Here are the study findings. Container Management Market Development Container management provides software and related services that support the ongoing operation of containers, at scale, in production environments. But production applications are uncommon. "There has been considerable hype and a high level of interest in container technology, but a lower ...

The banking industry is being disrupted by new agile, digital-savvy competition. Traditional banks must now increase their efficiency and reduce costs, all while preparing to delivering next-generation digital services, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. Gartner predicts that by the end of 2019, about 25 percent of retail banks will use innovative startup providers to replace legacy online and mobile banking systems. These digital transformation vendors are emerging to make banking easier to accomplish on the various devices that today's customers want to use. "Startups and emerging providers of digital banking platforms offer banks interesting opportunities for innovation," said Stessa Cohen, research director at Gartner . "However, CIOs must prepare to manage the challenges of evaluating and selecting new vendors that may not have proven track records in the financial services vertical or may simply be new and untried without an extensi...

Hybrid IT is the result of combining internal and external services -- usually from a combination of on-promise data center and public cloud computing resources. But what are the perceived benefits of hybrid IT? What does the hybrid IT market look like today? Here's recent research findings that offer answers to these questions. According to the latest market study by Technology Business Research (TBR), the need for better collaboration across traditional IT organizations and their Line of Business (LoB) internal customers -- for resource allocation decision making -- is primarily driving hybridization. Besides, there's growing demand for an open cloud infrastructure management solution that provides total visibility and control over all cloud computing assets, without the unwanted limitations of the traditional legacy proprietary IT vendors. TBR estimates the hybrid cloud integration market will generate $8 billion during 2015, with 14 percent year-to-year growth rate, ...

The public cloud computing sector continues to thrive, as more enterprise CIOs seek sustainable ways to free themselves from the burden of updating the inflexible high-cost proprietary software platforms in their own data center. According to the '1Q15 Public Cloud Benchmark' study by Technology Business Research (TBR), the public cloud market will reach $80 billion in 2015 and continue growing quickly -- now forecast to reach $113 billion by 2018. "The public cloud market is as hot as ever right now," said Jillian Mirandi, senior analyst at TBR . "After a few years of incumbent vendors trying to scare the market away from public clouds, they now offer and promote public clouds as part of their hybrid IT strategy." Public cloud pure-play service providers will continue investing in IT security, new data centers and geographic expansion in a successful effort to win more large enterprise deals. Integrated SaaS, PaaS and IaaS Offerings In addition, T...

Worldwide computer server shipments increased 2.8 percent to 2.5 million units in 4Q14 when compared with the same year-ago period, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Growth was due to an ongoing enterprise data center refresh cycle, coupled with infrastructure investments by public cloud computing service providers. For the full year 2014, worldwide server revenue increased 2.3 percent to $50.9 billion when compared to 2013, while worldwide unit shipments increased 2.9 percent to 9.2 million units, a record high. On a year-over-year basis, volume system revenue increased 4.9 percent and mid-range system demand increased 21.2 percent in 4Q14 to $10.8 billion and $1.4 billion, respectively. The volume segment was aided by a continued expansion of x86-based hyperscale open server infrastructures while mid-range systems were helped by enterprise investment in scalable systems for virtualization and consolidation. "Public cloud servic...

While much of the upside potential for cloud computing service adoption will occur in the developed markets this year, there's significant opportunities within the emerging markets around the globe. In Brazil, as an example, cloud computing  demand is evolving rapidly -- with 41 percent of companies already using these solutions and 42 percent planning to use them by the end of 2015, according to the latest market study by Frost & Sullivan. Approximately 25 percent of Brazilian companies will be investing in cloud solutions for the first time. While the majority of these companies are opting for the private cloud model, it is anticipated that the hybrid (public/private) model will become the preferred approach over time. By the end of 2015, 66 percent of Brazilian companies are forecast to use at least one cloud offering. The upside opportunity does include some caveats, however, that may impact further adoption. While the Brazilian companies now have a better unde...

