Gartner on Thursday upgraded its forecast for worldwide IT spending, saying it will grow 7.1 percent this year to US$3.7 trillion as companies migrate to the cloud and spend more on software and IT services.

The research firm previously forecast a growth of 5.6 percent in worldwide IT spending compared to last year, in which spending totaled $3.4 trillion and increased 5.9 percent from 2009. Growth in IT spending will continue through 2012, said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner, in a statement.

The revised projections reflect the minimal impact on tech spending of the Japan earthquake and tsunami on March 11, which affected supply chains and caused extensive damage to buildings and factories along the country’s eastern coast. The earthquake may have caused problems in supply of components, but it hasn’t affected overall IT spending, Gordon said.

The hardware segment is poised for the fastest growth, but the greatest amount of spending will take place on telecom, according to Gartner’s forecast. Spending on telecommunications will increase to $2.1 trillion, growing year-over-year by 6.9 percent, but slower than the 7.3 percent growth last year. Hardware spending is expected to grow faster that other sectors, at a rate of 11.7 percent to $419 billion, albeit slower than last year’s growth rate of 12.1 percent.

Spending will grow in the software and IT services segments, partly driven by the growing adoption of public cloud services and software-as-a-service. On a percentage basis, spending on IT services will more than double, growing by 6.6 percent to reach $846 billion. Last year, spending on IT services totaled $793 billion, growing only by 3.1 percent. Software spending is expected to grow by 9.5 percent year-over-year to $268 billion, Gartner said.

Though a marginal part of overall IT spending, cloud computing services are emerging as a driver for IT spending in some markets, growing by more than four times than overall IT spending, Gordon said. The effect of migration to public cloud services spending likely will spill over to the software sector as companies spend more on software-as-a-service.

“At about $10 billion, software as a service … already accounts for 10 percent of enterprise applications software spending, and by 2015 this share is expected to increase to close to 15 percent and to exceed $20 billion in annual spending,” Gordon said.

But the overall spending on the cloud is still nominal, Gartner said. Spending on public cloud services will be roughly $89 billion this year, compared to $74 billion last year. The market will continue to grow and reach $177 billion by 2015, but at the time be only 5 percent of the total IT spending.

Source

Managed IT Support Services – Percento Technologies

Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have detailed a new botnet–a collection of infected computers controlled by cybercriminals–called TDL-4, that might just be “indestructible.”

TDL-4 gets its name by being the fourth generation of the botnet. In 2008, the original TDL appeared. It has been altered over the last several years. With TDL-4, Kaspersky has found, the malware creators have drastically improved the botnet over its predecessors.

“The malware writers extended the program functionality, changed the algorithm used to encrypt the communication protocol between bots and the botnet command and control servers, and attempted to ensure they had access to infected computers even in cases where the botnet control centers are shut down,” Kaspersky wrote on its SecureList blog earlier this week. “The owners of TDL are essentially trying to create an ‘indestructible’ botnet that is protected against attacks, competitors, and antivirus companies.”

Central to TDL-4′s updates is an improved algorithm that encrypts communications between infected computers and the botnet’s command. According to Kaspersky, TDL-4 creates an identifier known as “bsh parameter” that “acts as one of the encryption keys for subsequent connections to the command and control server.” Once a request between command and the computer is activated, it’s transmitted over an HTTPS connection. According to Kaspersky, that system helps the botnet “run smoothly” and, at the same time, stops anyone else from trying to take control over it.

To help safeguard itself from removal, TDL-4 infects a computer’s master boot record, thus allowing it to run before the operating system starts up, and keep it away from the prying eyes of anti-malware programs. What’s more, the botnet deletes other malicious files that might get caught by security tools and tip users to TDL-4 running on their computers. In their place, TDL-4 has downloaded about 30 malicious programs on infected computers, including “fake anti-virus programs, adware, and the Pushdo spambot,” Kaspersky says.

According to Kaspersky, the botnet also uses peer-to-peer network Kad to issue several commands, including searching for new files, publishing files to Kad, and more.

The big upshot of that for TDL-4 creators, Kaspersky says, is that even if “its command and control centers are shut down, the botnet owners will not lose control over infected machines,” since they’ll still be able to access Kad.

Although Kaspersky believes TDL-4 is practically impenetrable, not everyone is so quick to agree. Writing for InfoWorld today, Roger Grimes, a self-described “24-year veteran of the malware wars,” says that there has yet to be a single threat that has been able to hold its ground indefinitely.

“I can safely tell you that no threat has appeared that the antimalware industry and OS vendors did not successfully respond to,” Grimes writes. “It may take months or years to kill off something, but eventually the good guys get it right.”

He makes a solid point. Last year, Conficker was taken down after wreaking havoc on computers worldwide since 2008. Earlier this month, the FBI announced that it had taken down the Coreflood botnet.

But TDL-4′s functionality might just be in a league of its own. As Kaspersky notes, the botnet can “manipulate adware and search engines, provide anonymous Internet access, and act as a launch pad for other malware.”

