Gartner released a new forecast that predicts the information technology spending to grow faster this year than previously expected. The growth will be boosted by strong demand for new telecom gear and for computing hardware, research firm Gartner said. The research agency believes that the global IT market will growth by 7.1% this year to $3.672 trillion. It had earlier forecast 5.6 percent growth this year.

IBM is entering the ecommerce industry with its new initiative to help online businesses better service their customers. IBM has launched an ecommerce program that focuses on retail operation integration and analytics. "Through technology, consumers have gotten much more empowered than they have ever been before," for the retail industry, said Craig Hayman, the general manager of IBM Software Industry Solutions, who heads the new practice.

IBM and Samsung will be jointly developing semiconductor technology for smartphones and other mobile gadgets as it appears from the conjoint statement made by the two companies this week. International Business Machines Corp and Samsung Electronics Co plan to research new chip materials and improvements in process technology, to develop smaller and more energy efficient semiconductor products, they said.

According to a new research by cPacket Networks hackers can exploit high-frequency trading networks to pocket millions of dollars during stock market transactions. Rony Kay, a former IBM research fellow and founder of cPacket Networks, says that the networks used to complete stock market transactions in microseconds, are vulnerable to manipulation by hackers who can inject tiny amounts of latency into them. By doing so, they can subtly change the course of trading to their advantage.

IBM presented its another report Next Five in Five which makes forecast for five tech innovations that will come within 5 years by 2015. The Next Five in Five report is a listing of five technology trends that can change the world in a matter of 5 years. The company analysts expect that by 2015 mobile devices will become more personal which means that they will be more helpful for people in their everyday life.

China has topped the list of the twice-annual ranking of the world's most powerful supercomputers, replacing the United States. In the latest ranking the Tianjin National Supercomputer Center's Tianhe-1A system benchmarked a performance of 2.67 petaflops (quadrillion floating-point calculations per second), surpassing the former top achiever, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility's Cray XT5 Jaguar system, which clocked in at 1.75 petaflops in this round.

ABN Amro is renewing its partnership agreement with with IBM, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Technologies, according to India's Economic Times. In 2005 the Dutch bank agreed a five year EUR1.8 billion combined deal with the three firms and Accenture and Patni Computer Systems in 2005.

IBM and Oracle has come to a settlement over lawsuits launched against each other. IBM sued Joanne Olsen, a 30-year Big Blue veteran and former head of its services division. The lawsuit was filed by the company after Olsen was gained over by Larry Ellison after the purchase of Sun Microsystems. In its filing IBM complained that Olsen had failed to take a year's gardening leave and was therefore taking advantage of confidential company information to help Oracle-Sun, which was now a direct competitor for big server and storage contracts.

An executive who oversaw development of the iPhone 4 at Apple is leaving his post. Mark Papermaster has been head of Apple's iPhone and iPod hardware engineering department since 2009 when he joined the company from IBM. According to many speculations his departure is linked to the problems with the antenna on the iPhone 4. Meantime, Apple, declined to comment on the reasons for his departure and say whether he resigns or is fired.

International Business Machines has partnered with Aetna Inc to launch a service meant to help hospitals improve patient care via better management of electronic medical records and other digital data. IBM says the new service developed in association with Aetna subsidiary ActiveHealth Management, would help physicians access patients' health data like previous medical records, claims, and lab data from multiple sources and quickly analyze what the best treatment might be.

Two anti-trust investigations have been launched against the International Business Machines Corp by European Union on allegations IBM is abusing its dominant position in the mainframe computer market. One investigation was launched after complaints filed by emulator software vendors T3 and TurboHercules against IBM's practices. This probe focuses on IBM’s alleged tying of mainframe hardware to its mainframe operating system.

IBM is establishing a consortium in association with the European Union and a number of universities to conduct a research into new cloud-computing models in a move to reduce costs for hosting and maintaining Internet-based services.

As it became known Friday, IBM Corporation is bringing an action in a New York State court against Joanne Olsen, former services division general manager of the company.   31-year Olsen left IMB to join Oracle by Larry Ellison after the purchase of Sun Microsystems - which put the two firms in more direct competition.

IBM's annual X-Force Trend and Risk Report revealed that the number of software vulnerabilities dropped in 2009 with the number of flaws in document readers and multimedia applications up 50%. X-Force research and development team deals with the vulnerability disclosures and collects other data on Web-based attacks. Thus, last year the team recorded 6,601 new vulnerabilities, a 11% drop from the previous year.

As it became known, IBM started a long-awaited upgrade to a range of its servers and other hardware targeting to make them more energy-efficient. This move will let IBM production to be more competitive than rival HP and Sun Microsystems products. According to, International Business Machines Corp Monday report, the new POWER7 system, including new microprocessors, storage and middleware, will be able to process more data than its predecessor POWER6, making them useful for utilities with electrical grids or banks conducting electronic trading.