idc

Even as the recession continues to cool CIO appetites for software purchases, Linux is bucking the trend, according to a new IDC report.

IDC is projecting Linux revenue to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 16.9 percent from 2008 to 2013, topping $1.2 billion in 2013.

As IDC notes, this growth will comprise just 4 percent of total software market revenue by 2013, up from 2.2 percent in 2008. However, for the second time, IDC has also examined nonpaid deployments of Linux, revealing some troubling data.

I've always assumed Red Hat's primary Linux … Read more

Helped by demand for Intel's Atom chip, microprocessor shipments shot up 10.1 percent in the second quarter of the year, according to research released Thursday by market firm IDC.

The second-quarter gain from the first quarter compared with a drop of 10.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008 to first quarter of 2009. However, the year-over-year comparison with 2008's second quarter showed a drop of 7 percent.

The growth from the first quarter of 2009 to the second quarter was driven largely by manufacturers replenishing their chip inventory, rather than any boost in consumer demand … Read more

For years, the analyst community has largely ignored open source or, worse, has actively advised against it. While there are exceptions--Forrester, The 451 Group, Redmonk--the general mood in the analyst community seems to be one of steadfast denial of open-source's impact on computing.

Ignoring open source is a bit like denying gravity, however, and even open-source agnostics like IDC and Gartner are now stating the obvious:

Open source is having a massive impact on enterprise computing, and it's becoming big business.

IDC, for example, significantly revised upward its estimate of the market size for open-source solutions, now projecting … Read more

The storage software industry has seen its first quarterly sales decline after more than five years of solid growth, according to a report from market researcher IDC.

First-quarter 2009 revenue for the industry sank 5.2 percent to $2.8 billion from the previous year. The slump has impacted several key vendors, including Hewlett-Packard, EMC, and IBM, all of which sell storage software to enterprise clients.

"The combination of the normally slow first quarter for most companies with the continued economic climate was displayed in this quarter's results," Michael Margossian, research analyst for storage software at IDC, … Read more

The disk storage market is the latest casualty of the recession. Worldwide sales for storage vendors in the first quarter of 2009 dropped 18.2 percent to $5.6 billion from $6.8 billion a year ago, according to a report from research firm IDC.

The market includes vendors such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell, which sell complete disk storage systems to enterprise customers. IDC blamed the decline on the overall downturn in total server sales.

Among the top five vendors, HP fared the worst, hit with a 25.8 percent drop in sales to $975 million from $1.3 … Read more

Worldwide server sales suffered a 25 percent drop in the first quarter, hitting their lowest level in at least 12 years, according to a new report from market tracker IDC.

The report, released Thursday, recorded first-quarter factory server sales at $9.9 billion, a drop of exactly 24.5 percent over the same period a year ago--and the lowest level since IDC began covering the market a dozen years ago.

The number of servers shipped fell 26.5 percent from the year-ago quarter, the smallest quarterly figure in the last five years.

IDC breaks the server market into three segments--volume … Read more

Open source has become big business, suggests an article in the Investors Business Daily, but it has done so by becoming more like the proprietary-software world it purports to leave behind.

The article cites recent research from IDC indicating that CIOs allocated up to 24 percent of their budgets to open-source software in 2008, up from 10 percent in 2007--a finding that jibes with recent data from Forrester. This open-source growth is propelling Red Hat to grow "at two to three times the rate of the broader software industry over a multiyear horizon," according to research from Piper Jaffray.… Read more

The decline in PC chip shipments may be slowing but Netbook processor deliveries were off 33 percent, while Advanced Micro Devices gained on Intel, IDC said.

In the first calendar quarter of 2009, worldwide PC microprocessor shipments fell 10.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008, compared with a 17 percent decline from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, according to IDC.

AMD gained on Intel in the first quarter. Intel garnered a 77.3 percent unit market share, a loss of 4.7 percent, while AMD had a 22.3 percent share, a gain of 4.6 … Read more

Market research firm IDC on Friday said it is cutting 82 workers in the United States, or 5 percent of its worldwide staff "due to the impact of the economic recession."

The Framingham, Mass.-based company said that the cuts include 26 research analysts.

"IDC will continue to have more than 1,000 research analysts worldwide which is more than any other technology market intelligence and advisory company," IDC said in a statement. The firm added that it still has more analysts than it did a year ago, noting that it hired 50 new analysts in … Read more