Breaking Analysis
with Dave Vellante
About the podcast
Dive into tech news and cutting-edge insights on current technology topics with Breaking Analysis hosted by Dave Vellante.
Powered by ETR, the program is our opportunity to share independent, unfiltered editorial with SiliconANGLE, theCUBE and theCUBE Research communities.
The program and conclusions we produce are data-driven, tapping ETR’s proprietary spending data set.
256 | Breaking Analysis | Cloud Market Share Shows Vendors Eyeing a $1T Opportunity
The ever expanding cloud has become ubiquitous. No longer is the cloud some remote set of services, somewhere up in the sky. Rather, the cloud is seeping into every industry, hybrid on-prem models, edge workloads, telco markets and has its sights on space. The market size is staggering and will surpass $1T in revenue when including infrastructure – IaaS and PaaS – SaaS and professional services. Much AI work is being done today in the public cloud and despite indications that bringing AI to on-prem data will be a growing trend, it’s unlikely that the cloud will stop expanding any time soon.
255 | Breaking Analysis | Broadcom’s VMware Strategy is Winning Despite Market Friction
Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware is proceeding almost exactly as we expected when the deal was announced in May of 2022. While much of the media and competitor narrative is focused on the increased license fees Broadcom is imposing and the urgency of migrating off VMware, customer conversations and recent surveys show that while migrations are happening, the real story is that VMware’s more narrow focus and cost discipline are allowing Broadcom to integrate VMWare into its highly successful business model. Specifically, we see two seemingly countervailing trends that are both possible to be true: 1) Customers are actively moving many low value workloads off VMware; and 2) Most mission critical work is staying put, allowing Broadcom to dramatically increase the contribution from its software business and deliver a roadmap for customers that will be more cost effective than migrating.
254 | Breaking Analysis | Why Jamie Dimon is Sam Altman’s Biggest Competitor
Investors have poured north of $30B into independent foundation model players including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Mistral and others. OpenAI itself has raised more than $20B. To keep pace, both Meta and xAI will have to spend comparable amounts. In our view, the stampeding herd of LLM investors is blindly focused on the false grail of so-called artificial general intelligence AGI. We believe the greatest value capture exists in what we’re calling enterprise AGI, metaphorically represented by the proprietary data estates and managerial know-how locked inside of firms like JP Morgan Chase, and virtually every enterprise. The tools to curate and harness that collective intelligence will allow these firms to capture the majority of value in the race for AI leadership.
253 | Breaking Analysis | Gen AI Adoption Sets the Table for AI ROI
Gen AI enthusiasm has lately turned to AI skepticism. Lack of clarity on tangible ROI for mainstream businesses, a narrow list of early winners and relentless vendor marketing around AI has caused cynicism and media backlash. But the reality remains that we have entered a new era in technology innovation that has a high probability of transforming industries, public policy, company leadership and the related fortunes of individuals and organizations. Moreover, 97% of leading Gen AI adopters report that they’re achieving tangible benefits from their deployments. Adoption of Gen AI is relentlessly on the rise and nearly two years in, is poised to begin throwing off enough value that it will heighten a mandate to apply AI to drive business results. As such, we believe that as we exit Q4 into 2025, the demand for AI solutions will continue to occupy the headspace of business technology pros and AI momentum will maintain its accelerated pace.
252 | Breaking Analysis | How IBM and Palo Alto Networks Team to Combat Cyber Threats
It’s estimated that organizations spend more than $200B annually on security hardware, software and services globally. That’s a big number. But consider that the economic impact of cybercrime ranges from $500B – $2T annually. There’s even an estimate from cybersecurity ventures that says the figure is as high as $9.5T. Each year, it seems the more we spend, the more vulnerable we become, which is especially concerning given the exposure to critical infrastructures. Governments around the world have stepped up their involvement with executive orders, privacy regulations and lots of “finger wagging” at the technology industry and its customers. Frankly some of that is justified. The technology industry does much good but has a subpar record at solving this problem. One premise that we’ve put forth at theCUBE Research is that the industry must find ways to better collaborate and share resources to combat cyber threats. Two firms, IBM and Palo Alto Networks, have joined forces to combine deep expertise, AI and platform approach to better protect organizations from attackers.
In this Breaking Analysis we look at the security landscape and unpack the multi-dimensional relationship between IBM and Palo Alto Networks to better understand how industry collaboration can improve cyber defenses and modernize security operations. With us are two senior executives from each firm, Mohamad Ali, SVP and Head of IBM Consulting and BJ Jenkins, the President of Palo Alto Networks.
251 | Breaking Analysis | What Microsoft’s Financial Disclosures Reveal About Azure’s Market Position
Microsoft’s new financial disclosures include changes to the way it reports Azure metrics. The company said the change was to better align Azure with consumption revenue and by inference, more closely aligning with how AWS, the leader in cloud computing infrastructure, reports its metrics. The accounting change removed certain mature, slower growth revenue streams and consequently raised the growth rates for Azure. It also had the effect of increasing the AI services contribution within Azure. While this was reported and often applauded in the media and financial circles, what wasn’t widely discussed is that while such a change increases growth rates, by definition it reduces the size of the Azure business and its resulting revenue market share. Regardless, in our view, Microsoft is comfortable that the future AI revenue contribution within Azure combined with both higher growth rates and a greater AI contribution will foster greater investor confidence and enthusiasm over time. They’re probably correct.
250 | Breaking Analysis | Desperately Seeking AI ROI as IT Budgets Tighten
Data from recent surveys shows that the scenarios we’ve been putting forth throughout 2024 continue to be in play. Specifically, we cite three main dynamics affecting the tech spending climate, including: 1) IT budgets continue to be constrained as; 2) GenAI is being funded by stealing from other budget buckets; and 3) The ROI for AI initiatives remains tepid, as expectations for break even continue to be pushed out to the right. Nonetheless, customers remain highly optimistic about the prospects for AI driving productivity improvements. Moreover, the cloud remains a key ingredient in supporting AI workloads.
249 | Breaking Analysis | From LLMs to SLMs to SAMs, How Agents are Redefining AI
We believe the AI center of gravity for enterprise value creation is shifting from LLMs to SLMs. Where the S not only stands for small but encompasses a system of small, specialized, secure and sovereign models. Moreover, we see LLMs and SLMs evolving to become agentic, hence SAM – i.e. small action models. In our view, it’s the collection of these “S-models,” combined with an emerging data harmonization layer, that will enable systems of agents to work in concert and create high impact business outcomes. These multi-agent systems will completely reshape the software industry generally and more specifically, unleash a new productivity paradigm for organizations globally.
248 | Breaking Analysis | Six Technology Myths and the Big Tech-lash
Technology generally and big tech specifically are regularly cited by politicians, media and governments around the world as the root of many societal problems today. Accusations like privacy invaders, fake news amplifiers, job destroyers, discriminators and more are commonly lobbed at technology firms with little recognition for the substantial value large tech companies have delivered over the decades. Moreover, many powerful government officials have rewritten the history of effective government oversight and are attempting to apply antitrust law in novel ways that have virtually killed M&A and threaten to stifle American exceptionalism and innovation.
247 | Special Breaking Analysis | The Root Cause of Intel’s Troubles…A Critical Analysis
For over a decade we’ve been sounding the alarm on Intel. Five years ago, like some on Wall Street, we recommended a strategy to recreate Intel by splitting up its design and manufacturing divisions. Most recently we posited that a miracle would be needed for Intel to achieve its aspirations of becoming a viable number two foundry by 2030. The majority of industry pundits have finally come to the realization that Intel’s current path is unsustainable. However some still feel that splitting Intel’s fabs from its design business doesn’t make sense.
We disagree.
246 | Breaking Analysis | It’s Larry’s World, We Just Live in it
Oracle Corporation is seeing renewed business momentum powered by a combination of an entrenched database business, years of investment in cloud infrastructure, an integrated application suite and AI technologies that are being infused throughout its product line. This includes its autonomous database, 23ai, Exadata/Exascale, other Oracle infrastructure and its vast applications portfolio. Oracle has a highly differentiated strategy that is hitting on most if not all cylinders. And it appears the best is yet to come. It’s one reason that, year to date, the stock is up 54%, compared to the Nasdaq which is up 19% as of the recording of this recording.
245 | Breaking Analysis | Is the Modern Data Stack Out Over Its Skis?
