IDC - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• PC stagnation means zero-sum game for OEMs, OS makers

  IDC this week said that while the PC industry would end the year better off than it had expected, the foreseeable future holds no hope for a return of growth.

• How to get more out of your virtualized and cloud environments

  After Dammions Darden arrived as the new senior systems administrator for the city of Garland, Texas, he knew that the 50 to 60 physical hosts for this 234,000-person city outside of Dallas were not running nearly as efficiently as they could be. Some had excess capacity, others were running way too hot.

• Public Cloud storage can be efficient, but the potential is still limited

  Public Cloud storage can be a cost efficient alternative to rolling your own, but observers warn that it isn't a cure all.

• Tablet craze calms down as iPad shipments decline

  It's time to kiss the tablet boom goodbye, as shipments of the once-dominant Apple iPad decline amid a worldwide slowdown for the devices.

• Alcatel-Lucent virtualises WANs and routers

  Alcatel-Lucent's Nuage Networks SDN venture has broadened its product line to tackle enterprise WANs, an increasingly vital market for the technology.

• RCA gives unexpected boost to tablet market in Q3

  RCA unexpectedly jolted an otherwise slowing tablet market in the third quarter as Apple's iPad shipments continued to decline.

• Gamification Helps Utility Companies Change Customer Behavior

  In exchange for discounts from their favorite companies, people will like corporate Facebook pages, fill out surveys and join mailing lists. But power companies have to get their customers to do more than that.

• Future points to Healthcare IT as a Service

  IT leaders today frequently mention the importance of bringing social, mobile, analytics and Cloud technology - the so-called "SMAC stack" - into a single, integrated architecture.

• Tablet sales growth slows dramatically

  Even as Apple is set to <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2824548/apple-will-webcast-oct-16-ipad-event.html">launch new tablets on Thursday</a>, the news about tablet sales isn't good.

• The coming war for developers

  In March, I discussed IDC's 2014 forecast. This unusually dramatic set of predictions based on what IDC refers to as the third platform, a confluence of cloud computing, mobile devices and applications, social media and big data.

• Is there a point where a private Cloud is cheaper than the public Cloud?

  A group of companies that sell products to build private Clouds has determined a price at which it claims it is less expensive to operate a private Cloud compared to using Amazon Web Service's IaaS public Cloud.

• Are e-health records at fault for Ebola mistakes?

  A Dallas man who became the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. has died. And while the hospital that treated him has retracted a claim that its electronic health records (EHR) system contributed to a lapse in his diagnosis, experts are skeptical that the system worked properly.

• PC shipments down just slightly in the third quarter, IDC says

  Worldwide PC shipments fell slightly in the third quarter this year, but the drop wasn't as big as IDC had originally projected, with expanded offerings of inexpensive laptops and a saturation of tablets in some areas helping to improve the numbers, the tech industry research firm said.

• Cisco, EMC consortium debuts new Cloud gear

  <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2163943/lan-wan/cisco--emc-data-center-coalition-feels-on-solid-ground.html">VCE</a>, the converged infrastructure consortium of Cisco and EMC, this week unveiled new and enhanced data center IT systems, including an all-flash memory platform for mixed workloads.

• Coming to terms with marketing technology

  With marketers become ever-more reliant on technology and importantly, data integration, to deliver the customer experiences organisations need today, CIOs can no longer afford to ignore the many platforms and solutions at their disposal.