Here is my collection of trends and predictions for year 2014:
It seems that PC market is not recovering in 2014. IDC is forecasting that the technology channel will buy in around 34 million fewer PCs this year than last. It seem that things aren’t going to improve any time soon (down, down, down until 2017?). There will be no let-up on any front, with desktops and portables predicted to decline in both the mature and emerging markets. Perhaps the chief concern for future PC demand is a lack of reasons to replace an older system: PC usage has not moved significantly beyond consumption and productivity tasks to differentiate PCs from other devices. As a result, PC lifespan continue to increase. Death of the Desktop article says that sadly for the traditional desktop, this is only a matter of time before its purpose expires and that it would be inevitable it will happen within this decade. (I expect that it will not completely disappear).
When the PC business is slowly decreasing, smartphone and table business will increase quickly. Some time in the next six months, the number of smartphones on earth will pass the number of PCs. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone: the mobile business is much bigger than the computer industry. There are now perhaps 3.5-4 billion mobile phones, replaced every two years, versus 1.7-1.8 billion PCs replaced every 5 years. Smartphones broke down that wall between those industries few years ago – suddenly tech companies could sell to an industry with $1.2 trillion annual revenue. Now you can sell more phones in a quarter than the PC industry sells in a year.
After some years we will end up with somewhere over 3bn smartphones in use on earth, almost double the number of PCs. There are perhaps 900m consumer PCs on earth, and maybe 800m corporate PCs. The consumer PCs are mostly shared and the corporate PCs locked down, and neither are really mobile. Those 3 billion smartphones will all be personal, and all mobile. Mobile browsing is set to overtake traditional desktop browsing in 2015. The smartphone revolution is changing how consumers use the Internet. This will influence web design.
The only PC sector that seems to have some growth is server side. Microservers & Cloud Computing to Drive Server Growth article says that increased demand for cloud computing and high-density microserver systems has brought the server market back from a state of decline. We’re seeing fairly significant change in the server market. According to the 2014 IC Market Drivers report, server unit shipment growth will increase in the next several years, thanks to purchases of new, cheaper microservers. The total server IC market is projected to rise by 3% in 2014 to $14.4 billion: multicore MPU segment for microservers and NAND flash memories for solid state drives are expected to see better numbers.
Spinning rust and tape are DEAD. The future’s flash, cache and cloud article tells that the flash is the tier for primary data; the stuff christened tier 0. Data that needs to be written out to a slower response store goes across a local network link to a cloud storage gateway and that holds the tier 1 nearline data in its cache. Never mind software-defined HYPE, 2014 will be the year of storage FRANKENPLIANCES article tells that more hype around Software-Defined-Everything will keep the marketeers and the marchitecture specialists well employed for the next twelve months but don’t expect anything radical. The only innovation is going to be around pricing and consumption models as vendors try to maintain margins. FCoE will continue to be a side-show and FC, like tape, will soldier on happily. NAS will continue to eat away at the block storage market and perhaps 2014 will be the year that object storage finally takes off.
IT managers are increasingly replacing servers with SaaS article says that cloud providers take on a bigger share of the servers as overall market starts declining. An in-house system is no longer the default for many companies. IT managers want to cut the number of servers they manage, or at least slow the growth, and they may be succeeding. IDC expects that anywhere from 25% to 30% of all the servers shipped next year will be delivered to cloud services providers. In three years, 2017, nearly 45% of all the servers leaving manufacturers will be bought by cloud providers. The shift will slow the purchase of server sales to enterprise IT. Big cloud providers are more and more using their own designs instead of servers from big manufacturers. Data center consolidations are eliminating servers as well. For sure, IT managers are going to be managing physical servers for years to come. But, the number will be declining.
I hope that the IT business will start to grow this year as predicted. Information technology spends to increase next financial year according to N Chandrasekaran, chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest information technology (IT) services company. IDC predicts that IT consumption will increase next year to 5 per cent worldwide to $ 2.14 trillion. It is expected that the biggest opportunity will lie in the digital space: social, mobility, cloud and analytics. The gradual recovery of the economy in Europe will restore faith in business. Companies are re-imaging their business, keeping in mind changing digital trends.
The death of Windows XP will be on the new many times on the spring. There will be companies try to cash in with death of Windows XP: Microsoft’s plan for Windows XP support to end next spring, has received IT services providers as well as competitors to invest in their own services marketing. HP is peddling their customers Connected Backup 8.8 service to prevent data loss during migration. VMware is selling cloud desktop service. Google is wooing users to switch to ChromeOS system by making Chrome’s user interface familiar to wider audiences. The most effective way XP exploiting is the European defense giant EADS subsidiary of Arkoon, which promises support for XP users who do not want to or can not upgrade their systems.