Input from theCUBE and data practitioner communities suggests that acceleration in compute performance and the sophistication of the modern data stack (MDS) is outpacing the needs of many traditional analytic workloads. Most analytics workloads today are performed on small data sets and generally can run on a single node, somewhat neutralizing the value of distributed, highly scalable data platforms. As
244 | Breaking Analysis | How Agentic AI Platforms Will Redefine Enterprise Applications
We believe enterprise applications are undergoing a profound change. By next year, highly capable agentic systems will emerge to create new application classes and alter the way organizations think about their backend systems, data platforms and user interfaces. The extent of the transformation, we believe, will be more impactful to the application stack than were the changes brought about by innovations seen during the modern GUI, Web, cloud and mobile eras.
243 | Breaking Analysis | Assessing Broadcom VMware Eight Months On
Customers and partners are pivoting to address Broadcom’s swift changes to its VMware packaging, pricing and partnership programs. Our data suggests customers and MSPs have moved beyond the emotional shock phase to implementing their options in earnest. Our advice to large VMware customers has been to evaluate your ELA expiration and work backwards from that timeframe. Isolate core workloads that
242 | Breaking Analysis | Cloud Spending Remains Resilient Amid Market Turbulence
The investor community is realizing that the return on invested capital for the AI buildout is going to take some time. The payback period for enterprise AI investments is not akin to the dopamine rush from completing a great workout. This realization combined with several other macro factors, has caused the big AI names to pullback hard recently. But the
241 | Breaking Analysis | The Emerging Data Stack Brings Opportunities and Risk for Buyers and Sellers
The so-called modern data stack is getting a facelift and perhaps a complete body makeover. As the point of control shifts from the DBMS to the governance layer we cite three dynamics that highlight a reshaping of today’s data landscape, including: 1) Key data players are disrupting the established norm as they expand their aspirations; 2) Data platform vendors used
240 | Breaking Analysis | Why Databricks v. Snowflake is not a Zero Sum Game
Three main pressure points are transforming the modern data landscape: 1) Increased interest in adopting open table formats to allow any compute to operate on any data; 2) The point of control is shifting from the DBMS to the governance layer; and 3) AI is enabling the emergence of a new class of intelligent data apps that promise to radically automate business processes and drive unprecedented levels of productivity.
239 | Breaking Analysis | CrowdStrike Incident Sounds an Alarm on Critical Infrastructure
The chaos caused by yesterday’s CrowdStrike content update shows that even the most successful cybersecurity firms with great management, award-winning products and a growing business, are exposed to unexpected events. What’s even more important is that it underscores the fragility of our connected world and the critical infrastructure that makes it run. Virtually every industry, and who knows how many
238 | Breaking Analysis | Harnessing AI as IT Spending Gradually Improves
AI continues to lead all enterprise IT sectors by a wide margin in terms of spending momentum. But that momentum has not led to an across the board boost in productivity or meaningful revenue gains for firms. Specifically, the adoption of Gen AI is increasing steadily but the use cases are not yet self-funding. As such, the outlook for IT spending, while slowly improving in the second half of 2024, remains constrained.
237 | Breaking Analysis | Gen AI is Passe’, Enter the Age of Agentic AI
In this Breaking Analysis we share our thoughts on the emerging trends around agentic AI. We’ll define what it is, how agentic builds on (and is additive to) generative AI, what’s missing to make it real, what the stack components look like and some of the likely players in the space.
236 | Breaking Analysis | Decoding the Chess Moves of Snowflake and Databricks
As customers try to “get AI right,” the need to rationalize siloed data becomes increasingly important. Data practitioners could put all their data eggs into a single platform basket, but that’s proving impractical. As such, firms are moving to an open model where they maintain control of their data and can bring any compute engine to any of their data. While compelling, the capabilities to govern open data across an entire estate remain immature. Regardless, the move toward open table formats is gaining traction and the point of control in the data platform wars is shifting from the database to the governance catalog.
235 | Breaking Analysis | AI Servers are on Fire but Cloud Continues to Win the Day
Earnings prints from the likes of Dell, Supermicro and more recently HPE have shown the AI server trend is not just benefiting cloud hyperscalers but also firms with large on-premises installed bases. Oracle as well is trading at an all time high citing cloud momentum and recent deals with Google, OpenAI and prior deals with Microsoft. But make no mistake,
234 | Breaking Analysis | Crystallizing Snowflake Summit 2024
Snowflake Summit 2024 marks the next chapter in the company’s history with new CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy taking center stage, driving even faster product innovation and an ambitious TAM expansion strategy. Snowflake has moved beyond being a friendly and simpler data warehouse to tackling new problems including how to bring AI value to enterprise customers, helping ecosystem partners monetize and providing tools and services to build AI-powered enterprise data apps.
233 | Breaking Analysis | A Sneak Peek at Snowflake Data Cloud Summit 2024 – Reframing the Future of Data Platforms
Snowflake is at a crossroads. The company, which defined the modern data platform, now faces fresh challenges on four fronts. Specifically, Snowflake must: 1) advance its data cloud vision; 2) transform into an AI leader; 3) become a platform for data apps; and 4) address external market forces that pressure its core values of simplicity, efficiency, and trusted data.
232 | Breaking Analysis | How NVIDIA, TSM, Broadcom, and Qualcomm Will Lead a Trillion Dollar Silicon Boom
In this research we quantify the semiconductor ecosystem which we believe is being led by a transition to AI. Four companies stand out including NVIDIA, TSMC, Broadcom and Qualcomm to make up 45% of a $900B market by 2028.
231 | Breaking Analysis | Power Play in Hybrid AI – IBM and Dell in Focus
In this week’s Breaking Analysis, ahead of IBM Think and Dell Technologies World, we shine a spotlight on these two firms as leading examples of hybrid AI players that we believe will benefit from the AI wave that is upon us. And of course we’ll share several survey data points from ETR to support our assertions.
230 | Breaking Analysis | RSAC 2024 goes beyond AI-powered security to securing AI itself
RSAC 2024 was crowded, buzzy, vibrant and chaotic, underscoring the very nature of the cybersecurity industry. This market has a kind of self-propelling energy with a dynamic that blends tons of money, an ever-present and capable adversary, technical innovation, public policy, geopolitics, and a smashing together of the digital and physical worlds.
229 | Breaking Analysis | Supply Chain Planning as an Intelligent Data App
In this Breaking Analysis we introduce you to Blue Yonder, a builder of digital supply chain management solutions that we believe represents an emerging example of intelligent data applications.
228 | Breaking Analysis | Security budgets are growing but so is vendor sprawl
Organizations continue to spend more on security with 87% of firms expecting to increase spend on cyber in the next twelve months. But are we safer?
It’s estimated that firms on average have between 60-75 security tools installed. While leading vendors logically market the benefits of addressing tools sprawl and complexity through consolidation, the data suggests that more than half the firms are increasing the number of security vendors installed with a very small percentage able to affect vendor consolidation.
227 | Breaking Analysis | How chasing AI shifts tech spending patterns
In another big week we saw the AI battles continue to escalate. Google reorged to better focus on AI, Meta’s Llama 3 was released, TSM is doubling its manufacturing capacity for NVIDIA high end chips, Samsung got a $6.4B tranche of the chips act money, a Microsoft paper describes VASA-1 that turns photos into a kinda creepy talking head, Mistral
226 | Breaking Analysis | Enterprises seek deeper AI value beyond chat
Enterprises are fighting a dual mandate of operating inside a tight IT budget envelope while at the same time transforming their organization into an AI-first company. Navigating macroeconomic headwinds while driving innovation is an exciting challenge for IT decision makers. To deliver the goods, technology leaders are stealing from other budgets to fund AI, finding quick wins with fairly unspectacular
226 | Breaking Analysis | AWS’ AI blueprint emphasizes optionality, trust and scalable industry solutions
AWS’ AI strategy combines foundation model optionality from partners with its own innovations across a three layered AI stack. In this Breaking Analysis we review takeaways from our AI field trip to NYC.
225 | Breaking Analysis | Adobe Summit highlights personalization at scale with Gen AI
Adobe Summit 2024 put highlighted AI powered digital experiences and personalization at scale. By applying AI, Adobe showed off its ability to bring custom experiences to the masses and do so with trusted, enterprise-grade content. Adobe’s TAM is approaching $300B and the company is demonstrating the ability to monetize AI at scale.
