Worldwide server shipments grew at a slower-than-expected clip during the first quarter of 2012, but Cisco, which has a small market share, beat market trends as top server makers struggled with slow demand and weak economic conditions, research firm Gartner said on Wednesday.

Corporations are starting to embrace technologies used to monitor employee Internet use, with 60 percent expected to watch workers' social media use for security breaches by 2015, according to a new report from Gartner.

Channel businesses should be planning on how to deal with forthcoming Carbon Tax now, according to experts.

Android and iPhone smartphones together made up 82% of all such devices shipped to retailers in the first quarter of 2012, IDC said Thursday.

IT managers grappling with bring-your-own-device policies can expect to see an explosion in the number of smartphones and tablets used by employees in the next few years.

Worldwide sales of mobile phones saw a 2 per cent decline from the first quarter of 2011 due to a slowdown in demand from the Asia/Pacific region, but the launch of the Apple iPhone 5 will help drive a stronger second half of the year in Western Europe and North America, according to Gartner. The report also notes that Apple's sales in China were "particularly strong" despite people holding of sales in the hope of an iPhone 5.

Samsung has become the clear leader in sales of Android smartphones as Gartner today reported that it accounted for 40% of worldwide Android sales in the first quarter of 2012.

Android smartphones made up 56% of the global smartphones sold to end users in the first quarter of 2012, giving them a far higher share than the 22.9% held by Apple's runner-up iPhone, Gartner said Wednesday.

2011 was a bad year for natural disasters. Several nations were rocked either by earthquakes, tidal waves, or floods. There was even a nuclear accident. But has the tumultuous year convinced businesses to bolster their disaster recovery?

Out went 42 aging black and white copiers with interface boxes that let them serve as printers. In went 42 new networked multi-function printers (MFPs) that could do color printing and copying and scan directly to e-mail, fax or files. And the owner, the Park Hill School District in Kansas City, MO, saves $19,000 yearly.

It's free, easier to use than ever, IT staffers know it and love it, and it has fewer viruses and Trojans than Windows.

First, a scary statistic: Gartner predicts that in less than three years, 35 per cent of enterprise IT expenditures will happen outside of the corporate IT budget. Employees will regularly subscribe to collaboration, analytic and other Cloud services they want, all with the press of a button. Others will simply build their own applications using readily available Cloud-based tools and development platforms.

ORLANDO -- The technology that makes up many of the systems in the ITworld today is at a critical juncture and in the next five years everything from mobile devices and applications to servers and social networking will impact IT in ways companies need to prepare for now, Gartner Vice President David Cearley says.

Businesses are eyeing a transition to Microsoft Windows 7, and with a wealth of security features that are part of it, it's worth figuring out the good and bad about each of them, says Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald, who notes in some cases, third-party security products might be the better fit.

In a 2009 Gartner survey of Asia-Pacific organisations about their software spending intentions, positive outlook increasingly varied by country, and was not only dominated by emerging countries such as China and India. Mature countries such as Australia and Singapore are not conservative in their software budget plan.

As the curtain lifts on 2010, issues around adopting and migrating to the cloud continue to hinder take-up. For every customer diving in the deep end, there are many organisations sitting on the edge of the pool, wary of dipping their toes in.