According to Kaspersky, 28 percent of all infected TDL-4 computers are in the U.S. Computers in the U.K., Italy, France, and many other countries are also infected with TDL-4. All told, more than 4.5 million computers were infected with TDL-4 in the first three months of 2011 alone.

A Microsoft-led consortium will begin a test in Britain this week to investigate how unused TV spectrum could be employed for new wireless broadband networks, according to a Financial Times report.

The group, which includes the BBC, British Sky Broadcasting, and telecommunications giant BT, hopes to tap “white spaces” to create “super Wi-Fi” networks to sate bandwidth-hungry smartphones, according to the report.

“Spectrum is a finite natural resource. We can’t make more and we must use it efficiently and wisely,” Dan Reed, Microsoft’s vice president of technology policy and strategy, told the newspaper. “The TV white spaces offer tremendous potential to extend the benefits of wireless connectivity to many more people, in more locations, through the creation of super Wi-Fi networks.”

The 300MHz to 400MHz of unused “white space” spectrum is considered prime spectrum for offering wireless broadband services because it can travel long distances and penetrate through walls. The Federal Communications Commission unanimously agreed in November 2008 to open up this spectrum for unlicensed use.

Microsoft has been testing new technology that uses the unlicensed spectrum on its 500-acre Redmond, Wash., campus. The company built the wireless network using only two base stations to transmit the signals via the white-space spectrum. Signals that use the white-space spectrum travel at least three times farther than signals transmitted over other unlicensed spectrum, such as Wi-Fi. This means it can cover an area that is almost nine times as large as one that uses Wi-Fi and because it operates at a much lower frequency than Wi-Fi, it can penetrate buildings much more easily.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and others have compared the white-space market to Wi-Fi–a $4 billion-a-year industry that also does not require a spectrum license. Last year, Microsoft commissioned research that suggests white-space applications may generate $3.9 billion to $7.3 billion in economic value each year.

Congratulations to Integrity Bank’s Hazem A. Ahmed, WINNER of the Percento Technologies drawing at the 2011 IBAT Leadership Conference last week at the Hyatt Hill Country Resort in San Antonio, Texas. Mr. Ahmed won the Kodak PlaySport Zx5 Video Camera.

Thank you to everyone who joined our drawing.

Financial Technology Support

Forget being limited to .com, .net, and .org.

The Internet’s overseers today approved a plan to dramatically expand the number “generic top-level domains,” or GTLDs, as soon as the end of 2012. There are only 22 such GTLDs today–others include .edu, .mil, and .biz–but the expansion could add dozens or potentially even hundreds more.

Among other implications, that means new opportunities and new complications for trademark holders.

“It opens up [what's] the right of the dot,” said Rod Beckstrom, chief executive of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, speaking at a press conference in Singapore after the ICANN board‘s vote. “When you think .com, .net, think .open to new ideas.”

The move will give a completely new look to Internet addresses. Domains can range from broad terms such as .auto to specific ones such as .canon.

Thus, the blessing and the curse that are new GLTDs: companies get new opportunities to reinforce their brand names, but at the same time it means trademark holders could face expensive new challenges in defending their trademarks.

ICANN has worked to mitigate these issues, for example with a trademark clearinghouse to track registered names. And there are consequences that extend as far as ICANN canceling a contract with a registrar that cooperates with a “bad actor,” said outgoing ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush.

LOS ANGELES–Nintendo got the next wave of console wars started today with the introduction of the next entry to its arsenal, the Wii U, at the company’s E3 presentation.

The new console, with an iPad-like controller, will be available next year. That was a bit of a surprise, given that many industry watchers expected it could arrive as soon as this holiday season.

The company didn’t offer the price of the console or any technical specifications. But it nevertheless wowed a partisan audience at the Nokia Theater here in Los Angeles with a video of novel new gameplay. The company never showed the device itself or any live demonstrations of the console or controller.

The Ultrabook comes on the heels of a largely unsuccessful effort to seed a category of laptops that were typically referred to as “ultrathins,” or what Intel internally had been calling CULV, or consumer ultra low voltage. Launched roughly two years ago, CULV ultrathins proved not to be popular. Though attractive, designs like Dell’s Adamo or the Acer Aspire Timeline AS1810T were either pricey or lagged the mainstream laptop market significantly in performance–or both. A criticism the MacBook Air faced originally.

But fast and power-efficient Core i5 and Core i7 Sandy Bridge processors should go a long way toward remedying this performance gap, according to Intel. The Asus UX21, for example, can use Intel’s latest Sandy Bridge Core i7 chips.

And Intel is hoping that guidelines will yield a steady stream of svelte designs. “We are working with [PC makers]. We have some rough guidelines. The target will be below 20 millimeters and you’ll see designs in the fourth quarter that will certainly be down to 17 [millimeters],” Kilroy said.

Source