According to the Yankee Group last report the monitored trend shows increase in IT performance and business value with utility computing and storage.

Utility computing, says the report, is an IT deployment model in which IT infrastructure resources, such as network bandwidth, server processing power and storage capacity, are pooled together as shared resources that can be dynamically allocated to business applications based on predefined policies or service levels.

According to the research, this is in stark contrast to IT deployment models of today that typically dedicate massive infrastructure resources to support a particular application.

The delivery of storage and storage-related data center operations (such recovery and archiving) as a service can create business value, says the analysis.

According to the research, businesses are beginning to recognize the value of storage utility model, but the biggest challenge businesses face is selecting the right approach to virtualization.

Another event in the industry last week was the music industry's legal assault. According to the reports, Australian recording industry investigators raided an Internet service provider on Thursday suspected of having used high-speed file-swapping technology to allow the pirating of hundreds of thousands of songs and video clips, an industry official said.

Desktop publishing software maker Adobe Systems continues to gain valuable market share, according to the last company release. Adobe Systems Incorporated reported strong financial results for its first quarter ended March 4, 2005.

In the first quarter of fiscal 2005, Adobe achieved record revenue of $472.9 million, compared to $423.3 million reported for the first quarter of fiscal 2004, and $429.5 million reported in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2004.

Adobe's first quarter revenue target range, revised upward on February 1, 2005, was $450 to $470 million.

"The explosive growth of digital content continues to drive demand for Adobe solutions across all of our customer segments," said Bruce R. Chizen, chief executive officer.

"This demand is particularly evident in our Intelligent Documents business, where we see increasing adoption of Adobe PDF-based document workflows in organizations and governments worldwide," continues Chizen.

GAAP net income was reported to be $151.9 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2005, compared to $123.0 million reported in the first quarter of fiscal 2004, and $113.5 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2004.

According to the analyst company DataMonitor Adobe's strong performance must be causing some concern at rival Quark Systems, with its QuarkXPress desktop publishing system that competes with Adobe's InDesign system. During the past year, continues the research analysis, a number of high-profile organizations announced they were moving away from Quark to InDesign.

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