The migration of IT workloads to public cloud service providers continues in 2015. Meanwhile, the forward-thinking enterprise CIOs are making plans to transform their data centers to accommodate the applications they intend to keep. Maturation of cloud computing infrastructure and demand for sustainable benefits will drive the marketplace for new hardware and software components to a 14 percent CAGR from 2014 to 2018 -- reaching $36.8 billion -- according to the latest market study by Technology Business Research (TBR). "Customers are increasingly integrating public and private cloud resources into day-to-day, mission-critical workloads and processes," said Krista Macomber, analyst at TBR . However, TBR believes that securing, managing and integrating these complex heterogeneous cloud environments is very challenging. For cloud components vendors, this means embracing more systems integrator partners and expanding their adoption of popular open-source cloud management...

There once was a time where Information Technology (IT) professional services was a high-growth sector of the global economy. Organizations in all regions of the world were engaged in the deployment of monolithic CRM and ERP applications. Teams of software engineers and consultants were hired to manage these expensive projects. The results were often disappointing. Today, the traditional IT Services business models have been disrupted by the transition to X-as-a-Service models, which combined with longer decision cycles around emerging complex hybrid cloud computing environments leads to continued pressures on vendor revenue growth. According to to the latest market study by Technology Business Research (TBR), cautious client spend on transformational projects and extended decision cycles are occurring in the IT Services market, with average trailing 12-month (TTM) revenue growing 1.5 percent year-to-year in 3Q14. That's slightly higher than the 1.2 percent year-to-year grow...

Chief executives have approved digital technology budgets and updated strategic plans, now the Line of Business leaders and their IT counterparts must address the tactical execution for 2015 and beyond. In hindsight, 2014 was a pivotal year for cloud service platform adoption. Regardless, the trend will accelerate next year. International Data Corporation (IDC) has shared their 2015 predictions about the global cloud computing platforms market, based upon their latest outlook. These predictions are intended to help senior executives and IT leaders capitalize on the most profound emerging market opportunities and plan for their future growth. "Digitization and transformation to virtualized, on-demand services are driving very rapid internal IT change. All business technology buyers are now shifting steadily toward cloud-first strategies," said Robert Mahowald, vice president at IDC . Moreover, nearly all organizations are reconsidering their IT best practices to embrac...

The early-adopters of cloud services already know what they want to achieve from each new deployment, and are somewhat confident that they're able to plan, implement and manage their own projects. In contrast, the typical CIO or IT manager in the majority of enterprises still need the help and wisdom of experienced practitioners -- people who have been there, done that. That's why business decision makers are seeking cloud professional services guidance at twice the rate of private and public cloud vendors, according to the latest worldwide market study by Technology Business Research (TBR). Today, these consulting engagements are a pivotal point of the mainstream buyer's journey, as more executives make the decision to migrate to a cloud services model and consultants provide advice and education to prospective cloud customers. Public, private and hybrid cloud integration guidance demand will follow basic cloud professional services growth in coming years, once adop...

The introduction of open source software platforms and bare-metal systems into the legacy enterprise network realm will eventually disrupt the status-quo for leading vendors that have previously benefited from the lack of unruly innovation. Meanwhile, established vendors can still take advantage of the apparent resistance to change within many traditional IT organizations that depend upon the conservative leadership of cautious CIOs. Results from the latest market study by Technology Business Research (TBR) indicate growth in the enterprise networking market is accelerating, as demand for cloud, mobility and security solutions -- particularly in developed markets -- escalated and major suppliers leveraged their dominant market positions to capture customer spending. Total enterprise networking revenue among the benchmarked companies grew 4.3 percent year-to-year in the first half of 2014, that's more than the 0.9 percent growth in second half of 2013. Vendors capitalized on...

Since its emergence four years ago, OpenStack has garnered a great deal of industry attention. This open source cloud computing project has seen increased momentum as more developers, vendors and end users have collaboratively built out the OpenStack architecture. Today, the OpenStack series of projects has evolved into a top priority for many IT professionals and suppliers. This rapidly evolving software technology is the essential foundation for the Open Hybrid Cloud phenomenon. The OpenStack standard will provide similar benefits for large-scale cloud computing in the data center that the Linux standard has previously provided within the computer server. The OpenStack technology market, which is still in the early-adopter stage of market development, will grow from an estimated $883 million in revenue during 2014 to reach $3.3 billion by 2018, as vendors increasingly adopt the open-source platform for developing their applications and enterprises deploy the infrastructure for hy...