224 | Breaking Analysis | NVIDIA, Broadcom and the expanding breadth of AI momentum
We attended both NVIDIA GTC and Broadcom’s investor day this week where the AI platform shift was on full display. In our view, GTC24 was the most important event in the history of the technology industry, surpassing Steve Jobs’ iPod and iPhone launches. The event was not the largest but, in our opinion, it was the most significant in terms of its reach, vision, ecosystem impact and broad-based recognition that the AI era will permanently change the world.
223 | Breaking Analysis | Navigating NVIDIA & the AI Trade – Sell, hold or double down?
Heading into the second half of 2023, some investors felt that the semiconductor run up last summer was a harbinger for a broader tech rally. That thesis proved prescient and rewarded managers who took on risk at the time with leading firms in semiconductors, security and enterprise software. The question is, where do we go from here? In this Breaking
222 | Breaking Analysis | Why CrowdStrike is separating from the cybersecurity pack
It’s been an interesting month in the cybersecurity space. The sector has been somewhat less affected by budget tightening these past twenty-four months and at the same time has benefitted from AI tailwinds. But in the past several weeks we’ve seen some separation in key highflying cybersecurity names. Specifically, Palo Alto shocked the street last month with a $600M billings forecast surprise and sounded the alarm that there were cracks in its consolidation execution.
221 | Breaking Analysis | The unplanned genius of Broadcom’s route to AI dominance
When you think of AI leadership, which companies come to mind? NVIDIA, OpenAI, the hyperscalers, Meta, Hugging Face, Anthropic and names like that, right? You don’t typically think of Broadcom do you? You should.
220 | Breaking Analysis | Dissecting the AI boom through the dotcom lens
Many people question whether the current AI boom will end in the same way that the dotcom bubble burst. It’s understandable as there are many similarities, especially with the exuberance seen this past week in the stock market following NVIDIA’s earnings print.
219 | Breaking Analysis | Cloud optimization wanes as AI slowly lifts off
The past twenty-four months have seen cloud spending face dual headwinds of macroeconomics and the ability to dial down resources as needed – i.e. cloud optimization. Nonetheless, the big four hyperscalers clocked in between $170 – $190B in IaaS and PaaS revenue last year depending on how you factor the leaked court documents suggesting Azure is much smaller than previously believed. Regardless, hyperscaler growth continued to outpace almost all markets, accelerating between 18-19% in revenue terms last year, despite their enormous size.
218 | Breaking Analysis | Intel Foundry is a bold bet filled with uncertainty
As an American, you can’t help but root for Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger to succeed. His vision to bring semiconductor manufacturing leadership back to the United States is more than just a quaint nationalistic sentiment. Rather it’s a strategic imperative for the country, its military, global competitiveness and access to future technological innovations in the AI era. But his strategy is dependent upon the success of Intel both as a designer and a leading manufacturer of advanced chips.
217 | Breaking Analysis | Slicing the Gordian Knot – A leap to real-time systems of truth
In order to support the vision of the sixth data platform, i.e. a capability that allows a globally consistent, real time, intelligent digital representation of a business, we believe the industry must rethink the single system of truth. Specifically, we envision a new data platform that marries the best of relational and non-relational capabilities and breaks the multi-decades tradeoffs between
216 | Breaking Analysis | Enterprise technology predictions 2024
Predictions about enterprise tech have never been more uncertain. Predictions become even more challenging when you try to make forecasts that are measurable. Generally, our belief is we should be able to look back a year later and say with some degree of certainty whether the prediction came true– ideally with some quantifiable evidence to back that up. In this
215 | Breaking Analysis | 2024 IT spending outlook shows cautious start with optimistic finish
Recent spending intentions data from more than 1,700 IT decision makers indicates that executives expect technology budgets to grow at 4.3% this year. That’s up from roughly 3.5% in 2023 and is higher than the expectation in October which was 3.8%. But the forecasts for 2024 are backend loaded. Moreover, while some sectors such as energy and regions like APAC
214 Breaking Analysis | Unifying intelligence in the age of data apps
With George Gilbert We believe the future of intelligent data apps will enable virtually all organizations to operate a platform that orchestrates an ecosystem similar to that of Amazon.com. By this we mean dynamically connecting and digitally representing an enterprise’s operations including its customers, partners, suppliers and even competitors. This vision includes the ability to rationalize top down plans with
213 | Breaking Analysis | Predictions 2024 – Deciphering Gen AI’s effect on data, governance & skill gaps
With Sanjeev Mohan, Tony Baer, Carl Olofson, Dave Menninger and Doug Henschen In the words of famous people like Nobel laureate Neils Bohr and baseball legend Yogi Berra, predictions are very difficult, especially if they’re about the future. In this special Breaking Analysis we’re pleased to host our third annual data predictions power panel with some of our collaborators in
212 | Breaking Analysis | Grading our 2023 enterprise technology predictions
Predictions about the future of enterprise tech are streaming to our inboxes, literally by the thousands. Most are thoughtful and we will review those prior to publishing our 2024 predictions later in January. As is our tradition, we try to make our own predictions more challenging by citing forecasts that are measurable and have either a numeric tied to them
211 |Breaking Analysis | The rise of observability and why it matters to your business
The rapid awareness and adoption of AI has increased concerns around security, governance, compliance and business risk. The digital business imperative to improve customer experience combined with a vastly more complex technology environment, comprising multiple clouds, IoT, containers, app integration and the popularity of open source, are driving need for better observability across technology stacks. But fragmented IT environments, lack
210 | Breaking Analysis | David vs Goliath reimagined – OpenAI’s approach to AI supervision
Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, has people both intrigued and fearful. As a leading researcher in the field, last July, OpenAI introduced the concept of superalignment via a team created to study scientific and technical breakthroughs to guide and ultimately control AI systems that are much more capable than humans. OpenAI refers to this level of AI as superintelligence. Last week,
209 | Breaking Analysis | Beyond separating compute & storage…Journey to the 6th data platform
With George Gilbert We believe today’s so-called modern data stack, as currently envisioned, will be challenged by emerging use cases and AI-infused apps that begin to represent the real world, in real time, at massive data scale. To support these new applications, a change in underlying data and data center architectures will be necessary, particularly for exabyte scale workloads. Today’s
208 | Breaking Analysis | re:Invent ’23 underscores a new simplicity mandate for AWS
With George Gilbert Generative AI has created a new mandate in enterprise tech with significant implications for all companies generally and AWS specifically. Amazon’s powerful playbook based on agility, developer choice, power, scale, reliability and security must now evolve to accommodate simplicity and coherence for mainstream customers. This imperative came into clear focus at AWS re:Invent ’23. AWS continues to
207 | Breaking Analysis | The OpenAI meltdown…Winners & losers in the battle for AI supremacy
Episode 207
Conventional wisdom says Microsoft is the big winner in the recent OpenAI saga. We don’t quite see it that way. Both Microsoft and OpenAI are in a worse position today than they were last Thursday, prior to the firing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the ongoing public drama that ensues. Microsoft and OpenAI had a huge lead in market momentum, AI adoption and feature acceleration and were setting the narrative in AI.
206 | Breaking Analysis | The copilot era takes flight at Microsoft Ignite 2023
Microsoft Ignite 2023 was one part a celebration of yearlong technological innovations, one part announcing the general availability of previously announced products, one part vision, one part ecosystem and four parts copilots everywhere. Copilots promise an historic software-led productivity increase. Perhaps for the first time in industry history we’re seeing huge demand for software coincide with the ability to make
Breaking Analysis: IBM turns the corner with Watson, why 2.0 is a breakthrough opportunity
With Watson 1.0, IBM deviated from the silicon valley mantra, fail fast, as it took nearly a decade for the company to pivot off of its original vision. In our view, a different dynamic is in play today with Watson 2.0 – i.e. watsonx. IBM’s deep research in AI and learnings from its previous mistakes, have positioned the company to
Breaking Analysis: The Gen AI power law – How data diversity will influence adoption
Our research indicates that the adoption of generative AI is occurring across a variety of frameworks with diverse deployment models, data sets and domain specificities. The transformative power of generative AI for industries is colossal, and we are convinced that AI will gravitate to where data lives. The power law of Gen AI, developed by theCUBE Research team, describes
Breaking Analysis: AI revenue riddle – Azure sees gains, when will other cloud titans see the surge?
