India enterprises have the highest adoption rate for cloud services: Microsoft Survey

Image Credit: REUTERS

  24 Oct 2016 , 18:13

Technology decision makers in Indian enterprises are the highest adopters of public Cloud solutions in the world, a survey by Microsoft revealed on Monday.

“Fifty seven per cent respondents from India have adopted public Cloud solutions and 33 per cent respondents stated that their companies use hybrid Cloud — a combination of public and private Cloud solutions,” the findings showed.

These are among the highest rate of adoptions and are better than markets such as the US, the UK and Japan, said the Microsoft survey conducted with market research firm Wakefield Research.

IT decision makers (ITDMs) refer to sales functions — CRM and ERP, data analytics and Internet of Things (IoT) — as the top three services or applications that their organisation would like to host on the public Cloud.

Microsoft has expanded its Cloud access for local customers by enabling Web Direct and Cloud solution provider channels that makes it easy for developers and startups to use the local Cloud.

“Sixty four per cent Indian respondents were comfortable in hosting their company’s most essential applications or services on the public Cloud,” the survey revealed.

Sixty four per cent Indian respondents believe that public Cloud solutions are very important to connect seamlessly to the organisation’s existing data centres five years from now.

Five major sectors — healthcare, Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), e-commerce, startups and government — are leading Cloud adopters in the country, the survey noted.

IANS

Gartner predicts that global IT spending will reach $3.5 trillion in 2017

Image Credit: REUTERS

  20 Oct 2016 , 17:06

Driven by growth in software and IT services revenue, worldwide IT spending is forecast to reach $3.5 trillion in 2017 — up 2.9 percent from 2016 estimated spending of $3.4 trillion, market research firm Gartner said on Wednesday. Software spending is projected to grow six percent in 2016. It will grow another 7.2 percent in 2017 to total $357 billion, the report said, adding that IT services spending is on pace to grow 3.9 percent in 2016 to reach $597 billion and increase 4.8 percent in 2017 to reach $943 billion.

While discussing the impact of Brexit on IT investment at the “Gartner Symposium/ITxpo” event here, John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner, said that the immediate impact of Brexit has caused modest growth in IT spending to turn negative for 2016.

“Without the UK, global IT spending growth would have been modestly positive at 0.2 per cent in 2016, but with the UK included, IT spending is expected to decrease 0.3 per cent. The immediate impact of the British pound will also cause the IT spending patterns to shift as prices for IT will increase,” Lovelock added.

While talking about IT spending trends in the wake of the US presidential election, Lovelock said that there is a slight pause in IT spending leading into the election and then a relief in spending, subsequently.

IANS

Report: Tech sector growing, but IT is hemorrhaging jobs

CompTIA's September jobs report reveals some grim statistics for IT pros: 142,000 jobs were lost last month. Tech sector growth slowed as well, but positions were still created rather than lost.

By Brandon Vigliarolo | October 11, 2016, 9:14 AM PST

It's not the best time to be an IT professional. Budgets are getting tight, cloud computing is making jobs more difficult, and now CompTIA reports that September was bleeding IT jobs at an alarming rate.

The CompTIA IT Employment Tracker for October reveals some interesting ups and downs. Before we dive in let's talk specifics: The report uses IT sector employment and IT occupation employment as two distinct terms.

IT occupation employment is clear: CompTIA uses this term to refer to anyone doing actual IT work. Programmers, CXOs, help desk techs, and network engineers are all in IT occupation employment.


The IT sector, on the other hand, is everyone involved in the tech world. Only 44 percent of IT sector jobs are IT occupations: The rest are marketing, finance, HR, and other positions.

The IT sector is growing according to CompTIA. IT occupations, on the other hand, are not.
Where the losses are

IT occupations across all industries faced a serious drop in September, with 142,000 jobs disappearing. That wipes away half of the job gains from August, when 205,000 IT occupation jobs were added.

The one upside to the news is the year-to-date numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is where CompTIA pulled data for the report. Job losses have been numerous but there's still been an overall gain of 17,000 positions since January.


CompTIA's report isn't specific about the particular jobs that were lost in

Trump calls for U.S. to use offensive cyberweapons

Donald Trump at a rally in Florence, South Carolina, on Feb. 5, 2016. Credit: Gage Skidmore/Trump Campaign

Grant Gross
IDG News Service
Oct 3, 2016 10:40 AM
The country shouldn't be shy about attacking those that target its resources, he says.

The U.S. government needs to be ready to use its offensive cyberweapons in response to attacks from other nations, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Monday.

The U.S. has significant offensive cybercapabilities, but it has been shy about deploying them, Trump said during a speech in Herdon, Virginia. "This is the warfare of the future," he said.

The U.S. should also increase its use of cyberweapons to attack terrorists, Trump said.

President Barack Obama has failed to protect the nation's cybersecurity and a new focus is needed, added Trump, who has largely avoided technology issues in his campaign.

Trump said he will create an international cybersecurity task force to battle hackers, and he will ask U.S. military leaders for suggestions on how to improve the nation's cyberdefenses.

Another team of experts will review all U.S. government cybersecurity systems. "Ultimately, all systems will be reviewed and made as secure as modern technology permits," he said. "The review team will also remain current with constantly evolving new methods of attack and will attempt to anticipate them and develop defense as often as possible before breaches occur."

Trump also called on U.S. agencies to follow "best and strongest" security practices and to set up new security training programs for all employees.

Trump didn't say how he'd pay for an overhaul of the government's IT systems, which could cost tens of billions of dollars. His description of the review team's duties to anticipate attacks mirror efforts that have been in place in the U.S. government for years.

Trump also used the speech to attack Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's operation of a private email server while she served as Obama's secretary of state.

Trump said his speech on cybersecurity was "just the beginning of a long and overdue discussion" about the issue.

Clinton released a cybersecurity plan months ago. She called on expanded investments in cybersecurity technologies and accelerated adoption of best practices such as the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework, first issued in February 2014.

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