The shift to cloud computing, the rise of open-source solutions and the ongoing adoption of hybrid cloud models will continue to change the dynamics of the global enterprise software market. Emerging applications with significant new compute and storage requirements, such as Big Data analytics, will most likely migrate to cloud service platforms. The shifting demand has a resulting effect on traditional software licence sales growth. International Data Corporation (IDC) released the latest forecast from the Worldwide Semi-annual Software Tracker. For 2014, the worldwide software market is forecast to grow 5.9 percent year over year in current US dollars (USD). In constant USD the growth rate has been revised to 5.7 percent -- that's down from the 6.2 percent year-over-year growth forecast in November 2013. IDC believes that the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the 2013-2018 forecast period will remain close to 6 percent. Structured Data Management Software, Collabo...

Marc Andreessen's 2011 proclamation that "software is eating the world" may be intuitive to some people, while many others will be puzzled by that remark. What does that mean in reality, and why should you care? Software is getting more attention today than hardware, and for good reason. You're going to hear a lot more about "Software-Defined" everything, because it's a significant trend in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector -- the mainstream business-related impact of virtualization will continue to reach across all sectors of the Global Networked Economy. A good example; International Data Corporation (IDC) released the latest results from their Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker. For 2013, the worldwide software market grew 5.5 percent year over year reaching a total market size of $369 billion. This was higher than the 4.3 percent growth experienced in 2012 -- a result of the Eurozone recovery and continued above-ave...

Did you know that cloud computing can be viewed as an evolution of various concepts and technologies that date back to the late 1950s? Even greater parallels to cloud computing were developed in the 1970s, as mainframe computer time-sharing emerged. Current offerings are the latest manifestation of this trend. While cloud services adoption will reach a crescendo in 2014, it's just the beginning of the next wave of enterprise computing evolution. Juniper Research expects the total enterprise cloud computing market to reach a value of $90.7 billion by 2018, with both IaaS and PaaS expected to grow rapidly. Moreover, revenues generated from enterprise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) will reach $53.5 billion in 2018, representing 59 percent of the enterprise public cloud computing market -- that's rising from $23.2 billion in 2013. Addressing Security and Compliance Concerns According to the Juniper assessment, SaaS will likely remain the dominant cloud model in the foreseeab...

The convergence of powerful forces -- such as mobile devices, cloud services, big data and the internet of things -- will drive new innovation within the government sector, according to the latest global market study by Gartner. Their analysts have highlighted the strategic technology trends for Smart Government projects. "Smart government integrates information, communication and operational technologies to planning, management and operations across multiple domains, process areas and jurisdictions to generate sustainable public value," said Andrea Di Maio, managing vice president at Gartner . The key trends for smart government include: Mobile Citizen Engagement Several inquiries with Gartner government clients reveal an interest in providing citizen-facing services using mobile devices, as well as leveraging social networking software functionality. This interest is driven by a combination of pressure coming from the political leadership and from opportunities that n...

The forward-looking effects of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) on the traditional wireline and wireless broadband service provider sector will truly be unprecedented. Vendors of deeply-rooted proprietary technologies are most at risk. Moreover, plans for open-source hardware and software adoption will potentially reshape the whole value-chain, as major service providers start to procure new equipment and services that are based upon open innovation-related business models. By leveraging virtualization and cloud technologies, SDN and NFV is looming as a disruptive force that is leading some telecom service providers to evaluate new network architectures and driving traditional equipment vendors to dramatically shift product development, according to the latest market study by Dell’Oro Group. Some traditional networking vendors have already made dramatic shifts in their go-to-market strategy. Indeed, the Open Hybrid Cloud era has ushere...

The confluence of hybrid cloud services -- based upon open source technologies like OpenStack -- and low-cost high-value Chrome OS notebook PCs is going to become a powerful combination that will gain momentum in 2014 and beyond. Here's an example of that key trend in motion. An estimated 2.1 million Chromebooks shipped in 2013 with nearly 89 percent of total shipments reaching North America, according to the latest global market study by ABI Research. As Chromebook shipments expand globally, ABI Research now forecasts an increase of 28 percent CAGR to 11 million units in 2019. “ABI Research tracked Chromebooks across six regions and found the average selling price (ASP) to be $338,” said Stephanie Van Vactor, research analyst at ABI Research . ABI believes that this truly budget-driven device is a disruptive force to the portable PC market. The ASP and shipment growth of Chromebooks shows the market responding to products for the budget conscious -- a reaction from a slowl...