There will be talk on what will be coming from Microsoft next year. Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a series of updates in 2015 that could see major revisions for the Windows, Xbox, and Windows RT platforms. Microsoft’s wave of spring 2015 updates to its various Windows-based platforms has a codename: Threshold. If all goes according to early plans, Threshold will include updates to all three OS platforms (Xbox One, Windows and Windows Phone).
Amateur programmers are becoming increasingly more prevalent in the IT landscape. A new IDC study has found that of the 18.5 million software developers in the world, about 7.5 million (roughly 40 percent) are “hobbyist developers,” which is what IDC calls people who write code even though it is not their primary occupation. The boom in hobbyist programmers should cheer computer literacy advocates.IDC estimates there are almost 29 million ICT-skilled workers in the world as we enter 2014, including 11 million professional developers.
The Challenge of Cross-language Interoperability will be more and more talked. Interfacing between languages will be increasingly important. You can no longer expect a nontrivial application to be written in a single language. With software becoming ever more complex and hardware less homogeneous, the likelihood of a single language being the correct tool for an entire program is lower than ever. The trend toward increased complexity in software shows no sign of abating, and modern hardware creates new challenges. Now, mobile phones are starting to appear with eight cores with the same ISA (instruction set architecture) but different speeds, some other streaming processors optimized for different workloads (DSPs, GPUs), and other specialized cores.
Just another new USB connector type will be pushed to market. Lightning strikes USB bosses: Next-gen ‘type C’ jacks will be reversible article tells that USB is to get a new, smaller connector that, like Apple’s proprietary Lightning jack, will be reversible. Designed to support both USB 3.1 and USB 2.0, the new connector, dubbed “Type C”, will be the same size as an existing micro USB 2.0 plug.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Research reveals 3D browser SurroundWeb that displays content across multiple surfaces in a room
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/03/03/microsoft-research-reveals-3d-browser-surroundweb-displays-content-across-multiple-surfaces-room/#!yhvV2
Microsoft has a small obsession with innovating in the living room, so it should come as no surprise that its research arm continues to plough forward with a 3D browser. Called SurroundWeb, the prototype allows Web pages to display content across multiple surfaces in a room.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud computing costs for Healthcare.gov more than quintuple original estimates
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/25/cloud-computing-costs-for-healthcaregov-more-than-quintuple-original-estimates/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Murdoch dumps Microsoft, prepares to Hangout with Google
News Corp Australia drops Outlook, brings in Gmail and Gcalendar
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/04/murdoch_dumps_microsoft_collaborates_with_google/
“News Corp dumps Microsoft for Google Apps”
The story reports that News Corporation, Murdoch’s antipodean publishing entity, will migrate “its email and calendar platforms from Microsoft Outlook to Google Mail and Calendar over the next six months.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fujitsu Labs develops prototype haptic sensory tablet
http://www.gizmag.com/fujitsu-haptic-sensory-tablet-prototype/31052/
Many smartphone or tablet users will already be familiar with receiving vibration feedback when typing on a virtual keyboard, but, though better than nothing, it’s not particularly convincing. There have been attempts to make sensory feedback from touchscreens more realistic using electrostatic force, for example, or even creating the sensation of physical buttons by pushing liquid into prearranged tactile pixels, but Fujitsu is claiming to break new ground with its prototype haptic sensory tablet.
The company took the technology to MWC last week, where visitors were introduced to four demonstrations of the haptic sensory capabilities of the prototype tablet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
In 2020, Everything Will Be a Game
http://technologyadvice.com/in-2020-everything-will-be-a-game/
According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 85% of the tasks in our daily lives will include game elements by 2020. In other words, our lives will be gamified.
Gamification is already entrenched in our society. Organizations such as the Boy and Girl Scouts use game elements to promote skill development through the awarding of merit badges. We use our smartphones to check in on Facebook, Foursquare, and Yelp in order to earn badges or displace our friends as the “mayor” of a popular restuarant. According to Richard Garriott, longtime IEEE member, “our mobile devices will be the hub for all the ‘games’ we’ll be playing throughout a normal day by tracking the data we submit and using it to connect everything.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
March 2014 Issue of Linux Journal: 20 Years of Linux Journal
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/march-2014-issue-linux-journal-20-years-linux-journal
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Job After Steve Jobs: Tim Cook and Apple
From the moment he became CEO of Apple, Tim Cook found himself in the shadow of his boss
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304610404579405420617578250?mod=rss_Technology&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304610404579405420617578250.html%3Fmod%3Drss_Technology
Tomi Engdahl says:
RONNIEE Card Shares Memory Across Networks
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1321256&
Just as memory and storage continue to merge, memory is also becoming a key consideration in network architectures to improve application performance and reduce latency.