In 1987, Nobel Prize-winning economist Bob Solow famously observed, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” This proclamation became known as the productivity paradox. Ironically, Solow’s statement preceded the greatest productivity boom since the dawn of the computer age which subsequently came to fruition in the 1990’s. It can be argued that a similar pattern
Breaking Analysis: From hype to reality, the true state of AI adoption
MIT professor and economist Erik Brynjolfsson said recently that he’d be disappointed if AI didn’t lift the current anemic 1.2% productivity growth rate to 3% or even 4%. This would be a good thing for business and government as it could potentially help with the labor shortage, drive earnings growth and increase tax revenues, which would ostensibly help address current
Breaking Analysis: Getting ready for the sixth data platform
In the next 3-5 years, we believe a set of intelligent data apps will emerge requiring a new type of modern data platform to support them. We refer to this as a sixth data platform. In our previous research we’ve used the metaphor “Uber for everyone” to describe this vision; meaning software-based systems that enable a digital representation of a
Breaking Analysis: Lower for longer – Tech spending remains tepid
We’re getting used to the phrase, “higher for longer,” referring to the realization that interest rates are expected to remain elevated for a period of time. This trend is having an inverse effect on enterprise tech spending growth rates. Prior to the Fed’s tightening binge for example, IT decision makers (ITDMs) in aggregate expected annual technology spending to increase by
Breaking Analysis: Cisco Splunk under the microscope, joint customers weigh in
Cisco’s $28B acquisition of Splunk represents a good outcome for Splunk and a strategic growth opportunity for Cisco. Splunk’s painful transition to a cloud and subscription pricing model was largely through the knot hole as seen by its margins and recent P&L performance. But questions remained with respect to its growth prospects and competitiveness in the hot observability space. For
Cisco Splunk under the microscope, joint customers weigh in
Cisco’s $28B acquisition of Splunk represents a good outcome for Splunk and a strategic growth opportunity for Cisco. Splunk’s painful transition to a cloud and subscription pricing model was largely through the knot hole as seen by its margins and recent P&L performance. But questions remained with respect to its growth prospects and competitiveness in the hot observability space. For
Breaking Analysis: Bob Muglia on Uber for everyone…how the future of data apps will evolve
With George Gilbert The future of intelligent data applications: Uber for everyone In June, we put forth our scenario about “Uber for all.” We believe a new breed of data apps is emerging and we used Uber as an example where data about people, places and things is brought together in a data-coherent, realtime system. The premise is that increasingly,
Breaking Analysis: Cloud security powers CrowdStrike momentum, Gen AI is next
George Kurtz is pumped up…and why not? CrowdStrike’s business appears to be on a fast track and entering a new phase of growth, despite the difficult macro and elongated sales cycles. The company’s products are considered best in class, its business is growing steadily and an improved profitability and cash flow outlook had investors excited, at least up until this
Breaking Analysis: Google goes all in on the AI cloud
With George Gilbert and Rob Strechay At Cloud Next, Google showcased its strong leadership position in data and AI. In our view, Google’s messaging, demos and tech-centric narrative have broad appeal for developers and next generation startups. As well, the company’s focus on solutions, contrasts its strategy to the typically disjointed services we’ve seen from AWS over the past decade.
Breaking Analysis: Snowflake has Momentum with AWS and Microsoft… Why Google may not be Next
With George Gilbert Recent earnings prints from Amazon and Snowflake, along with new survey data, have provided additional context on top of the two events that Snowflake and Databricks each hosted last June. Specifically, we believe that the effects of cloud optimization are still being felt but are nearing the end of peak negative impact on cloud companies. Snowflake’s recent
Breaking Analysis: VMware's Future… Navigating Multicloud Complexity and Gen AI Under Broadcom's Wing
With Rob Strechay and Zeus Kerravala The FTC continues to drag its feet on approving Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware. Ironically, in our view, these delays only hurt the very competitive environment the FTC claims to be protecting. The AI era is accelerating at a breakneck pace and the big 3 hyperscale cloud vendors already have a sizable lead on legacy
Breaking Analysis: VMware’s Future… Navigating Multicloud Complexity and Gen AI Under Broadcom’s Wing
With Rob Strechay and Zeus Kerravala The FTC continues to drag its feet on approving Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware. Ironically, in our view, these delays only hurt the very competitive environment the FTC claims to be protecting. The AI era is accelerating at a breakneck pace and the big 3 hyperscale cloud vendors already have a sizable lead on legacy
Breaking Analysis: Cloud vs. On-Prem Showdown – The Future Battlefield for Generative AI Dominance
The data from enterprise customers is clear but conflicted. While 94% of customers say they’re spending more on AI this year, they’re doing so with budget constraints that will steal from other initiatives. As well, the choice of where customers plan to run generative AI is split almost exactly down the middle in terms of public cloud vs. on-premises/edge. Further complicating
Breaking Analysis: Spearing Tech Stocks Beyond the Magnificent Seven
After a tough 2022, the first half of 2023 has shown impressive strength paying off earlier technology bets. For sure investors in the so-called Magnificent Seven, i.e. Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla have been rewarded. But sharp investors have sought alpha beyond these names, riding the wave of secular trends in AI, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure and software
Breaking Analysis: What leaked court docs tell us about AWS, Azure & Google cloud market shares
Recently leaked court documents during the Microsoft Activision hearing require us to revisit our cloud forecasts and market share data. The poorly redacted docs, which have since been removed from public viewing, suggest that Microsoft’s Azure revenue is at least 25% lower than our previous estimates. As a result, we’ve cut and revised our Azure revenue figures which in turn increases
Breaking Analysis: What leaked court docs tell us about AWS, Azure & Google cloud market shares
Recently leaked court documents during the Microsoft Activision hearing require us to revisit our cloud forecasts and market share data. The poorly redacted docs, which have since been removed from public viewing, suggest that Microsoft’s Azure revenue is at least 25% lower than our previous estimates. As a result, we’ve cut and revised our Azure revenue figures which in turn increases
Breaking Analysis: AI gives cyber attackers the advantage – for now
Cloud complexity, tools sprawl and the AI awakening further tip the balance in favor of cyber attackers. Combined with corporate inertia, AI-washing, LLM inconsistency and the pace of change, we believe for now anyway, adversaries have the advantage over defenders. Moreover, macro spending headwinds continue to force organizations to make budget tradeoffs, not the least of which is how to
Breaking Analysis: AI won’t be a winner takes all market
The AI heard ’round the world has put the machine intelligence sector back in the spotlight. But when you squint beyond the press hype, the data shows that artificial intelligence is now the number one sector in terms of relative spending velocity in the ETR taxonomy. Normally market hype leads deployments, but the data suggests that spending activity and market penetration
Breaking Analysis: Connecting the dots on the emerging Databricks tech stack
With George Gilbert, Rob Strechay & Andy Thurai The recent Databricks Data+AI Summit attracted a large audience and, like Snowflake Summit, featured a strong focus on large language models, unification and bringing AI to the data. While customers demand a unified platform to access all their data, Databricks and Snowflake are attacking the problem from different perspectives. In our view,
Breaking Analysis: Connecting the dots on Snowflake’s Data Cloud ambitions
With George Gilbert Over the past several months we’ve produced a number of in-depth analyses laying out our mental model for the future of data platforms. There are two core themes: 1) Data from people, places, things, and activities in the real world drives applications, not people typing into a UI; and 2) Informing and automating decisions means all data
Breaking Analysis: HPE wants to turn supercomputing leadership into gen AI profits
With Rob Strechay & Andy Thurai HPE’s announcement of an AI cloud for large language models highlights a differentiated strategy that the company hopes will lead to sustained momentum in its high performance computing business. While we think HPE has some distinct advantages with respect to its supercomputing IP, the public cloud players have a substantial lead in AI with
Breaking Analysis: Uber’s real-time architecture represents the future of data apps…meet the architects who built it
With George Gilbert Uber has one of the most amazing business models ever created. The company’s mission is underpinned by technology that helps people go anywhere and get anything. The results have been stunning. In just over a decade, Uber has become a firm with more than $30 billion in annual revenue, an annual bookings run rate of $126B and a
Breaking Analysis: Snowflake Summit will reveal the future of data apps…here’s our take
