Oracle hardware system product sales decline by -14% and software sales grow by 2% Y-o-Y in Q2 2011, causing analysts to describe the company as an "oracle" of further doom and gloom for the future. 

Revenues show 2% Y-o-Y growth (reaching $8.8BN), lower than previous company estimates of 5-9%. Oracle also previously estimated software sales will grow by 6-16% Y-o-Y.

Analysts have been expressing doubts for the enterprise sector for quite a while now, largely fueled by the euro zone crisis. Other IT companies (including Salesforce and Red Hat) al Read more...

Jon Peddie Research describes the Q3 2011 workstation market with one word-- "normal," meaning "not great, but not too bad either." And these days, "not bad" is more of a positive than, before the mid-2008 market crash. 

The analyst says WW Q3 2011 workstation shipments total 1.02M units, with "robust" 20.1% Y-o-Y and 12.5% Q-o-Q growth. It is also the first quarter with shipments exceeding 1M units for 2011. 

However JPR suggests we should not start celebrating yet-- unless market volatility subsides further, the analyst has "no strong confidence Read more...

According to IHS iSuppli, the Thailand floodings will disrupt the global PC supply chain further-- causing a 3.8M unit shipment shortfall in Q1 2012 due to HDD shortages.

As a result, the analyst revises 2012 forecasts and now says WW PC shipments will grow by only 6.8% Y-o-Y to total 376M units (down from previous estimates of 399M units and 9.5% Y-o-Y growth).

Q1 2012 shipments will be hit badly, reaching 84.2M with a -11.6% Q-o-Q decline (from 95.3M units in Q4 2011)-- a far sharper decrease from the historical average decline of -6% for Read more...

Iceland bolsters international data centre hopes with plans for a new transatlantic subsea cable linking New York and London via Iceland and Ireland, the Financial Times reports. 

The link will make Iceland more attractive for companies looking to move their data centres to the North-- currently Iceland lacks a fast data connection to the rest of the world. 

The country has 3 subsea cables, leading to Scotland, Denmark and N. America, with the last cables being laid in 2003. 

Iceland-founded Emerald Networks will handle the new transatlantic link, and says the network will be able to handle traffic from NY to London and back in less than 62ms.  Read more...