Startup A3Cube recently announced a new network interface card, dubbed RONNIEE Express, designed to eliminate the I/O performance gap between CPU power and data access performance for datacenters, big data, and high-performance computing applications. The company said that by turning PCI Express into an intelligent network fabric, it can exceed existing networking technologies such as Ethernet, InfiniBand, and Fibre Channel, and improve memory latencies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
When You Are Popular on Facebook, Strangers Think You’re Attractive
http://neoacademic.com/2014/02/26/when-you-are-popular-on-facebook-strangers-think-youre-attractive#.UxWr04VM0ik
From psychology, we’ve known for a while that people create near-instant impressions of people based upon all sorts of cues. Visual cues (like unkempt hair or clothing), auditory cues (like a high- or low-pitched voice), and even olfactory cues (what’s that smell!?!) all combine rapidly to create our initial impressions of a person. Where things get interesting is when one set of these cues is eliminated. For example, if we’ve never met a person in a real life, do we form impressions of people when all we know about them is their Facebook profile? And if so, what do we learn from those profiles?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Can Tell You If A Person Is Worth Hiring
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/03/05/facebook-can-tell-you-if-a-person-is-worth-hiring/
Employers already know it’s a good idea to check job candidates’ Facebook pages to make sure there aren’t any horrible red flags there. The reddest flags for most employers seem to be drugs, drinking, badmouthing former employers, and lying about one’s qualifications. But there’s another good reason for checking out a candidate’s Facebook page before inviting them in for an interview: it may be a fairly accurate reflection of how good they’ll be at the job.
That’s the conclusion in a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology last month.
Key takeaway for hiring employers: The Facebook page is the first interview; if you don’t like a person there, you probably won’t like working with them. The bad news for employers, though, who are hoping to take the Facebook shortcut: “So many more profiles are restricted in what the public can access,” says Kluemper.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Data Centre World: It’s hard work cooling off those hot racks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/04/data_centre_world_2014_show_report/
Certainly, cooling is an area that attracts some diverse approaches, some such as Excalibur Energy’s focus on updating and optimising existing systems, rather than simply swapping out old kit for new. In one project,
Iceotope relies on specially equipped cooling racks that are designed to accommodate existing equipment. Heat needn’t go to waste, but harnessing this high density computing byproduct does require some commitment and clarity of vision.
On this point, the European Commission funded CoolEmAll initiative looks to improving efficiency from the design level. Part of the project involves developing the Simulation, Visualisation and Decision Support (SVD) Toolkit which will enable data centre modelling to reveal how the physical positioning, cooling, applications and workloads can be configured to improve energy efficiency.
Needless to say, if you wander over to Keysource, you’ll find there’s an app for that. The Data Centre Daily is a freebie iOS and Android app to aid the calculation of energy costs in the data centre, together with a handy convertor to work out rack space availability for a given area.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Windows XP data transfer tool and end of support notifications
http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/windowsexperience/archive/2014/03/03/new-windows-xp-data-transfer-tool-and-end-of-support-notifications.aspx
As the end of support for Windows XP on April 8th nears we’re continuing to focus on ensuring customers are aware of the deadline and helping them to migrate to a modern operating system such as Windows 8.1. Today we have some news on both those fronts.
To help customers on Windows XP prepare to move to a new PC, we are announcing a free transfer tool that will be available beginning this month. We have partnered with Laplink to provide Windows XP users with a free data migration tool called PCmover Express for Windows XP which copies your files and settings from your Windows XP PC to a new device running Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1. This tool will copy your files, music, videos, email and user profiles and settings from your old PC to your new device, transferring across your home or work network, and even enables Windows XP users to customize exactly what they want to bring over to their new device.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD updates driver and programming tools roadmap for supporting HSA features in Kaveri
by Rahul Garg on March 3, 2014 8:30 AM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7825/amd-updates-driver-roadmap-for-supporting-hsa-features-in-kaveri
n our Kaveri review, we discussed HSA and that Kaveri brings many exciting hardware features such as true CPU/GPU shared memory (hUMA) and others such as heterogeneous queueing (hQ). However, at launch they were not really exposed in the drivers. AMD has now provided an update on the driver roadmap for exposing the hardware features to various compute APIs.
Today AMD is expected to release a beta driver for Windows that exposes some shared memory extensions to OpenCL. Currently, AMD ships an OpenCL 1.2 implementation for Kaveri. OpenCL 1.2 standard by itself does not really expose shared memory features properly but OpenCL 2.0 will have more robust support.
However, OpenCL is only part of the story. Kaveri’s promise is that it will provide driver support for HSA software stack which includes components such as a compiler for HSAIL and a HSA runtime. HSA software stack will enable high-level languages and simplified programming models and the exciting HSA developments appear to be happening on Linux first. In Q2 2014, AMD will release a beta HSA software stack for Linux.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft finalizes Windows 8.1 Update 1, improved desktop features available next month
http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/4/5468968/windows-8-1-update-1-rtm-release-date-april
Microsoft has completed the development process of Windows 8.1 Update 1. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans have revealed to The Verge that the software maker recently signed off on a final version of the update, a process known internally as Release to Manufacturing (RTM).