With George Gilbert Our research and analysis points to a new modern data stack that is emerging where apps will be built from a coherent set of data elements that can be composed at scale. Demand for these apps will come from organizations that wish to create a digital twin of their business to represent people, places, things, and the
Breaking Analysis: Snowflake Summit will reveal the future of data apps…here's our take
With George Gilbert Our research and analysis points to a new modern data stack that is emerging where apps will be built from a coherent set of data elements that can be composed at scale. Demand for these apps will come from organizations that wish to create a digital twin of their business to represent people, places, things, and the
Breaking Analysis: Cisco needs to simplify…here’s how
With a nearly $60B revenue run rate, growing at 14% and throwing off over $5B in operating cash last quarter, Cisco has an awesome business. But customers are vocal about the complexity of Cisco’s portfolio and if not addressed head on, the company risks encountering friction beyond just economic headwinds. We believe Cisco’s challenges are most decidedly not product breadth
Breaking Analysis: Cisco needs to simplify…here's how
With a nearly $60B revenue run rate, growing at 14% and throwing off over $5B in operating cash last quarter, Cisco has an awesome business. But customers are vocal about the complexity of Cisco’s portfolio and if not addressed head on, the company risks encountering friction beyond just economic headwinds. We believe Cisco’s challenges are most decidedly not product breadth
Breaking Analysis: GPUs get all the headlines, but the future of AI is real-time data
The era of AI everything continues to excite. But unlike the Internet era, where any company announcing a dotcom anything immediately rose in value, the AI gods appear to be more selective. Nvidia beat its top line whisper number by more than $300M and the company’s value is rapidly approaching one trillion dollars. Marvell narrowly beat expectations this week but
Breaking Analysis: The AI-powered hybrid-multi-super cloud
AI will now add superpowers to every triggering buzzword, hence the title of this week’s post. Look past the buzz and you’ll find substance somewhere. The spring conference season is kicking into high gear, so it’s a time to get serious and extract the signal from the event noise. This week we’ll see Microsoft Build, which will no doubt volley
Breaking Analysis: Searching for gold in enterprise AI
With Andy Thurai, VP & Principal Analyst, Constellation Research The AI gold rush is on. The paths to monetization are seemingly endless but the most obvious converge on making humans more productive or supercharging existing business models like search advertising or subscription licenses. Much of AI adoption in enterprise IT is hidden. Our research shows a very high overlap (around 40-60%) between
Breaking Analysis: Desperately seeking cloud repatriation
While we’ve been skeptical about repatriation as a notable movement, anecdotal evidence suggests that it is happening in certain pockets. Even though we still don’t see cloud repatriation broadly showing in the numbers, certain examples have caught our attention. In addition, the potential impact of AI raises some interesting questions about where infrastructure should be physically located and causes us
Breaking Analysis: Don’t be fooled by slowing cloud growth…Cost optimization is a feature not a bug
The big three US cloud players all announced earnings this past week and, as expected, cloud growth is slowing. But don’t kid yourselves. Hyperscale clouds remain the epicenter of innovation in tech and foundation models like GPT will only serve to harden this fundamental fact. Our data suggests the deceleration in cloud spend is a function of two related factors: 1)
Breaking Analysis: Don't be fooled by slowing cloud growth…Cost optimization is a feature not a bug
The big three US cloud players all announced earnings this past week and, as expected, cloud growth is slowing. But don’t kid yourselves. Hyperscale clouds remain the epicenter of innovation in tech and foundation models like GPT will only serve to harden this fundamental fact. Our data suggests the deceleration in cloud spend is a function of two related factors: 1)
Breaking Analysis: RSA 2023 & the security identity crisis, part 2
The narrative from security vendors is organizations don’t spend enough money on cyber defense. Maybe…but will spending more actually address the problems organizations face? The conventional wisdom is it will help; or at least it can’t hurt, but as we and others have pointed out over the years, a crowded market and mega VC funding have created more tools, more
Breaking Analysis: RSA 2023 & the security identity crisis, part 2
The narrative from security vendors is organizations don’t spend enough money on cyber defense. Maybe…but will spending more actually address the problems organizations face? The conventional wisdom is it will help; or at least it can’t hurt, but as we and others have pointed out over the years, a crowded market and mega VC funding have created more tools, more
Breaking Analysis: RSA 2023 highlights an identity crisis in the age of AI
RSA Conference takes place in the last week of April this year at a time when the industry is at a crossroads. Once hopeful that the security industry would be shielded from macroeconomic conditions, the past year has been painful for many investors with some exceptions – most notably those investors who stuck with Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet. That
Breaking Analysis: Hidden Gems from HPE GreenLake Storage Day
On Tuesday, April 4, HPE invited a number of industry analysts to participate in HPE GreenLake Storage Day. Notably, HPE declared 2023 the year of storage. While the company made several storage-related announcements, perhaps even more interesting was what the event tells us about HPE’s culture, its strategy and the future direction of the company. In this Breaking Analysis we’ll
Breaking Analysis: Semis rebound but enterprise tech spending remains soft
An AI-powered rebound in semiconductor stocks has many investors asking if this is a harbinger of good news for the broader enterprise tech sector. Indeed the SOXX semiconductor ETF is up nearly 30% year to date as of this posting, as are bellwether fab suppliers like Applied Materials and Lam Research. Nvidia is up over 90% YTD and AMD over
Breaking Analysis: Which tech firms are most exposed to the banking crisis?
The financial services industry has always been a leading consumer of tech with big IT budgets. The recent banking crisis will add even more headwinds to the already challenging IT spending climate and several tech firms are exposed. In particular, we believe those companies with a higher than average mix of business in financial sectors, combined with decelerating spend momentum
Breaking Analysis: GPT models are a two-edged sword for automation platforms
The viral awareness and adoption of foundation models like ChatGPT have created both an opportunity and threat to automation platforms generally and RPA point tools specifically. On the one hand, large language models can reduce complexity and accelerate the adoption of enterprise automation platforms. The flip side is software robots are designed to improve human productivity through intelligent automation and
Breaking Analysis: Databricks faces critical strategic decisions…here’s why
With George Gilbert When Apache Spark became a top level project in 2014, and shortly thereafter burst onto the big data scene, it along with the public cloud disrupted the big data market. Databricks cleverly optimized its tech stack for Spark and took advantage of the cloud to deliver a managed service that has become a leading AI and data
Breaking Analysis: MWC 2023 goes beyond consumer & deep into enterprise tech
While never really meant to be a consumer tech event, over time, the rapid ascendancy of smartphones captured much of the agenda at Mobile World Congress, now MWC. And while device manufacturers continue to have a major presence at the show, the maturity of intelligent devices, longer lifecycles and the disaggregation of the network stack have created more interest in
Breaking Analysis: MWC 2023 goes beyond consumer & deep into enterprise tech
While never really meant to be a consumer tech event, over time, the rapid ascendancy of smartphones captured much of the agenda at Mobile World Congress, now MWC. And while device manufacturers continue to have a major presence at the show, the maturity of intelligent devices, longer lifecycles and the disaggregation of the network stack have created more interest in
Breaking Analysis: MWC 2023 highlights telco transformation & the future of business
The world’s leading telcos are often branded as monopolies that lack innovation. Telcos have been great at operational efficiency, connectivity and living off of transmission services. But in a world beyond telephone poles and basic wireless services, how will telcos modernize, become more agile and monetize new opportunities brought about by 5G, private wireless and a spate of new innovations
Breaking Analysis: MWC 2023 highlights telco transformation & the future of business
The world’s leading telcos are often branded as monopolies that lack innovation. Telcos have been great at operational efficiency, connectivity and living off of transmission services. But in a world beyond telephone poles and basic wireless services, how will telcos modernize, become more agile and monetize new opportunities brought about by 5G, private wireless and a spate of new innovations
Breaking Analysis: Google’s point of view on confidential computing
Confidential computing is a technology that aims to enhance data privacy and security by providing encrypted computation on sensitive data in use and isolating data from apps and other host resources in fenced off enclaves. The concept of confidential computing is gaining popularity, especially in the cloud computing space where sensitive data is commonly stored and processed. However, there are
Breaking Analysis: Cloud players sound a cautious tone for 2023
