Tag Archive for Gartner

| August 25, 2010
Comments Off on Acer Beats Dell in PC Wars

Acer Beats Dell in PC Wars

Acer Beats Dell in PC WarsI recently wrote about the troubles at Dell. Here is more proof of the downturn at Dell.  BusinessInsider is reporting that Acer (ACEIY), the Taiwanese computer maker has posted another solid quarter of global PC sales, according to new data from Gartner.

Acer logoThe Asian and emerging markets drove Acer’s growth. It has also successfully ridden the explosion in netbook demand. The netbook market is drying up now, though thanks to Apple’s iPad. This could give Dell an opening if it can execute well (a big if lately) and Taiwan-based Acer has problems cracking the mainland China market.

Acer Beats Dell

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| January 2, 2010
Comments Off on Personal Laptops at Work?

Personal Laptops at Work?

Personal Laptops at Work? CIO.com is reporting on a recent survey by Gartner which claims that 10% of a firm’s laptop computers are employee-owned. The research firm says that companies are starting to let employees use privately owned laptops for work purposes, according to a  survey of 500 IT managers in the U.S., U.K., and Germany. The IT managers said they expect that percentage to creep higher next year.

Gartner says that some employees like the trend because it means they can have more powerful laptops and newer designs than their companies’ IT departments offer. The survey found that 47% of workplaces have banned employee-owned PCs, 43% have policies that allow the use of employee-owned PCs for work-related purposes, and 10% have no policy on the matter.

Gartner believes this trend is popular with employers because of cost. When employees bring their own hardware to work, and the employer doesn’t pay for it or support it.

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Who was Gartner interviewing? What regulated firm (SOX, PCI, HIPPA, etc.) would allow unknown devices on their internal network. This trend needlessly exposes the company to malware and data theft risks. We encourage our clients to go in the opposite direction. We talk to them, write and enforce policies to ban personal devices like USB drives and iPods for the data theft risk. We also suggest they get control of their remote access and private email on the corporate network.

This really seems to be a lax policy in this age of cyber-crime because privately owned hardware could open the door for a hacker.

What do you think?

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| December 9, 2009
Comments Off on Which Anti-Malware is Best?

Which Anti-Malware is Best?

Which Anti-Malware is Best?In a report, AV-Comparatives compared the base performance of some of the top anti-malware products on the market. The objective of these tests was to identify how well antivirus scanners can detect new malware using their base functions.

Base anti-malware functions included their proactive scanning and heuristics methods, without the advantage of downloading the latest signatures. Forcing a test without the latest virus signatures makes it possible to evaluate the strength of the heuristic-or proactive, technology of the anti-malware engines.

ArsTechnica summarizes that the tests were run on two sets of malware. Set A, which contains malware from December 2007 to December 2008 (of which most products could detect over 97%). Set B, contained 1.6 million samples of malware collected between August 11 and August 17, 2009. This set included the following categories of malware: Trojans (69.5%), Backdoors/Bots (20.7%), Worms (6.1%), other malware (1.5%), and Windows viruses (0.4%).

Results

Ars reported these proactive detection results (rounded to the nearest percent):

After taking these results into consideration and adjusting for false positives, AV-Comparatives rated the security companies from best to worst in three categories:

  • Advanced+:
    • G DATA,
    • Kaspersky,
    • ESET,
    • F-Secure,
    • Microsoft,
    • Avast,
    • eScan.
  • Advanced:
  • Standard:

In September of 2008 NetworkWorld reported on Gartner claims that enterprises are paying too much for security software. Gartner says vendors simply aren’t doing enough to keep up with the prevalence of threats on the Internet. Neil MacDonald, a research vice president at Gartner says that security vendors are “maintaining high-profit margins on firewalls and antivirus software despite these products being nothing more than commodities.” NetworkWorld says that during his presentation at the Gartner’s 2008 IT Security Summit in London, Mr. MacDonald was vociferous in his condemnation of how security products are actually increasing their prices over the years across a backdrop of lowered effectiveness, contradicting pricing schemes across the rest of the IT industry.

Anti-malware pricing is broken

Security vendors have maintained a pricing scheme that contradicts the rest of the IT industry, Mr. MacDonald said. Typically with software or hardware, prices go down year after year with the introduction of new and better products. In some cases, however, security software often loses its effectiveness as new threats emerge, while prices stay high. “Why in antivirus year after year do we pay more for something that gives us less?” MacDonald asked. “It’s insanity. Why is information security immune from the trends of the IT industry?”

Gartner recommends that firms use the commodity status of security software to their advantage, “I know it’s hard to switch but you have to seriously enter the negotiations,” MacDonald said. “Let the vendors know that you are not afraid to switch.”  And he recommends that buyers should aggressively negotiate for better prices.