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDC Expects PC Shipments to Fall by -6% in 2014 and Decline Through 2018
04 Mar 2014
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24700314
Worldwide PC shipments fell by -9.8% in 2013, slightly better than a projected decline of -10.1%, but still the most severe contraction on record, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker.
“Emerging markets used to be a core driver of the PC market, as rising penetration among large populations boosted overall growth,” said Loren Loverde, Vice President, Worldwide PC Trackers. “At the moment, however, we’re seeing emerging regions more affected by a weak economic environment as well as significant shifts in technology buying priorities. We do expect these regions to recover in the medium term and perform better than mature regions, but growth is expected to stabilize near zero percent, rather than driving increasing volumes as we saw in the past.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hey doc, what’s the PC’s prognosis? A. Long-term growth below zero
Everyone wants battery-friendly chips or beefy server silicon, says IDC
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/05/idc_pc_growth/
The worldwide PC market suffered the “most severe contraction on record” in 2013, which means it is doing better than expected, analyst house IDC said on Tuesday.
PC and laptop shipments declined by 9.8 per cent in 2013, the firm revealed – and it projected further year-on-year declines through to 2014.
315 million PCs and laptops shipped worldwide in 2013, IDC said, and the analysts reckoned that number would fall to 291.7m by 2018.
The PC market is in the doldrums due to the rise of, you guessed it, mobile phones and tablets, Loverde explained. This transition has taken some companies by surprise, and others such as Lenovo have planned for it via a ‘PC Plus’ strategy that has seen it diversify into mobes and other devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
1 in 10 Americans think HTML is an STD, study finds
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-1-10-americans-html-std-study-finds-20140304,0,1188415.story#ixzz2v54ieM4R
If you’re talking tech with Americans, you may want to avoid using any jargon.
A recent study found that many Americans are lost when it comes to tech-related terms, with 11% saying that they thought HTML — a language that is used to create websites — was a sexually transmitted disease.
Besides HTML, there were some other amusing findings
Despite the incorrect answers, 61% of the respondents said it is important to have a good knowledge of technology in this day and age.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The new PHP
PHP’s experiencing a renaissance, with improvements and new standards
http://programming.oreilly.com/2014/03/the-new-php.html
The programming language many love to hate is experiencing a renaissance. This is not your parents’ PHP. The new PHP is a more mature language with community standards, a growing affinity for interoperable components, and a passionate movement to improve performance. If you have bypassed PHP for alternative languages, or if you are a PHP veteran unaware of recent changes, you owe it to yourself to give PHP a second look.
PHP 5.5 (the latest stable build as of this writing) has made major progress from earlier versions.
There are also exciting things happening with PHP under the hood, too.
The memory usage in PHP 5.5 is far less than earlier versions. The PHP Zend Engine also provides a built-in FastCGI process manager that typically sits behind a reverse proxy (e.g. nginx) and will take of process spawning and management for you.
Tomi Engdahl says:
If you don’t GRIP it tightly, lonely enterprise cloud will WANDER
There’s more to this than just a bigger DropBox
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/05/how_to_fly_a_cloud_for_enterprise/
In his seminar on Cloud, Enterprise and the New Rules of IT, Jared Wray, chief technology officer of cloud at CenturyLink (the company that owns and has rebranded Savvis) outlined how cloud computing has evolved from experimentation and deployment to optimisation with a particular focus on the end user.
an early issue was enabling enterprise-based workloads to get a slice of data centre performance in the cloud with automation, governance and security in place.
“We had a problem where the customer was moving past what IT was trying to figure out. We were starting to see that over 71 per cent of business users were now just using shadow IT and going to these clouds already – using things like DropBox and Salesforce… lighting up an entire environment for all their sales and marketing campaigns without IT even knowing.”
According to Wray’s figures, 50 per cent of US developers were happy to utilise shadow IT in the US, whereas the figures were up to 72 per cent in the UK.
The problem that Wray highlights is that not many clouds during the experimental phase or even now have the necessary features for enterprise workloads or compliance.
“Enterprise needs the co-location and managed services all on one platform… that wave is now starting to happen. They are always going to have co-location, always going to have network – and now they want all that business agility.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nice writing on history of Linux and Linux Journal:
Our Assignment
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/our-assignment
We need to protect the freedoms in which Linux was born and grew up.
Linux Journal was born, in March 1994, just as Linux itself arrived at version 1.0. Its first Editor in Chief was Bob Young
Bob left to start a Linux company of his own, called Red Hat.