The unraveling of market enthusiasm continued in Q4 of 2022 with the earnings reports from the U.S. hyperscalers now all in. As we said earlier this year, even the cloud is not immune from the macro headwinds and the cracks in the armor we saw from the data we shared last summer are playing out into 2023. For the most
Breaking Analysis: Enterprise technology predictions 2023
With Erik Bradley, ETR Making predictions about the future of enterprise tech is more challenging if you strive to lay down forecasts that are measurable. In other words if you make a prediction, you should be able to look back a year later and say with some degree of certainty whether the prediction came true or not. With evidence to
Breaking Analysis: ChatGPT won’t give OpenAI sustainable first mover advantage
Guest writer: ChatGPT OpenAI, the company, and ChatGPT have taken the world by storm. Microsoft reportedly is investing an additional $10B in the startup. But in our view, while the hype around ChatGPT is justified, we don’t believe OpenAI will lock up the market with its first mover advantage. Rather we believe that success in this market will be directly
Breaking Analysis: ChatGPT won't give OpenAI sustainable first mover advantage
Guest writer: ChatGPT OpenAI, the company, and ChatGPT have taken the world by storm. Microsoft reportedly is investing an additional $10B in the startup. But in our view, while the hype around ChatGPT is justified, we don’t believe OpenAI will lock up the market with its first mover advantage. Rather we believe that success in this market will be directly
Breaking Analysis: Supercloud 2 explores cloud practitioner realities & the future of data apps
Enterprise tech practitioners, like most of us, want to make their lives easier so they can focus on delivering more value to their business. They want to tap best of breed services in the public cloud and at the same time connect their on-prem intellectual property to emerging applications which drive top line revenue and bottom line profits. But creating
Breaking Analysis: CIOs in a holding pattern but ready to strike at data monetization
Recent conversations with IT decision makers show a stark contrast between the period exiting 2021 versus the mindset leaving 2022. CIOs are generally funding new initiatives by pushing off or cutting lower-priority items. While security efforts are still being funded, those that enable business initiatives that generate revenue take priority over cleaning up legacy technical debt. The bottom line is,
Breaking Analysis: AI goes mainstream but ROI remains elusive
With Andy Thurai, VP & Principal Analyst, Constellation Research A decade of big data investments combined with cloud scalability, the rise of more cost effective processing and the introduction of advanced tooling has catapulted machine intelligence to the forefront of technology investments. No matter what job you have, your operation will be AI powered within five years and machines may be
Breaking Analysis: Grading our 2022 enterprise technology predictions
Nailing technology predictions in 2022 was tricky business. Projections on the performance of markets, identifying IPO prospects and making binary forecasts on data, AI, the macro spending climate, along with other related topics in enterprise tech, carried much uncertainty. 2022 was characterized by a seesaw economy where central banks were restructuring their balance sheets, the war in Ukraine fueled inflation,
Breaking Analysis: How Palo Alto Networks became the gold standard of cybersecurity…and what it has to do to stay on top
Palo Alto Networks has earned a reputation as the leader in security. You can measure this in revenue, market cap, execution and, most importantly, conversations with CISOs. The company is on track to double its revenues to nearly $7B in FY23 from FY20. This despite macro headwinds which will likely continue through next year. Palo Alto owes its position to
Breaking Analysis: Cyber firms revert to the mean
While by no means a safe haven, the cybersecurity sector has outpaced the broader tech market by a meaningful margin. That is up until very recently. Cyber security remains the number one technology priority for the c-suite but as we’ve previously reported, the CISO’s budget has constraints; just like other technology investments. Recent trends show that economic headwinds have elongated
Breaking Analysis: re:Invent 2022 marks the next chapter in data & cloud
The ascendency of AWS under the leadership of Andy Jassy was marked by a tsunami of data and corresponding cloud services to leverage data. Those services mainly came in the form of primitives – i.e. basic building blocks that were used by developers to create more sophisticated capabilities. AWS in the 2020s, led by CEO Adam Selipsky, will be marked
Breaking Analysis: re:Invent 2022 marks the next chapter in data & cloud
The ascendency of AWS under the leadership of Andy Jassy was marked by a tsunami of data and corresponding cloud services to leverage data. Those services mainly came in the form of primitives – i.e. basic building blocks that were used by developers to create more sophisticated capabilities. AWS in the 2020s, led by CEO Adam Selipsky, will be marked
Breaking Analysis: Snowflake caught in the storm clouds
A better than expected earnings report in late August got people excited about Snowflake again but the negative sentiment in the market has weighed heavily on virtually all growth tech stocks. Snowflake is no exception. As we’ve stressed many times, the company’s management is on a long term mission to simplify the way organizations use data. Snowflake is tapping into
Breaking Analysis: Cloudflare’s supercloud…What multi-cloud should have been
Over the past decade, Cloudflare has built a global network that has the potential to become the fourth U.S.-based hyperscale-class cloud. In our view, the company is building a durable revenue model with hooks into many important markets. These include the more mature DDoS protection space, but also extend to growth sectors such as zero trust, a serverless platform for
Breaking Analysis: Even the cloud is not immune to the seesaw economy
Have you ever driven on the highway and traffic suddenly slows way down? And then after a little while it picks up again and you’re cruising along thinking…ok that was weird but it’s clear sailing now…only to find out in a bit that that traffic is building up again, forcing you to pump the brakes as the traffic patterns ebb
Breaking Analysis: Survey Says! Takeaways from the latest CIO spending data
The overall technology spending outlook is deteriorating. And yet there are positive signs making things unpredictable. The negative sentiment is of course being driven by macroeconomic factors and earnings forecasts that have been coming down all year while interest rates keep rising. Making matters worse is many people think earnings estimates are still too high. It’s understandable why there’s so
Breaking Analysis: Analyzing Nuggets from Microsoft Ignite & Google Cloud Next
This past week, we saw two of the “Big 3” cloud providers present an update of their respective cloud visions, business progress, announcements and innovations. The content at these events had many overlapping themes including modern cloud infrastructure at global scale, applying advanced machine intelligence, end-to-end data platforms, the future of work, automation and a taste of the metaverse/Web 3.0.
Breaking Analysis: Analyzing Nuggets from Microsoft Ignite & Google Cloud Next
This past week, we saw two of the “Big 3” cloud providers present an update of their respective cloud visions, business progress, announcements and innovations. The content at these events had many overlapping themes including modern cloud infrastructure at global scale, applying advanced machine intelligence, end-to-end data platforms, the future of work, automation and a taste of the metaverse/Web 3.0.
Breaking Analysis: Latest CIO Survey Shows Steady Deceleration in IT Spend
Is the glass half full or half empty? Well, it depends on how you want to look at it. CIOs are tapping the brakes on spending that’s clear. The latest macro survey from ETR quantifies what we already know to be true, that IT spend is decelerating. CIOs and IT buyers forecast that their tech spend will grow by 5.5%
As the tech tide recedes, all sectors feel the pinch
Virtually all tech companies have expressed caution on their respective earnings calls. And why not… the macroeconomic environment is full of uncertainties and there’s no upside to providing aggressive guidance when sellers punish even the slightest miss. Moreover, the spending data confirms the market is softening across the board, so it’s becoming expected that CFOs will guide cautiously. But companies
Breaking Analysis: UiPath is a Rocket Ship Resetting its Course
Like a marathon runner pumped up on adrenaline, UiPath sprinted to the lead in what is surely going to be a long journey toward enabling the modern automated enterprise. In doing so, the company has established itself as a leader in enterprise automation, while at the same time getting out over its skis on critical execution items and disappointing investors
Breaking Analysis: How CrowdStrike Plans to Become a Generational Platform
In just over ten years, CrowdStrike has become a leading independent security firm. It has more than $2B in annual recurring revenue, nearly 60% ARR growth, a roughly $40B market capitalization, very high retention and a path to $5B in revenue by mid-decade. The company has joined Palo Alto Networks as a gold standard pure play cyber firm. It has
Breaking Analysis: We have the data… What private tech companies don’t tell you about their business
The negative sentiment in tech stocks, caused by rising interest rates, less attractive discounted cash flow models and more tepid forward guidance, is easily measured by public market valuations. And while there’s lots of talk about the impact on private companies, their cash runways and 409A valuations, measuring the performance of non-public companies isn’t as easy. IPOs have dried up
Supercloud Definition 3.0
