spending

Considering all you hear about social networks finally starting to convince the advertising industry that they're a worthwhile destination for dollars, it's a bit surprising to see new numbers from eMarketer that put social networks' share of the digital-ad marketplace at a paltry 5.5 percent last year.

That's up from 5 percent in 2008, the stats released Thursday say. The good news is that, unlike some other sectors of the ad world, it's not shrinking--but it's also not growing exponentially by any means. After plunging from a 61 percent rate of growth in 2008 … Read more

AT&T said Thursday that it will invest an additional $2 billion in its network in 2010 to make sure it keeps up with the growing demand from new smartphones and other 3G data devices, such as the Apple iPad, on its network.

During its fourth quarter 2009 conference call, Chief Operating Officer John Stankey said AT&T plans to spend between $18 billion and $19 billion in 2010 upgrading its wireless and backhaul networks to handle the onslaught of new traffic. This is roughly $2 billion more than the company had invested in the previous year.

Specifically, … Read more

IT executives are feeling optimistic about a possible sector recovery this year, according to a new survey from CompTIA.

Following a wave of well-deserved pessimism that lasted most of 2009, executives were more upbeat when surveyed by the tech trade association in December. The new outlook prompted the rating for CompTIA's third IT Industry Business Confidence Index to jump 6.3 points to 56.6 out of 100.

With a rating higher than 50, the index now marks the first time positive sentiments outshone negative ones. The first two indexes from July and September of last year both scored … Read more

IT spending around the world will rise 4.6 percent this year to reach $3.4 trillion, according to research released Thursday by Gartner.

Though modest, the growth will show much needed improvement over last year when spending actually dipped 4.6 percent from 2008. Gains are expected to hit all major segments of the IT market, including hardware, software, IT services, and telecommunications. This latest forecast is also higher than Gartner's previous prediction from last quarter when the firm said it didn't expect IT spending to hit 2008 levels until 2011.

Around the world, a recovery in … Read more

CIOs are eyeing relatively flat IT budgets this year, but that's better news than last year when spending took a nosedive.

IT budgets will rise on average only about 1.3 percent this year compared with last year, though that marks a halt to 2009's recession when spending dropped by 8.1 percent, says a Gartner CIO survey released Tuesday. The research firm's report "Leading in Times of Transition: The 2010 CIO Agenda" questioned almost 1,600 chief information officers, all of whom saw 2009 as their most challenging year in a decade.

This year'… Read more

It's no secret that Novell would dearly love to trade market share with Red Hat in the Linux market. Red Hat, however, isn't happy with at least one of Novell's chosen strategies for getting there:

Cloning.

As its white papers allege, Novell thinks it can offer high-quality support for SUSE Linux, the Linux distribution it owns and ships, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the Linux distribution that it...doesn't. The company has been offering a migration plan from RHEL to SUSE since at least November 2008, but it recently raised the ire of Red Hat … Read more

Analysts may differ on the strength of the technology spending recovery, but they're increasingly in sync on believing that 2010 will see a healthy rise.

Both Forrester Research and Goldman Sachs recently updated their projections on technology spending in 2010, and both see global spending on the upswing: Forrester projects 8.1 percent growth while Goldman Sachs's new "Mapping 2010: Key Tech Trends to Watch" report forecasts a more conservative 5 percent growth.

It's fair to say, however, that technology vendors will be happy with either outcome, especially as the U.S. continues to shed jobs.… Read more

IT spending worldwide will reboot in 2010, rising 8.1 percent after last year's 8.9 percent freefall, Forrester Research predicts in a report released Tuesday.

Businesses and governments are expected to spend $1.6 trillion on information technology throughout 2010, Forrester predicts. In the U.S. alone, IT spending is likely to grow 6.6 percent this year to $568 billion after last year's drop of 8.2 percent.

The largest gains are expected to be in computer hardware and software. Purchases of computer equipment globally will increase by 8.2 percent, while communications hardware will see … Read more

Among the budget cuts California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed to health care, prison, environment, and other parts of the state budget, there's one area that has a good chance of actually getting a budget increase: open source in IT.

According to a policy letter (PDF) issued last week by California CIO Teri Takai, "the use of Open Source Software (OSS) in California state government [has now been formally established] as an acceptable practice."

It's about time.

California faces a $20 billion budget deficit, a gaping void that open-source software, no matter how aggressively used by … Read more