There’s been some discussion of the profitability of the microprocessor market in the press in the last week, so I wanted to share some of my research to add to the debate. My Figure above shows the profitability (net profit/revenues) of the suppliers in the microprocessor market. I’ve chosen to show this on a rolling 4 quarter basis (i.e. the 4 trailing quarters are shown in each value). Read more »
IBM integrates Red Hat ODF and Ceph into its storage division
IBM acquired Red Hat in 2018. Since then Red Hat has operated as a semi-autonomous company with IBM using its expertise to enhance its own software developments and its OpenShift management software as a pivotal part of its hybrid multi-cloud strategy. Read more »
IBM Storage pushes the cyber resilience of its Spectrum software even further
IBM has improved its world-beating storage system security even further with its latest software releases announced last week. Its strategy is to protect corporate data from:
- User errors, hardware failures and other random threats,
- Ransomware and other targeted criminal attacks,
While widening the use of automated backup procedures and orchestrated data recovery. Its enhancements are targeted at Chief Information Security Officers, IT architects, data protection operators and application owners. Read more »
IBM launches the LinuxONE Emperor 4 server – sustainability, cost and security advantages
Today IBM is launching its latest enterprise Linux server. It’s a high-end system for enterprise customers and cloud service providers, based on technology found in its IBM z16 server, launched in April. This open, enterprise server gives customers the ability to run Linux at scale, but not the IBM Z stack that the z16 runs, such as z/OS, CICS, IMS and other IBM proprietary mainframe software.
What’s it announcing?
The new machine has some very impressive specifications. In particular:
- Housed in 1, 2, 3 or 4 19” frames (with 125 cores in a single frame),
- 32 (7nm 5.2GHz) Telum processors ,
- 200 LinuxONE cores/system, which are designated as Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL),
- 40TB memory/system,
- 16 internal NVMe carrier cards for flash storage/system,
- Quantum-safe encryption and
- On-chip accelerators for AI, data compression and encryption.
My 360° insight into the $7.3 trillion post-pandemic ITC market
The IT and communications industry is massive and vital to the world economy. During the pandemic we saw an acceleration of cloud computing and remote networking to help companies and individuals put up with a period of unprecedented isolation and worry. I want to share with you my analysis of the size, movement and importance of our industry in the two and a bit years since the beginning of 2020. Read more »
IBM expands the Power10 server lineup – more security, more performance, more Linux, more cloud
IBM introduced the Power10 processor and its first use in its Power E1080 server back in September last year and launched the new IBM i OS 7.5 in May this year. Today it fills out the Power10 server line along with impressive performance results, new ways to buy, better security, new cloud integration capabilities and enhanced security. I was pre-briefed by Steve Sibley, VP IBM Power Product management and his team to bring you this analysis at launch. Read more »
Peer Software GFS – software for handling exponential storage growth
Jimmy Tam, CEO of Peer Software recently outlined his company and how it helps enterprise customers to manage and secure the massive growth in storage capacity (see my Figure above for the annual worldwide shipped capacity of HDD, NAND and DRAM since 2003). Read more »
IBM Storage announces Spectrum Sentinel – protection and fast recovery for Epic Healthcare workloads
IBM Storage recently introduced the third-party Predatar, which adds backup anomaly detection, automation and orchestration for users of Spectrum Protect. It’s part of how IBM provides logical, operational and physical data air-gapping aligned with NIST’s Cyber Security framework (see my Figure above based on IBM’s).
