Market Analysis

Global server revenue declined 4.5% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2017, while shipments fell 4.2%, according to analyst Gartner. "The first quarter of 2017 showed declines on a global level with a slight variation in results by region," said Jeffrey Hewitt, an analyst at Gartner. "Asia/Pacific bucked the trend and posted growth while all other regions fell.

According to Gartner, half of all enterprise content will be machine authored as well as managed on hybrid cloud systems by 2018. File synchronisation and sharing are expected be a standard embedded Enterprise Content Management business function, while over 20% of all businesses will be managing content from multiple organisations.

NetApp research has put a spotlight on the compliance challenges faced by businesses in the run up to the deadline for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). NetApp's research into European cloud adoption, security and GDPR compliance found gaps in the understanding and sense of urgency among organisations that should be on top of preparations for the May 25th 2018 GDPR deadline.

Volume sales of mini PCs (housed in a space-saving small case design) through Western Europe's largest distributors continued to grow in Q1 2017 even though demand in the overall desktop segment remained weak, according to data published by Context, the European IT market research company.

Businesses with 500 employees could be losing over $5m annually, claims Mitel in a survey into the cost of inadequate enterprise communications and collaboration capabilities.

Researchers Gartner and IDC both forecast rapidly rising public cloud spending, hitting $203bn by 2020 as global IT outlay tops $2.65tn in the same year.

Almost half of channel leaders expect the channel to grow between now and 2020 according to research commissioned by inventory-as-a-service firm Agilitas. The research commissioned by Agilitas and carried out by OnePoll surveyed 100 senior level executives at leading IT resellers, managed service providers and independent IT channel firms.

Average selling prices are still falling in volume sales of desktop monitors. Western Europe's largest distributors increased sales by +4% year-on-year in Q4 2016, according to the latest data published by CONTEXT, the European IT market analysis company. Growth in Southern Europe has been good, but the UK and Poland slipped back on last quarter's numbers.