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WIRELESS
Text messaging is on the rise
Get those fingers ready because youre going to need them.
According to industry research company Gartner, the number of text messages sent to and from mobile devices will reach 2.3 trillion by 2010, more than double what was sent in 2005. In addition, revenues generated from text messaging will grow from $39.5 billion to $72.5 billion during the same period.
In a survey released Dec. 12, Gartner said the number of messages transmitted over SMS (Short Message Service) systems in 2005 was about 936 billion.
“By far the most messages will continue to be sent in the Asia Pacific region, where Gartner predicts the level of SMS messages will top 1.8 trillion in 2010,” Gartner analysts said in a statement. “Wireless messaging is the most successful mainstream mobile data service to have emerged during the 30-year history of the cellular [telecommunications] industry.”
INFRASTRUCTURE
More virtualization on tap, IDC predicts
The future for system infrastructure software—at least for 2007—will center on virtualization, management and Microsoft, according to IDC.
In its Dec. 13 list of top 10 predictions for the space, IDC includes the next wave in virtualization—what it is calling Virtualization 2.0—where businesses move away from using the technology simply for server consolidation projects and toward such goals as continuity, disaster recovery and high availability.
Virtualization also will fuel the growth of software appliances, and users will focus a lot of their efforts on managing virtual infrastructures, according to IDC. That said, IDC questioned how much use businesses will find for the Xen hypervisor, saying it will be “mostly sizzle—not steak.”
In addition, IDC predicted that Microsofts anti-piracy efforts in the Windows client operating system will drive more people to Linux and that, while Windows Vista wont be a huge boon for the OS or PC markets, there will be a shift toward users adopting premium Vista offerings.
OPEN SOURCE
SUSE co-founder returns to Novell
A year after resigning his position, Hubert Mantel is back at Novell.
The SUSE Linux co-founder and top maintainer of the SUSE Linux kernel left the company in November 2005, saying that after 13 years, “this is no longer the company I founded.” Novell bought SUSE in 2004.
But now Mantel is back, explaining in an interview with Italian online IT site DMO, or Data Manager Online, that he left Novell because he was “burned out” and that he “simply needed some time off.” He also said that during the year off, he found that what still interested him most was Linux. Mantel now leads Novells kernel quality assurance team, according to a company spokesperson.
Mantel, who returned to work in December, also said in the DMO interview that he approves of the recent deal between Novell and Microsoft. “If you think some years back, Linux was not taken seriously,” he said. “Now even Microsoft acknowledges that it exists and will not go away.”
—Compiled by Jeffrey Burt