Then, over the next few years, the Web became a “content delivery platform” for literally millions of blogs
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft to unveil DirectX 12 on March 20th at the Games Developers Conference
http://www.winbeta.org/news/microsoft-unveil-directx-12-march-20th-games-developers-conference
the unveiling of DirectX 12, Microsoft’s next generation graphics API. DirectX 11, the current generation, made its debut back in 2008.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Users mock Microsoft for asking their help on XP-to-Windows 8.1 upgrades
After company’s plea, users point out that upgrading XP to Windows 8.1 is ‘impossible’
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9246525/Users_mock_Microsoft_for_asking_their_help_on_XP_to_Windows_8.1_upgrades?source=li_edpicks
Astute Windows users have pointed out the Achilles Heel of Microsoft’s plea for help in getting customers to dump Windows XP: The lack of a smooth upgrade path to Microsoft’s newest operating system, Windows 8.1.
“We need your help spreading the word to ensure people are safe and secure on modern up-to-date PCs,” wrote Brandon LeBlanc, a Microsoft marketing communications manager, in a blog post two weeks ago. LeBlanc asked his readers to assist others in either upgrading their current Windows XP PC to Windows 8.1 or help them pick out a new machine to replace their aged system.
The problem with the upgrade option, as nephilim and others noted, is that there’s no way to transform a PC running XP into one running Windows 8.1 without hours spent reinstalling applications and restoring files from a back-up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Help your friends and family get off Windows XP
http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/windowsexperience/archive/2014/02/06/help-your-friends-and-family-get-off-windows-xp.aspx
Tomi Engdahl says:
DDN unveils Wizard of WOS: Not beardy Steve – object storage, silly
360 product supports ‘entire unstructured data lifecycle’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/06/ddns_wonderful_object_wizard_of_wos/
“WOS technology is the only platform that provides local, replicated and globally distributed erasure coding.”
Global ObjectAssure (G OA) is designed for use cases requiring low network overhead with high levels of data durability. It features both local and global protection. Rebuilds use local copies unless the site goes down, in which case the remote data is used. DDN envisages G OA typically being used for three or more sites and large archival data sets.
This storage has “a flat, single layer address structure where objects are stored in a contiguous group of blocks so that disk operations are minimised, performance is maximised and disks are used at full capacity.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Active Archive Alliance
http://www.activearchive.com/
The Active Archive Alliance launched on April 27, 2010 as a collaborative industry association formed to educate end user organizations on the evolving new technologies that enable reliable, online and efficient access to their archived data.
Our goal is to align the education and technologies needed to meet the rapidly evolving requirements for data archive. Alliance members strive to extend solutions beyond the high-end supercomputing and broadcast markets to the greater general IT audience that is in need of online data archive options.
As data creation, storage and access requirements continue to grow and evolve, organizations are struggling to meet internal business requirements and externally imposed regulations. No single vendor has the complete product set or resources to solve today’s data access demands.
Tomi Engdahl says:
PC manufacturers have been struggling since 2008. Tablets and smartphones have replaced the old PDA for most needs, and the better the translation is displayed. PC is heading towards a slow death.
Source: Elektroniikkalehti
http://www.elektroniikkalehti.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1046:pc-kuolee-hitaasti&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Embedded World – First impressions
Thursday, February 27, 2014
http://embeddedexperience.blogspot.fi/2014/02/embedded-world-first-impressions.html
Once again, it’s the time of the Embedded World in Nuremberg Germany, the biggest and most important event of it’s kind in Europe
Internet of Things (IoT) is the big theme of the event this year, and in the embedded industry in general. Wireless connectivity is very important part of the IoT scheme. There are some clear changes ongoing. Rising technologies are Wifi, Bluetooth Smart (the new official name of Bluetooth Low Energy), and Sub-GHz RF solutions. Other 2.4GHz radios, including Zigbee and classic Bluetooth are loosing market share.
ARM, Linux and Qt seems to be the winning combo. In the past, x86 architecture dominated the embedded market. Now clearly all new design are based on ARM architecture.
Embedded Windows seems to disappeared from the map altogether. All the demos I familiarized myself where either based on Linux or QNX, or in some occasions some other RTOSs as well.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tablet slowdown seen after years of breakthrough growth
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2105520/tablets-coming-back-to-earth-after-years-of-breakthrough-growth.html
The rate of increase in tablet shipments is expected to slow this year after unabated growth during the product category’s first three years of existence.
Research firm IDC is projecting tablet shipments to grow at 19.3 percent this year compared to 2013, when tablet shipments increased 51.6 percent compared to 2012.
IDC is projecting tablet shipments this year to be 260.9 million units. The numbers include both tablets and hybrids that can function as a tablet or laptop.
