Worldwide Telepresence 2008–2012 Forecast and Analysis

IDC defines telepresence as a combination of very high-quality audio and video communications within two nearly identical physical environments, including furniture, lighting, and other interior design features, to mimic an in-person meeting as closely as possible. However, this emerging communications medium is a clear step beyond traditional videoconferencing and has a business case that a select cadre of Fortune 1000 companies will be able to justify in the near term to reduce executive travel, increase team collaboration, and reduce carbon footprint. This IDC study examines the market outlook for telepresence systems for 2008–2012. These telepresence rooms use audio and visual technologies, interior design, and high-speed wide area network connections to mimic the experience of a face-to-face meeting, regardless of where the rooms are located.

Worldwide VoIP Support Services 2008–2012 Forecast

In 2006, the market could only speculate about the pending impact of Microsoft's entrance on the IP telephony and unified communications marketplace. Yet we would begin to see the reality of that situation when Office Communications Server 2007 was generally released in October 2007. IDC notes it is still early to see how a desktop-based approach to IP communications might affect other vendors' IP PBX system shipments and IP line shipments, but this approach has certainly affected IDC's long-term projections for future IP PBX shipments and IP line shipments.
The big market questions in 2008 that will evolve from "the Microsoft effect" will be:

U.S. and Worldwide Server Installed Base 2008–2012 Forecast

This study is tightly coupled with Worldwide and Regional Server 2008–2012 Forecast: March 2008 (IDC #211606 , April 2008) and incorporates the latest quarterly server forecasts. As of year-end 2007, there were approximately 30 million servers installed worldwide. While a majority of these servers fall into the volume space, there are still thousands of midrange enterprise and high-end enterprise servers that will be replaced over the next few years as product support ends and power and cooling costs warrant a retirement of the system. IDC research has shown that for every dollar a customer spends on new server hardware, it will spend $0.50 powering and cooling its server installed base. While we haven't yet seen an impact on retirement cycles as a result of escalating power and cooling costs in the datacenter, we have seen rapid adoption of server virtualization technology that is helping customers to temper the growth rates of their installed server footprint. There are also many users that have aging systems, with no plans of retiring these systems. These users have spent thousands of dollars developing homegrown applications that support their work requirements and see no reason to change.

Worldwide High-Performance and Technical Computing Server 2008–2012 Forecast

2007 showed a return to significant growth in the technical computing server (aka high-performance computing [HPC]) market, with a 15% increase to reach $11.56 billion for the year. Growth varied significantly between the IDC competitive segments, with the high-end capability segment seeing good growth after a number of tough years. The departmental segment exhibited the strongest growth overall, and the workgroup segment was close to flat after a number of stellar growth years. Looking forward, IDC projects the total HPC market will expand by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.2% to reach just under $18 billion by 2012. This IDC study presents an overview of our forecast for the technical server market for the 2008–2012 period.

Worldwide Disk Storage Systems 2008–2012 Forecast: Content-Centric Customers — Reshaping Market Demand

Despite the deteriorating economic outlook that plagued the second half of 2007, the disk storage systems market had another strong year, showing steady growth year over year. Total disk storage systems customer revenue increased 6.8%, reaching $28.2 billion. New terabyte shipments increased by 53.6%, to 5.2 million terabytes. This IDC study provides a forecast of the worldwide disk storage systems market for 2008–2012 as well as discussion of assumptions and major market trends.

Is UTM a Threat to Routers? We Think So!

Persistent growth in the demand for routing capacity and concurrent increases in security requirements have conspired to create a competitive market dynamic that has otherwise been overlooked by network equipment vendors and analysts alike. From a technology perspective, routers have traditionally been the primary network device used to connect a LAN to a larger network. This is the case in large enterprise environments, where the ability to support legacy and TCP/IP protocols renders the router a critical device in managing traffic between branch offices and headquarters datacenters. In the SMB market, however, point-to-point or even mesh wide area networks are of little value. Connectivity to the Internet is often sufficient. This shift from a desire to connect offices together (with Internet connections as a secondary goal) to demanding a secure and low-cost way of providing Internet connectivity is changing the competitive landscape for vendors of SOHO and low-end routers.

This study examines the displacement of routers by unified threat management devices, describes trends in each market, and details the competitive dynamics between them. Our goal is to define the nontraditional yet increasingly competitive landscape for routers and UTM devices and prescribe steps vendors in each camp can take to further delineate their market and capitalize on available opportunities.