SMB IT Spending Growth

"According to the IDC, IT spending growth has returned more rapidly than expected since the recession officially ended in 2009. IDC's recent forecast found the nearly 8 million SMBs in the United States will spend more than $125 billion on advanced technology in 2011, an increase from approximately $120 billion in 2010."

Jenny Thomas, IT Jungle.com

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh062011-story07.html

Virtualization and Moving to the Cloud

Virtualization and moving to the cloud are considered to be a great way to decrease the cost of IT. Server virtualization has been widely adopted with about half of all servers now virtualized. The cost savings are significant. There are savings in higher utilization of fewer more powerful servers. Virtualization also lowers the cost of managing the servers. A new virtual server can be set up in a matter of minutes! These virtual servers are easier to move around and manage as they are all the same.

Virtualization of desktops, storage and moving to the cloud are not as wide spread as server virtualization. Companies implementing these solutions are not reporting the savings as being as high according to Gartner Survey and Symantec Survey. These other areas of virtualization and moving to the cloud are newer trends. Although companies are reporting challenges they look promising – I suppose time will tell…

Networkworld Articles:

"Gartner: IT should be planning, moving to private clouds"
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/061511-gartner-private-clouds.html?page=2

"Survey finds many disappointed in virtualization, cloud computing"
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/061311-virtualization-survey.html

Internet Future

I read an interesting article in ZDNet: “The future of the Internet: it's in the app” by Andrew Nusca. The article is about the recent prediction made by George Colony CEO of Forrester that the apps are the future. The apps have a cloud component in most cases but the power of the endpoints is so strong that it does not make sense to turn PCs and mobile devices into dummy terminals.
Here is a statement that articulates the power of the PC and mobile device: “IEEE researchers benchmarked the iPad 2 to be equivalent to a 1986 8-core Cray 2 — running at 1.65 gigaflops. In 1993 the iPad 2 would have been among the top 30 supercomputers in the world.”

The servers powering the cloud are much more powerful also but doesn’t it make sense to utilize the power at your finger tips as well? I have said this before on this blog regarding going to thin client. The argument for thin client and cloud is largely around managing and supporting the solution. It is easier to manage a few severs than all the endpoints. Clearly there are many applications best entirely hosted in the cloud but I don’t think that everything will be. Maybe there will be a greater growth rate of the apps than pure cloud solutions. What do you think?

ZDNet “The future of the Internet: it's in the app” by Andrew Nusca:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/the-future-of-the-internet-its-in-the-app/49512