Price declines helped drive growth in previous years, but IDC said prices will be leveling off in 2014, which could be a factor in slower growth rates. Meanwhile, some users are trying to get more from their devices and moving to high-end tablets, IDC said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Worldwide Tablet Growth Forecast to Slow as New and Replacement Purchases in Mature Markets Begin to Level Off, According to IDC
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24716914
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, the total tablet market, inclusive of both tablets and 2-in-1 devices, is forecast to grow 19.4% in 2014, down from a growth rate of 51.6% in 2013. IDC reduced the 2014 forecast by -3.6% from its previous projection to 260.9 million units worldwide. The reduction in the short-term forecast was due to slowing consumer purchases as hardware iterations slow and the installed base—particularly in mature markets—continues to grow.
Tomi Engdahl says:
People Love Their Tablets. That’s Bad News for Apple
http://www.wired.com/business/2014/03/people-love-ipads-bad-news-apple/
Apple sold more than 70 million iPads last year. People love them. But they might love them a little too much for Apple’s taste, if new predictions of shrinking growth in the tablet market turn out to be true. Tablets are so good, it seems, that people are keeping the ones they have and not buying as many new ones.
The glimmer of hope for Apple in IDC’s prognostication is that the trend toward lower-priced tablets appears to be bottoming out. Consumers are moving to higher-end devices that work better and last longer, Mainelli says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sysadmins and Devs: Do these job descriptions make any sense?
Industry lobby group defines skills used in 25 common IT jobs
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/09/sysadmins_and_devs_do_these_job_descriptions_make_ianyi_sense/
The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has released an ICT Skills White Paper, titled “Common ICT Job Profiles & Indicators of Skills Mobility”, offering definitions of 25 jobs and what they entail.
“For an individual,” the White Paper says, “the skills profiles provide an invaluable resource in support of career planning,”
The White Paper relies relies on the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA)
SFIA ranks occupations on this seven-ladder scale:
1. Follow
2. Assist
3. Apply
4. Enable
5. Ensure and advise
6. Initiate and influence
7. Set strategy, inspire, and mobilise
Chief information officers score a 7 on the scale. Customer support folks score a 3.
www.youtube.com says:
Hey! Quick question that’s entirely off topic.
Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly?
My website looks weird when browsing from my iphone4.
I’m trying to find a template or plugn that might be able to resolve this
issue. If you have any recommendations, please share.
Cheers!
Tomi Engdahl says:
There are mobile friendly templates for WordPress.
Try to use them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Distro diaspora: Four flavours of Ubuntu unpacked
No Unity no worries for Linux traditionalists and XP wobblers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/10/ubuntu_flavours_review/
The Unity-based Ubuntu may prove too much of a departure for many in the stolid world of IT, which means one of the Ubuntu flavours that don’t use Ubuntu might be more agreeable for those comfortable with the desktop paradigm.
There are quite a few alternative flavours to the main Ubuntu: the Xfce-based, Xubuntu, the KDE-based Kubuntu, the LDXE-based Lubuntu and the relative newcomer – GNOME-based Ubuntu GNOME.
Of all the various ‘buntu alternatives, Xubuntu is most likely to feel natural to Windows XP refugees.
Xubuntu is the lightweight but powerful variant of the Ubuntu line.
While OpenSUSE remains my favorite KDE distro, Kubuntu 14.04 is looking like a great way to run KDE atop a Debian-based system.
The lightest of the lightweight, Lubuntu features the minimalist LXDE desktop. If you have older hardware that struggles with today’s graphics-intensive desktops, Lubuntu just might be the distro you need to breathe some new life into your machine.
Ubuntu GNOME is the new flavour on the block
The future of Ubuntu is clearly based around Unity and its integration across all facets of hardware
In fact that’s part of the beautify of the various Ubuntu flavours, all the good of Ubuntu but with the desktop of your choice.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Toshiba: Our 2.5-incher does the same job as a 3.5-incher
A case of trying hard to put a better spin on it – in a good way
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/10/toshs_tiny_tour_de_spinning_force/
Toshiba sees life in fast 2.5-inch drives yet, and has followed close on HGST’s heels by announcing a 600GB model spinning at 15,000rpm.
There are also 300GB and 450GB capacity points in this 24 x7 operation enterprise drive product set.
Both drives have a 2 million hour MTBF (HGST) or MTTF (Toshiba).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t be shy, we know you’ve got .NET code. Why not run it on our Linux cloud – Red Hat
Two can play that game, Pivotal
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/05/red_hat_openshift_origin/
Red Hat plans to welcome Microsoft Windows .NET workloads onto its on-premises app-hosting cloud OpenShift Origin – as it attempts to close the gap between its technology and Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry.
The upgrade was announced on Wednesday by Red Hat, which will work with Uhuru Software to bring .NET and SQL Server support to its Linux-powered OpenShift technology.