The following definition is the result of direct and indirect feedback from more than fifty technology experts, practitioners, consultants, analysts and business leaders. The methodology used to develop this definition was to put forth a premise about a new architectural framework called supercloud and iterate the definition with community input over a nine month period. The primary input for this
Breaking Analysis: VMware Explore 2022 will mark the start of a supercloud journey
With David Floyer While the precise direction of VMware’s future is unknown, given the planned Broadcom acquisition, one thing is clear; the subject of what Hock E. Tan plans will not be the main focus of the agenda at the upcoming VMware Explore event next week in San Francisco. We believe that despite any uncertainty, VMware will lay out for
Breaking Analysis: What Black Hat 2022 tells us about securing the supercloud
Black Hat 2022 was held in Las Vegas last week, at the same time as theCUBE’s supercloud event. Unlike AWS re:Inforce, where words are carefully chosen to put a positive spin on security, Black Hat exposes all the warts of cybersecurity and openly discusses its hard truths. It’s a conference attended by technical experts who proudly share some of the
Breaking Analysis: Brainstorming supercloud with tech leaders VMware, Snowflake, Databricks and more
At our inaugural Supercloud22 event we sought community input to evolve the concept of a supercloud by iterating on the definition, the salient attributes and examples of what is and is not a supercloud. We asked several technologists including experts from VMware, Snowflake, Databricks, HashiCorp, Confluent, Intuit, Cohesity and others to help test the supercloud definition, operational models, service models
Breaking Analysis: What we hope to learn at Supercloud22
The term supercloud is relatively new, but the concepts behind it have been bubbling for years. Early last decade when NIST put forth its original definition of cloud computing, it said services had to be accessible over a public network…essentially cutting the on-prem crowd out of the conversation. A guy named Chuck Hollis, a CTO at EMC and prolific blogger
Breaking Analysis: How the cloud is changing security defenses in the 2020s
The rapid pace of cloud adoption has changed the way organizations approach cybersecurity. Specifically, the cloud is increasingly becoming the first line of cyber defense. As such, along with communicating to the board and creating a security-aware culture, the CISO must ensure that the shared responsibility model is being applied properly. The DevSecOps team has emerged as the critical link
Breaking Analysis: AWS re:Inforce marks a summer checkpoint on cybersecurity
After a two year hiatus, AWS re:Inforce is back on as an in-person event in Boston next week. Like the all-star break in baseball, re:Inforce gives us an opportunity to evaluate the cybersecurity market overall, the state of cloud security and what AWS is up to in the sector. In this Breaking Analysis, we’ll share our view of what’s changed
Breaking Analysis: Amping it up with Frank Slootman
Organizations have considerable room to improve their performance without making expensive changes to their talent, structure or fundamental business model. You don’t need a slew of consultants to tell you what to do. You already know. What you need is to immediately ratchet up expectations, energy, urgency and intensity. Fight mediocrity every step of the way. Amp it up and
Breaking Analysis: Answering the top 10 questions about supercloud
As we exited the isolation economy last year, supercloud is a term we introduced to describe something new that was happening in the world of cloud. In this Breaking Analysis we address the ten most frequently asked questions we get on supercloud. Today we’ll address the following frequently asked questions: 1. In an industry full of hype and buzzwords, why
Breaking Analysis: Tech valuations could get worse – Here’s why we’re still optimistic
After a two year epic run in tech, 2022 has been an epically bad year in the market. Through yesterday, the Nasdaq composite is down 30%, the S&P 500 is off 21%, the DJIA down 16% and the poor HODLers of BTC have had to endure a nearly 60% decline year to date. But judging by the attendance and enthusiasm at
Breaking Analysis: Tech Spending Intentions are Holding Despite Macro Concerns
Despite fears of inflation, supply chain issues, skyrocketing energy and home prices and global instability caused by the Ukraine crisis, CIOs and IT buyers continue to expect overall spending to increase more than 6% in 2022. While this is lower than our 8% prediction made in January of this year, it remains in line with last year’s roughly 6-7% growth
Breaking Analysis: Snowflake Summit 2022…All About Apps & Monetizing Data
Much of the energy around data innovation that dispersed with the decline of Hadoop’s relevance is coalescing in a new ecosystem spawned by the ascendency of Snowflake’s Data Cloud. What was once seen as a simpler cloud data warehouse and good marketing with Data Cloud, is evolving rapidly with new workloads, a vertical industry focus, data applications, monetization and more. The
Breaking Analysis: Snowflake Summit 2022…All About Apps & Monetizing Data
Much of the energy around data innovation that dispersed with the decline of Hadoop’s relevance is coalescing in a new ecosystem spawned by the ascendency of Snowflake’s Data Cloud. What was once seen as a simpler cloud data warehouse and good marketing with Data Cloud, is evolving rapidly with new workloads, a vertical industry focus, data applications, monetization and more. The
Breaking Analysis: How Snowflake Plans to Make Data Cloud a De Facto Standard
When Frank Slootman took ServiceNow public, many people undervalued the company, positioning it as just a better help desk tool. It turns out the firm actually had a massive TAM expansion opportunity in ITSM, HR, logistics, security, marketing and customer service management. NOW’s stock price followed the stellar execution under Slootman and CFO Mike Scarpelli’s leadership. When they took the
Failing to Upgrade Oracle Database 12c to 19c Exposes Organizations to Ransomware & Cyber-attacks
by, Marc Staimer June, 2022 Research Premise It is a well-known fact that few if any DBA pros enjoy or simply welcome performing any database upgrade. It’s easy to understand why. The process has historically been tedious, time-consuming, and labor-intensive together with downtime and, often, weekend work. The database applications frequently break after the upgrade, requiring more time to
Failing to Upgrade Oracle Database 12c to 19c Exposes Organizations to Ransomware & Cyber-attacks
by, Marc Staimer June, 2022 Research Premise It is a well-known fact that few if any DBA pros enjoy or simply welcome performing any database upgrade. It’s easy to understand why. The process has historically been tedious, time-consuming, and labor-intensive together with downtime and, often, weekend work. The database applications frequently break after the upgrade, requiring more time to
Breaking Analysis: MongoDB Sends Strong Signals Despite Cautious Macro Tones
Earnings season has shown a conflicting mix of signals for software companies. Most firms are expressing caution over macro headwinds citing a combination of Ukraine, inflation, interest rates, EMEA softness, currency, supply chain and general demand for technology. But MongoDB, along with a few other names appeared more sanguine, thanks to a beat in the recent quarter and a cautious but
Breaking Analysis: Broadcom Aims to Tame the VMware Beast
Broadcom’s planned $61B acquisition of VMware will mark yet another new era for the virtualization leader, a mere seven months after finally getting spun out as a fully independent company by Dell. For VMware this means a dramatically different operating model, with financial performance and shareholder value creation as the dominant and perhaps sole agenda. For customers it will mean
Breaking Analysis: Supercloud is Becoming a Thing
Last year we noted in a Breaking Analysis that the cloud ecosystem is innovating beyond the notion of multicloud. We’ve said for years that multicloud is really not a strategy but rather a symptom of multivendor. We used the term supercloud to describe an abstraction layer that resides above and across hyperscale infrastructure, connects on premises workloads and eventually stretches to
Breaking Analysis: Are Cyber Stocks Oversold or Still too Pricey?
Cybersecurity stocks have been sending mixed signals as of late…Mostly negative like much of tech. But some, such as Palo Alto Networks, despite a tough go of it recently, have held up better than most tech names. Others like CrowdStrike had been outperforming broader tech in March but then flipped in May. Okta’s performance was somewhat tracking along with CrowdStrike
Breaking Analysis: What You May Not Know About the Dell-Snowflake Deal
In the pre-cloud era, hardware companies would run benchmarks showing how database and application performance ran best on their systems relative to competitors and previous generation boxes. They would make a big deal out of it and the independent software vendors would do a “golf clap” in the form of a joint press release. It was a game of leapfrog
Breaking Analysis: The Ever-expanding Cloud Continues to Storm the IT Universe
Despite a mixed bag of earnings reports from tech companies, negative GDP growth this past quarter and rising inflation…the cloud continues its relentless expansion on the IT landscape. AWS, Microsoft and Alphabet have all reported earnings and, when you include Alibaba’s cloud in the mix, the big 4 hyperscalers are on track to generate $167B in revenue this year based
Breaking Analysis: Does Hardware (Still) Matter?
The ascendancy of cloud and SaaS has shone new light on how organizations think about, pay for, and value hardware. Once-sought-after skills for practitioners with expertise in hardware troubleshooting, configuring ports, tuning storage arrays and maximizing server utilization have been superseded by demand for cloud architects, DevOps pros and developers with expertise in microservices, container app development and similar skills.