Today it’s announcing its own IBM Spectrum Sentinel, which provides automated cyber resiliency and data recovery for those securing Epic medical records. It is an end-to-end solution covering the copy management/recovery orchestration and the anomaly detection in primary storage. Read more »
Mobile devices – the battle between East and West for a $545 billion market
The mobile device market is massive – in 2021 there were 1.7 billion shipments worth $545 billion and an installed base of 3.7 billion. Growth in the year was 25% in spending and 8% in shipments, although the installed base didn’t grow. The number of non-Internet enabled basic phones and audio devices continued to shrink, highlighted by Apple’s recent withdrawal of its iPod. Read more »
IBM announces the Elastic Storage System 3500 and partners with Predatar for backup cyber resiliency
Launching the ESS3500
ESS is a software defined storage solution incorporating IBM’s Spectrum Scale software and its Global Data Platform. It is storage designed for customers who need simple, automated ways of building and running modern (often container-based) applications including those that use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Read more »
The PC market booms, despite supply chain and government challenges
The PC market has been revitalized by the pandemic. In 2021 spending grew by 19% to $217 billion, shipments by 4% to 281 million; even the installed base grew – by 5% to 967 million (my figure above shows annual growth rates since 2006). If no one had more than a single machine, 12% of the world’s population would have a PC. The average price of PCs increased in the year due to shortages of material and other supply chain challenges. The continuing war in Ukraine will is making things even tougher in 2022. Read more »
The software market booms in 2021 – $1.4b revenue, 11% growth, 24% profitability
The software market is the smallest if the four categories in the IT and communications market. In 2021 it accounted for $1.4 billion in revenues, $337 billion in net profit and employed 11.3 million. Of the seven constituent offerings, application software was by far the largest (36.6%), followed by SaaS (25.3%), operating system (16.3%), custom (10.6%), database (8.3%) and analytics (3.0%). I show the spending trends in each offering in the Figure above. However spending alone doesn’t tell the whole story, as the widespread use of open source code not only fuels the business, but is also the foundation of huge financially immeasurable activities. Read more »
The $1.2 trillion Enterprise IT market 2021 – Amazon market leader of a varied and changing landscape
The pandemic has changed the enterprise IT market, stimulating growth overall, a faster shift to cloud services and traditional managed services and outsourcing. Having brought to you my analysis of the server, storage system and enterprise network markets in 2021 in the last few weeks, I want to draw a picture of the wider market in 2021. Read more »
IBM i 7.5 – database and security enhanced, applications modernized
IBM is proving its long-term commitment to its server customers this week by announcing the 7.5 update for its i systems. Used in Finance, Insurance, Manufacturing and Retail industry these servers have the advantage of the RPG programming language and an in-built database (Db2) on a system than runs essential applications without the need for deep technical know-how and supported by a number of specialist business partners and application developers. I show my estimates for the operating system mix on the installed Power servers by year in the Figure above; IBM i has done well in keeping a 35% share of the base throughout and, unlike AIX (IBM’s Unix variant) has been largely unaffected by the introduction of Linux on Power in 2013. Read more »
The $207b network market – still haunted by issues of trust
Networking is vital to the digitization of the world – so useful during the pandemic, when meeting each other face-to-face became difficult and, at times, illegal. This is one area of the ITC market that is not dominated by US vendors. The strong presence of Nokia and Ericsson (see my Figure above for the annual revenues of the major suppliers since 2003) as well as Huawei and ZTE give Europe and China respectively strong current roles. These – added to Japanese and US suppliers – make this one of the most internationally balanced businesses in our industry. Read more »
Storage systems 2021 – stable spending in a sea of change
The worldwide storage systems hardware market grew by just 2% in 2021 to reach $34.8 billion, which proved yet again that the success of these products has become increasingly unconnected with that of raw storage, which grew by 19% growth in the year. My Figure above shows total spending by year for storage systems verses three types of storage devices. Read more »
Raw storage in 2021 reaches 3.6ZB capacity, $182B spending, 1B shipments
The raw storage market is made up of three offerings – NAND and DRAM (both solid state storage), Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). 2021 was a year of tremendous growth in capacity – up 18% to 3.6ZB (ZetaBytes) – and spending – up 19% to $182 billion. I included this area in my 2022 predictions, so I thought it would be a good idea to look at it in a bit more detail. Read more »
IBM launches the IBM z16 – the world’s first quantum-safe server with on-chip AI inferencing
IBM has launched its new IBM z16 mainframe today. Based on its IBM Telum Processor, announced in August last year, the new system has been based on over 1,100 hours of co-creation with more than 70 of its mainframe customers and partners. The new server extends the technical leadership IBM already has for providing ‘systems of record’ to the largest enterprise organizations in the world and will be available from the very end of May. Read more »
Server market grows 4% to $91 billion in 2021 – could have been more
In 2021 the worldwide server market grew by 4% to $91b. I show market shares for revenues, shipments and the installed base in my Figure above. I want to update you on the current state of the market and its leading players. Read more »
IBM LinuxONE – beats x86 servers for environmental sustainability
The way data centers are built, populated with equipment and run is key to the world’s attempts to combat climate change. The pandemic has made more of our financial, social and work interactions digital, which can be witnessed in worldwide spending trends (my Figure above gives the trends and my forecast for the purchasing of cloud services and enterprise hardware). Spending on cloud services grew by 57% between 2019 and 2021 compared with just 4% for enterprise hardware – adding to an 18% growth for both combined. Read more »