“Almost every enterprise customer has some amount of .NET in their environment,” a Red Hat spokesperson explained
Tomi Engdahl says:
Inside Facebook’s engineering labs: Hardware heaven, HP hell – PICTURES
Better duck, Amazon… Hardware drone incoming
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/05/facebook_lab_tour/
10 years of Facebook Facebook’s hardware development lab is either a paradise, a business opportunity, or a hell, depending on your viewpoint.
If you’re a hardware nerd who loves fiddling with data centre gear, ripping out extraneous fluff, and generally cutting the cost of your infrastructure, then the lab is a wonderful place where your dreams are manufactured.
If you’re an executive from HP, Dell, Lenovo, Cisco, Brocade, Juniper, EMC or NetApp, the lab is likely to instill a sense of cold, clammy fear, for in this lab a small team of diligent Facebook employees are working to make servers and storage arrays –and now networking switches – which undercut your own products.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM and SAP: Looks like we’re STUCK forever on the cloud highway
This ain’t no upwardly mobile freeway… Oh no, this is the road to Hell Amazon
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/24/sap_ibm_cloud_set_backs/
Earnings from SAP and IBM – two giants in enterprise IT – proved that both companies are struggling to cope with the move to the cloud and show that success in hosted computing is receding for them.
While it’s true that the big growth for SAP was in its cloud-related business – up 66 per cent for the fourth quarter and 158 per cent for the year, the company’s core business, software sales, is not looking as healthy.
But at least SAP is growing, unlike IBM. Big Blue took a mauling this week – total revenue was pulled down by plunging sales of the hard stuff.
IBM has a toe in the cloud waters, with its Smart Cloud, but it’s not swimming where it needs to be in the really growth-rich waters of hosting.
IBM said it had earned $4.4bn on cloud “solutions” for the whole year – public, private, hybrid and SaaS – growing 64 per cent year on year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google’s Eric Schmidt: ‘let us celebrate capitalism’
http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/7/5481748/eric-schmidt-sxsw-let-us-celebrate-capitalism
In Schmidt’s view, the tensions in the Bay Area are a manifestation of a global trend in which technology is displacing human labor without proportionately raising standards of living for most of the population. “Ninety-nine percent of people have seen no economic improvement over the last decade,” he said, adding that “the data suggest that the problem gets worse” and will become the “number one issue in democracies around the world.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Online File Sharing: An Update on “Going Rogue”
http://mds.ricoh.com/blog/online_file_sharing_an_update_on_going_rogue
Earlier this year I wrote a blog about online file sharing and collaboration and how it has become one of the most popular applications within the enterprise. It came as no surprise to me that the Forrester Wave™ on File Sync and Share Platforms1 reports that 21% of global information workers already use file sync solutions. Without file syncing, collaboration can quickly descend into chaos.
To get their jobs done this increasingly includes sharing files with distributed colleagues, global teams, partners and customers. All of this sharing is (generally) great—but it also presents challenges in keeping track of versions and which files are the most current.
File sync and sharing platforms are designed to help users and IT avoid this information chaos—but deciding on the right one for your organization means answering some tough questions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Extend the Life of Your SSD Hard Drive, Part 1
http://blog.raxco.com/2012/12/28/how-to-extend-the-life-of-your-ssd-hard-drive-part-1/?utm_campaign=Outbrain&utm_medium=122812&utm_source=Content-Marketing
While super-fast SSD hard drives have become the norm and SSD prices drop below $1/GB, this newer technology is more accessible to the masses but one issue remains: the limited life expectancy of the SSD.
The simple answer is to extend the life of your SSD you must limit writes to the drive. There are a few ways to accomplish this
File access and “read” times are not a problem with SSDs…but writing to the disk is another issue.
SSD users should be concerned about the fragmentation of free space.
The first way to combat the effects of write amplification is to keep free space consolidated on the SSD. Write amplification actually decreases when running TRIM operations to free up disk space, so you want to use the TRIM command to wipe clean unused disk space trapped in partially full blocks of data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
If We’re At the End of Email, What’s Next?
http://www.workintelligent.ly/information/trends-information/end-of-email-whats-next/
Are you still using email? Of course you are. But, the real question is, for how much longer?
Recently, we asked Are We At the End of Email? After all, it can be a woefully unproductive tool for businesses. Not only is it a security nightmare, it’s also filled with spam and impossible to organize. It’s no wonder that email use peaked in 2008 and has been falling steadily ever since. But despite overwhelming fatigue and frustration from all corners, no clear alternative has emerged.
Until now.
A growing number of companies are becoming just as fed up with email as you probably are. Security is a major concern, as is the productivity lost by dealing with a crush of unwanted emails. These have long been considered acceptable losses; because after all, what choice do you have?
social intranets are increasingly becoming the primary communication and workflow management solution of choice for many companies
Tomi Engdahl says:
The largest data warehouse contains 12.1 petabytes (12,100 terabytes) of raw data, achieved by a collaboration between SAP, BMMsoft, HP, Intel, NetApp and Red Hat at the SAP Co-location Lab, Santa Clara, California, USA, on 17 February 2014.
