Global IT spending will reach $3.8 trillion in 2019, Gartner reports-- a 3.2% increase over 2018 spending of $3.7tr, with the shift from ownership to cloud services bringing the biggest changes to the industry.

“While currency volatility and the potential for trade wars are still playing a part in the outlook for IT spending, it is the shift from ownership to service that is sending ripples through every segment of the forecast,” the analyst says. “What this signals, for example, is more enterprise use of cloud services-- instead of buying their own servers, they are turning to the cloud. As enterprises continue their digital transformation efforts, shifting to "pay for use" will continue. This sets enterprises up to deal with the sustained and rapid change that underscores digital business.”

Enterprise software spending sees the highest growth in the forecast, with an 8.3% increase. As one might imagine, SaaS drives growth in nearly all segments, particularly CRM, due to an increased focus in providing customer experiences. Cloud software sees over 22% growth in 2019, compared with the 6% growth for all other forms of software.

According to IDC, Q3 2018 traditional PC (desktop, notebook and workstation) shipments total 67.4 million units-- a -0.9% Y-o-Y decline, down from the growth of Q2 2018 but still an improvement over previous analyst forecasts of a -3% Y-o-Y drop.

The PC market has been trending towards stabilisation since 2017, and even reached actual growth in Q2 2018. Demand from mature regions remains key to the market, but many emerging markets have to deal with unfavourable currency headwinds, as well as other politico-economic factors. In addition, Q3 2018 had processor shortages, even if most top OEMs managed to fulfill a "sizable" portion of demand and outperform the market.

Driving Q3 2018 are pockets of strong demand, as well as an increase in inventory ahead of further supply issues and expected price hikes. The EMEA market shows "flattish" results, with ongoing mobility demand leading to slightly stronger notebook performance compared to desktops. The aforementioned component shortages do dampen overall growth, despite strong commercial demand.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen died on Monday in Seattle, age 65. His family says it was due to complication of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a disease Allen said he was being treated for earlier this month.

Born in 21 January 1953, Allen was a childhood friend of Bill Gates. The two founded Microsoft back in 1975. Allen claimed he was the one to come up with the name "Micro-Soft," and was instrumental in buying what was to become MS-DOS from a Seattle programmer. Allen left Microsoft in 1983 after learning he was suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma, and remained a member of the board until 2000. In 2009 he started receiving treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, before he went into remission. However the disease returned on October 2018.

EMEA Q2 2018 server revenues total €3.4 billion-- an 18.7% Y-o-Y increase, even as shipments are down by -3.7% Y-o-Y to 515000. Such results are due to shipment declines accompanied by a "significant" increase in ASPs.

In terms of product categories, standard rack optimised shipments are up by 29% Y-o-Y, with strong performance in the UK and Germany. The UK, Germany and the Netherlands drive standard multinode shipments with 251.4% Y-o-Y growth, while custom multinode revenues remain strong with 87.3% Y-o-Y growth. Large systems also see strong performance, with shipments growing by 48.6% due to "major" refreshes in Denmark, Italy, France and Germany.

"ODM growth has been driven by datacenter buildout of several hyperscale public cloud providers-- AWS, Microsoft, Google-- in W. Europe," the analyst adds. "This growth has slowed down somewhat in recent quarter. France is the major exception, with both AWS and Microsoft opening new datacenters around Paris and Marseille. The hyperscalers now focus on diversifying the portfolio of EMEA countries with datacenter presence, which will translate into significant ODM growth in new geographies such as Austria."