Server market set to grow

Despite a decline in server shipments in 2009, analyst firm Gartner is predicting growth in the x86 server space, writes ARN.

“This is due to users' preference towards Nehalem-based servers,” said principal Gartner research analyst, Erica Gadjuli. “Virtualisation technology may slow down volume growth in high-end servers.”

Server shipments declined by 3.8% in Asia-Pacific market in 2009, according to Gartner. Vendor revenue also collapsed by 6.2% compared to 2008 levels. However, there was strong growth in Q4 and the Australian and New Zealand server market rebounded representing positive year-on-year growth by 21%

Microsoft's chief financial officer, Peter Klein, says the company sees business spending picking up over the next 18 to 24 months and expects to benefit as companies buy more PCs and servers, reports CNET News.

"We feel very well-positioned for growth as the economy recovers," says Klein. He adds that the majority of large businesses are making plans to deploy Windows 7.

Klein also confirmed that Microsoft plans to roll out a programme for Office 2010, where customers who buy Office 2007 ahead of that product will get a free or low-cost upgrade to the new version.

VeriSign reports no serious problems with its ongoing deployment of DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), says Network World.

Matt Larson, vice-president of DNS Research at VeriSign, says the registry operator is on schedule with its roll-out of DNSSEC, an emerging Internet standard that prevents spoofing attacks by allowing Web sites to verify their domain names and corresponding IP addresses using digital signatures and public-key encryption.

DNSSEC is being deployed across the Internet infrastructure, from the root servers at the top of the DNS heirarchy to the servers that run .com and .net and other top-level domains, and then down to the servers that cache content for individual Web sites.