Source: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/5000/largest-data-warehouse
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sony & Panasonic Next-Gen Optical Discs Moving Forward
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/03/10/1637236/sony-panasonic-next-gen-optical-discs-moving-forward
“First-wave ADs are slated to launch in summer of 2015 and will be able to hold up to 300GB of data. Archival Discs will be double-sided, so this works out to 150GB of data per side.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sony can’t wait to flash you its enormous disc … a 1TB Blu-ray spinner
One step at a time, though … first it’ll tease out 300GB next year
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/11/sony_puts_out_roadmap_for_1tb_bluray_discs/
Sony has laid out plans to ramp up the capacity of its Blu-ray disc format in the coming years.
The company said that its joint effort with Panasonic, first outlined in July of last year, was on track to boost capacity of the optical storage discs from 30GB to 300GB by 2015
Further down the line, the two companies said they plan to tout 1TB optical discs. No date was given for that target.
Dubbed the “Archive Disc”, the new 300 to 1000GB format will seek to offer a replacement for the Blu-ray standard in data storage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Thunderbolt replacement for the procrastinates with: “The current rate is enough”
Intel is working on a technology that Thunderbolt connection speed could be increased by up to 50 gigabits per second: Single optical fiber to transfer the data at 25 gigabits per second, and the use of two fibers in the same cable would increase the bus speed to 50 Gbps.
While the new version of the Thunderbolt would be more than twice as fast as its predecessor (20 Gbps), and many times faster than their competitors (USB 3.0 5Gbps), Intel does not see the need for reform in the coming years. The company does not plan to bring a faster bus is still on the market for a while as it does not see that there is still no need for more than 20 gigabit speeds as offered now by Thunderbolt.
However, the company promises that as the need arises faster connection, it’s going to act quickly in order to take their share of the market.
Source: Tietoviikko
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/uutisia/intel+viivyttelee+thunderboltin+korvaajan+kanssa+quotnykyinen+vauhti+riittaaquot/a973628
Tomi Engdahl says:
Red Hat: We’ve got a corker for Docker Linux locker app hawkers
Check your apps run in containers, earn a shiny certificate
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/11/red_hat_docker_linux/
Red Hat has woken up to the growth of Linux containers – cough, cough, Docker – and has begun certifying applications running in the sandboxing tech.
The Red Hat Container Certification program was announced on Tuesday, and essentially checks that a piece of software can be executed safely and securely in a container on Red Hat’s Linux for big biz.
Containerization is a way of packaging up applications so that they share the same underlying OS but are otherwise fully isolated from one another with their own CPU, memory, disk and network allocations to work within – going a few steps further than the usual process separation in Unix-y OSes, but not completely down the per-app virtual machine route.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Five reasons Microsoft could become a top Android smartphone company
http://www.zdnet.com/five-reasons-microsoft-could-become-a-top-android-smartphone-company-7000027116/
Summary: I think Microsoft has a real shot of being a top-tier Android hardware company. Yes, I’m quite serious.
Here’s why.
1) Microsoft already makes major profits from Android.
2) Android already owns the market.
3) MS-Android has unique advantages over its competitors.
4) Lower development costs.
5) More apps, more developers
Presto! For far less money, Microsoft cuts its internal development costs and opens its doors to tens of thousands of new developers and hundreds of thousands of new programs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google To Replace GTK+ With Its Own Aura In Chrome
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/03/12/0147256/google-to-replace-gtk-with-its-own-aura-in-chrome
“Google’s Chromium team is working on an alternative of Gtk+ for the browser, called Aura”
Google to replace GTK+ with its own Aura in Chrome
http://www.muktware.com/2014/03/google-replace-gtk-aura-chrome/22735
“We aim to launch the Aura graphics stack on Linux in M35. Aura is a cross-platform graphics system, and the Aura frontend will replace the current GTK+ frontend.”
The new graphic stack, Elliot says will also “address long standing issues with GPU memory consumption and GPU rendering performance. Using our own graphics stack enables us to have one OpenGL context per window, instead of one OpenGL context per tab, which should significantly reduce GPU resource consumption.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Storage Solution is Music to the Ears of Fast-Growing Digital Music Company
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/new-storage-solution-music-ears-fast-growing-digital-music-company
Digital music distribution and technology company INgrooves is growing rapidly, signing contract after contract to distribute music for independent labels and artists. The company had originally deployed a traditional storage platform from a large manufacturer
After reviewing a variety of alternatives, INgrooves worked with Silicon Mechanics to consolidate and modernize its storage using zStax, an enterprise-level software-defined storage platform based on open-source ZFS technology and powered by NexentaStor.