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While most malware writers are script kiddies with an affinity to making minor modifications to existing malware there are some very good black hat hackers out there that are not dummies.  These tests are important for buyers to understand which product’s core functionality is more efficient against new threats and not rely on constant updates to augment their capabilities. In the face of new threats, superior heuristic capabilities are crucial to anti-malware software? The weekly, daily, or even multiple times a day, definitions updates are the lifeline of the anti-malware industry. The need for constant updates is what drives the annual payments for subscriptions.

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| October 30, 2009
Comments Off on 2010 Not Any Better – Maybe

2010 Not Any Better – Maybe

2010 Not Any Better - Maybe it spendingGartner says that IT spending experienced its worst year ever in 2009. The Stamford, CT research firm says the enterprise space saw a spending decline of 6.9%. ChannelInsider reports that the industry won’t reach 2008’s spending levels again until 2012. In the meantime, there will be some growth in 2010. Gartner sees a 3.3% increase over 2009 levels to $3.3 trillion.

IT spending prediction

“2010 is about balancing the focus on cost, risk, and growth,” says Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of research, in a prepared statement. “For more than 50% of CIOs the IT budget will be 0% or less in growth terms. It will only slowly improve in 2011.” On the other hand, Forrester has a rosier picture. In their report released 10-08-09 “US and Global IT Outlook: Q3 2009,” Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels, says the global IT market will see an upturn, starting Q3 2009 in an article on Campus Technology.

Hardware is hard hit

According to Gartner, things have been toughest on the hardware side of the computer market. Gartner says that worldwide computer hardware spending will total just $317 billion this year, a 16.5% decline, and in 2010 hardware spending will remain flat. Forrester says computer equipment sales will increase by 8.3% in 2010. Worldwide telecom spending is on pace to decline 4% this year and is forecast to grow by 3.2% in 2010 according to Gartner. Forrester claims communications equipment sales will show a bump at 3.6%.

Professional services is up

Additionally, Gartner forecasts IT services spending to total $781 billion in 2009 and to grow 4.5% in 2010.  In their report, Forrester predicts IT consulting services will increase by 11.7% in 2010 Software spending will decline 2.1% in 2009 but is expected to grow by 4.8% in 2010. Forrester says software purchases will be up by 9.3% in 2010.

Three big trends will shape the IT spending and operational infrastructure in 2010, according to Gartner—a shift in IT budgets to more opex from capex, the ramifications of an older infrastructure made up of older IT hardware, and the need for IT to create business cases for spending.

Spending trends

Gartner says the shift from capital expenditure to operational expenditure in IT budgets will be accelerated by emerging cloud services and will make IT costs more scalable and elastic. The second trend comes from delays in computer hardware upgrades. As the business has delayed buying servers, PCs, and printers, and is expected to continue to keep wallets closed in 2010, they need to look at the impact of increased equipment failure rates. “Approximately 1 million servers have had their replacement delayed by a year. That is 3% of the global installed base. In 2010 it will be at least 2 million,” Gartner says.

“If replacement cycles do not change, almost 10 percent of the server installed base will be beyond scheduled replacement by 2011,” Sondergaard says. “That will impact enterprise risk. CFOs need to understand this dynamic, and it’s the responsibility of the CIO to convey this in a way the CFO understands.”

Third, Gartner says that IT needs to build compelling business cases, “2010 marks the year in which IT needs to demonstrate a true line of sight to business objectives for every investment decision. IT leaders can no longer look at IT as a percentage of revenue. CIOs must benchmark IT according to business impact.”

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From where I stand, the Gartner predictions seem more rational than Forrester’s. Forrester seems to base their optimism on two fleeting factors, Obama-money and Microsoft. The only real beneficiaries of Obama-money has been Wall Street, not the rest of America, so stimulus spending is irrelevant to most American business. Forrester seems to believe that Windows 7 will save IT spending, another large leap of faith that businesses are going to jump on the bandwagon, but none of my clients seem ready to leap yet.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| September 22, 2008
Comments Off on Broadband Reach Grows

Broadband Reach Grows

Broadband Reach GrowsA recent Gartner report was cited in a Network World article that claims Broadband to reach 77% of U.S. households by 2012. Gartner states that U.S. Broadband penetration will increase to 77% of U.S. households by 2012. The market research firm is basing this projection on emerging 4G wireless services as WiMAX and Long Term Evolution (LTE). Both technologies are expected to be launched over the next four years.

Based on Gartner’s projections, the U.S. will be in a 5th place tie worldwide with Japan for broadband penetration. The 2012 leaders will be South Korea (97%), the Netherlands (82%), Hong Kong (81%), and Canada (79%).

According to the Network World article, the current U.S. broadband services subscription rate is just above 50%.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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