Gartner suggests CIOs should reduce their business costs while retaining control of risk, integration and customisation issues by adopting industrialised low-cost IT services (ILCS)-- increasing IT business value and improving its perception by business. 

After all, CIOs tell Gartner their 2011 business and IT priorities include "delivering differentiation and additional business value, while reducing the cost of IT."

The analyst forecasts the industrialised services sector will make more than 30% of the IT services market by 2015-- while by 2015 Read more...

IHS iSuppli says the WW PC market shows signs of recovery in Q2 2011-- with global shipments growing by 3.7% Y-o-Y to 85.6M units.

In comparison Q1 2011 shipments total 80.8M.

The analyst attributes the growth to IT departments refreshing their hardware-- allowing the top PC vendors (HP and Dell) to maintain their leadership.

HP shipments for Q2 2011 total 15.4M (with 2.8% Y-o-Y growth) while Dell shipments total 10.5M, growing by 3.9% Y-o-Y.

Lenovo delivers the strongest performance for the period, growing by 23% Y-o-Y with shipments reaching Read more...

The Wall Street Journal reports Google opening a €200M server hall in Hamina, Finland, inside what was once a paper mill. 

Why Finland? The combination of cold climate and low electricity prices. 

Being close to the Baltic coast, the Hamina data centre also has a seawater cooling system, while cold weather cools down servers instead of refrigerators. 

Finland is not the only choice for international data centers, either-- an undisclosed "major US internet company" (rumoured to be Facebook) is planning a data center worth 3-5BN Swedish kronor in Luleå Read more...

Global 2011 PC unit growth will total 364M units and 3.8% Y-o-Y growth according to the latest Gartner forecast-- a reduction from the previous Gartner 2011 projection of 400M units and 9.3% Y-o-Y growth.

Next year should improve a bit-- the 2012 WW PC market should reach 404M units, with 10.9% Y-o-Y growth (still down from the previous projection of 12.8% growth).

The "notably lower" 2011 PC growth outlook is due to sharply downgraded H2 2011 forecasts for W. Europe, resulting in a weaker 2011 and a slower start to 2012.

W. Europe currently Read more...