IT spending tanked worldwide last year

But the U.S. bucked the trend, as spending rose

Worldwide IT spending fell nearly 6% last year -- the largest one-year decrease research firm Gartner says it has ever seen. The global forecast for 2016 is for an improving, but relatively flat, $3.54 trillion. That would be a 0.6% increase.

Gartner blames a strong U.S. dollar for the global decline, because it effectively increased the price of exports by as much as 20%. Political and economic instability in countries such as Russia and Brazil also contributed to the spending problems. By comparison, the U.S. saw an increase in IT spending.

In the U.S., IT spending increased 3.1% to $1.14 trillion. The U.S. forecast this year is for a 1.2% increase.

Globally, "we're just in this anemic growth period," John-David Lovelock, a research vice president at Gartner. The countries who saw the most problems with IT spending include Russia, Japan and Brazil.

The economic issues also changed how firms bought IT products and services, said Lovelock.

Instead of buying a product license for $1 million, for instance, users are switching to SaaS products for $100,000 a year. Cloud services have also replaced physical servers, he said.

Globally, there were declines in every area of IT spending, including software, devices and services. The only area to post growth was data center systems spending, largely thanks to cloud.

The IT area expected to see the largest gains this year is software; it is expected to rise 5.3% to $326 billion globally. CRM is the hot area, as users seek to integrate social media with the business needs.

Click here to view complete Q&A of MB2-706 exam

Certkingdom 20% Discount Promotion Coupon Code: 45K2D47FW4

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MB2-706 Training at certkingdom.com

802.11ah Wi-Fi standard approved, will underpin Internet of Things

Say hello to HaLow WiFi standard

A new wireless standard that extends Wi-Fi’s reach down into the 900MHz band will keep the 802.11 family at the center of the developing Internet of Things, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced today.

The new standard, 802.11ah, combines lower power requirements with a lower frequency, which means that those signals propagate better. That offers a much larger effective range than current Wi-Fi standards, which operate on 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, and lets the newer technology penetrate walls and doors more easily.

The alliance, which refers to 802.11ah as HaLow, said that the technology will be well-suited to the vast numbers of new connected devices predicted to be in use soon across many different areas, including auto, smart home, industrial, and retail, among others.

Moreover, HaLow will interoperate with existing 802.11x devices, bringing the Internet of Things firmly into the 6.8-billion-strong ecosystem of Wi-Fi devices, the group said in its announcement. Like existing Wi-Fi, 802.11ah will provide IP-based connectivity, allowing devices to communicate with a broad range of other hardware.

IoT has provided more smoke than fire thus far – grandiose predictions about the numbers of connected devices are commonplace, but widespread uptake has been relatively limited. The generally accepted reasons for this slower-than-prophesied growth are security concerns and a lack of a unified underpinning technology. HaLow might go some way towards alleviating the latter concern, though that’s still far from certain.

Click here to view complete Q&A of N10-006 exam

Certkingdom 20% Discount Promotion Coupon Code: 45K2D47FW4

Best Comptia N10-006 Certification, Comptia N10-006 Training at certkingdom.com