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.

According to market research from ChangeWave due to the new Microsoft’s OS, companies started buying more PCs, while home run with Windows 7 has also surged.

According to the latest IT spending survey conducted by Goldman Sachs' amid 100 IT executives from Fortune 1000 companies, in the coming year modest overall growth is expected with restrained demand for new hardware such as servers and PCs stimulating an increase in Windows 7 upgrades. Totally, Goldman predicts an 8% decline in global IT spending for 2009, followed by 4% growth in 2010.

 Secure-24, a certified SAP® hosting partner and leading provider of managed hosting, disaster recovery and information security services, reported new appointments to its IT staff. The company says that Tim Magdziarz will focus on SAP hosting and managed services in the Midwest Region, based in Chicago. John Ripma will focus on SAP Hosting and Enterprise Application Services in the Southeast Region.

According to the latest reports Morgan Stanley and Citigroup will have to wait for up to two years before they could have the full benefits of their brokerage joint venture as the complexity of merging information technology systems delays integration. These IT problems caused much disappointment with the 18,500 financial advisers of the new business who had expected to be able to sell products from both firms to their clients.

Data security company Cyber-Ark conducted a poll of over 400 senior IT professionals in the United States and Britain and according to the survey findings more than 1/3 of information technology professionals abuse administrative passwords to access confidential data such as colleagues' salary details or board-meeting minutes.

Barclays IT staff has received another email about more jobs being likely to be cut in 2009. The department has already lost 700 staff last year as part of a planned job cuts of 1,800 by 2011 and another 400 people in January whose "roles and responsibilities were unclear". 

President is a person who is simultaneously far from people and close to them. That is a person attracting the majority of nation’s attention as the head of the state. People want to know how their President lives, what are the new things he offers on the way of country development, his thoughts, his business and activity, his negotiations and his visits inside the country and overseas, etc.

Intel Corp. reported last week that companies with 30,000 PCs upgrading to new Core 2 Duo or Quad computers would return their money in 17 months. Those which also equip themselves with vPro-enabled motherboards in even a shorter time period, 10 months. However, it is known that these figures apply only to a limited set of firms and do not encompass other costs of PC upgrades.

An IBM survey of over 2750 banking executives worldwide showed that a new order for the financial services industry is characterized by a shift to specialization, higher transparency and lower returns.The study predicts that banks will be concentrating on the need to specialize around services that clients value rather than continuing to provide a full range of in-house services.

Global economic recession affected differently different countries, thus it influenced India in particular way. The crisis gives India an opportunity to re-examine its economic strategy. As Business Week says, the boom the country has experienced in IT and BPO (business process outsourcing) is driven by the low-cost labor, called labor arbitrage —not by a concerted effort of an Indian industry to innovate or to grow strengths like manufacturing capabilities.

Judging from news broadcasts and newspaper headlines, the U.S. is slipping deeper and deeper into recession. It inevitably means increasing level of unemployment. If you have been redundant, you definitely don’t want to repeat this unpleasant experience. So, in times of the economic collapse, it makes sense to consider new job opportunities. Which professions can be the safest choice?