Breaking Analysis: Closing the Technology & Architectural Gaps of Data Mesh
The introduction and socialization of data mesh has caused practitioners, business technology executives and technologists to pause and ask some probing questions about the organization of their data teams, their data strategies, future investments and their current architectural approaches. Some in the technology community have embraced the concept, others have twisted the definition while still others remain oblivious to the
Breaking Analysis: Closing the Technology & Architectural Gaps of Data Mesh
The introduction and socialization of data mesh has caused practitioners, business technology executives and technologists to pause and ask some probing questions about the organization of their data teams, their data strategies, future investments and their current architectural approaches. Some in the technology community have embraced the concept, others have twisted the definition while still others remain oblivious to the
Breaking Analysis: Ripple effects from the Okta breach are worse than you think
The recent security breach of an Okta third party supplier has been widely reported. The criticisms of Okta’s response have been harsh and the impact on Okta’s value has been obvious. Investors shaved about $6B off the company’s market cap during the week the hack was made public. We believe Okta’s claim that the customer technical impact was “near zero,”
Breaking Analysis: New Data Shows C-Suite Taps the Brakes on Tech Spending
Fresh survey data from ETR shows a clear deceleration in spending and a more cautious posture from technology buyers. Just this week we saw sell side downgrades in hardware companies like Dell and HP; and revised guidance from high flier UiPath, citing exposure to Russia, Europe and certain sales execution challenges. But these headlines we think are a canary in
Breaking Analysis: Governments Should Heed the History of Tech Antitrust Policy
There are very few political issues that get bipartisan support these days, never mind consensus spanning geopolitical boundaries. But whether we’re talking across the aisle or over the pond, there seems to be common agreement that the power of big tech firms should be regulated. However the government’s track record when it comes to antitrust aimed at tech is mixed,
Breaking Analysis: Snowflake’s Wild Ride & How Investment Pros See its Future
Snowflake…they love the stock at 400 and hate it at 165. That’s the nature of the business isn’t it? Especially in this crazy cycle over the last two years of lockdowns, free money, exploding demand and now rising inflation and rates. But with the Fed providing some clarity on its actions, the time has come to really look at the
Breaking Analysis: Snowflake’s Wild Ride & How Investment Pros See its Future
Snowflake…they love the stock at 400 and hate it at 165. That’s the nature of the business isn’t it? Especially in this crazy cycle over the last two years of lockdowns, free money, exploding demand and now rising inflation and rates. But with the Fed providing some clarity on its actions, the time has come to really look at the
Breaking Analysis: Pat Gelsinger has the Vision… Intel Just Needs Time, Cash & a Miracle
Intel’s future would be a disaster without Pat Gelsinger. Even with his clear vision, fantastic leadership, deep technical and business acumen and amazing positivity, the company’s future is in serious jeopardy. It’s the same story we’ve been telling for years. Volume is king in the semiconductor industry and Intel no longer is the volume leader. Despite Intel’s efforts to change
Breaking Analysis: Pat Gelsinger has the Vision… Intel Just Needs Time, Cash & a Miracle
Intel’s future would be a disaster without Pat Gelsinger. Even with his clear vision, fantastic leadership, deep technical and business acumen and amazing positivity, the company’s future is in serious jeopardy. It’s the same story we’ve been telling for years. Volume is king in the semiconductor industry and Intel no longer is the volume leader. Despite Intel’s efforts to change
Breaking Analysis: RPA has Become a Transformation Catalyst, Here’s What’s New
In its early days, robotic process automation emerged from rudimentary screen scraping, macros and workflow automation software. Once a script-heavy and limited tool that was almost exclusively used to perform mundane tasks for individual users, RPA has evolved into an enterprise-wide megatrend that puts automation at the center of digital business initiatives. In this Breaking Analysis we present our quarterly
Breaking Analysis: RPA has Become a Transformation Catalyst, Here's What's New
In its early days, robotic process automation emerged from rudimentary screen scraping, macros and workflow automation software. Once a script-heavy and limited tool that was almost exclusively used to perform mundane tasks for individual users, RPA has evolved into an enterprise-wide megatrend that puts automation at the center of digital business initiatives. In this Breaking Analysis we present our quarterly
Breaking Analysis: Cyber Security Stocks Caught in the Storm While Private Firms Keep Rising
The pandemic precipitated what is shaping up to be a permanent shift in cyber security spending patterns. As a direct result of hybrid work, CISOs have invested heavily in endpoint security, identity access management, cloud security and further hardening the network beyond the HQ. Moreover, the need to build security into applications from the start, rather than bolting protection on
Breaking Analysis: The Improbable Rise of Kubernetes to Become the Cloud OS
The rise of Kubernetes came about through a combination of forces that were in hindsight, quite a long shot. AWS’ dominance created momentum for cloud native application development and the need for simpler experiences beyond easily spinning up compute as a service. This wave crashed into innovations from a startup named Docker and a reluctant open source benefactor in Google
Breaking Analysis: What to Expect in Cloud 2022 & Beyond
We’ve often said that the next ten years in cloud computing won’t be like the last ten. Cloud has firmly planted its footprint on the other side of the chasm with the momentum of the entire multi-trillion dollar technology business behind it. Both sellers and buyers are leaning in by adopting cloud technologies and many are building their own value
Breaking Analysis: What to Expect in Cloud 2022 & Beyond
We’ve often said that the next ten years in cloud computing won’t be like the last ten. Cloud has firmly planted its footprint on the other side of the chasm with the momentum of the entire multi-trillion dollar technology business behind it. Both sellers and buyers are leaning in by adopting cloud technologies and many are building their own value
The Compelling Economic Value of Incomparable Database Performance
Research Premise When Oracle announced the latest X9M generation for Exadata Cloud@Customer, Exadata Database Machine and Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance (Recovery Appliance), it radically pushed the database performance envelope to mindboggling heights. Oracle performance specifications are remarkable at ≤19 µs average read latency with more than 27.6 million Oracle Database 8K SQL read IOPS and 7.4 million write IOPS,
Breaking Analysis: Securing Your Snowflake Cloud Data
The challenges of legacy data warehouses have been well documented. Built on rigid infrastructure and managed by specialized gatekeepers, data warehouses of the past were, as one financial customer once told us, “like a snake swallowing a basketball.” Slide from Wikibon’s 2014 Big Data Capital Markets Event: The amount of data ingested into a data warehouse overwhelmed the system. Every
Breaking Analysis: Enterprise Technology Predictions 2022
With Erik Bradley The pandemic has changed the way we think about, and predict the future. As we enter the third year of COVID, we see the significant impact it’s had on technology strategies, spending patterns and company fortunes. Much has changed and while many of these changes were forced reactions to a new abnormal, the trends we’ve seen over
Breaking Analysis: Cyber, Blockchain and NFTs Meet the Metaverse
When Facebook changed its name to Meta last fall it catalyzed a chain reaction throughout the tech industry. Software firms, gaming companies, chip makers, device manufacturers and others have joined in the hype machine. It’s easy to dismiss the metaverse as futuristic hyperbole, but do we really believe that tapping on a smartphone, staring at a screen or two dimensional
Breaking Analysis: Analyst Predictions 2022 — The Future of Data Management
In the 2010s, organizations became keenly aware that data would become the critical ingredient in driving competitive advantage, differentiation and growth. But to this day, putting data to work remains a difficult challenge for many if not most organizations. As the cloud matures it has become a game changer for data practitioners by making cheap storage and massive processing power
Breaking Analysis: Grading our 2021 Technology Predictions
Predictions are all the rage this time of year. On December 29th, 2020, in collaboration with Erik Porter Bradley of Enterprise Technology Research, we put forth our predictions for 2021. The focus of our prognostications included tech spending, remote work, productivity apps, cyber, IPOs, SPACs, M&A, data architecture, cloud, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, AI, containers, automation and semiconductors. We covered a lot
Breaking Analysis: Why Oracle Stock is Surging to an All-time High
On Friday, Oracle announced a meaningful earnings beat and strong forward guidance on the strength of its license business; and slightly better than expected cloud performance. The stock rose sharply on the day and closed up nearly 16% surpassing $280B in market value. Oracle’s success is due largely to its execution of a highly differentiated strategy that has evolved over
Breaking Analysis: Rise of the Supercloud
Last week’s AWS re:Invent underscored the degree to which cloud computing generally and AWS specifically have impacted the technology landscape. From making infrastructure deployment simpler, to accelerating the pace of innovation, to the formation of the world’s most active and vibrant technology ecosystem; it’s clear that AWS has been the number one force for industry change in the last decade.
Breaking Analysis: Break up Amazon? Survey Suggests it May Not be Necessary
Despite the posture that big tech generally and Amazo.com Inc.specifically should be regulated and/or broken apart, recent survey research suggests that Amazon faces many disruption challenges, independent of any government intervention. Specifically, respondents to our survey believe that history will repeat itself in that there’s a 60% probability that Amazon will be disrupted by market forces, including self-inflicted wounds. Amazon
Breaking Analysis: Investors Cash in as Users Fight a Perpetual Cyber War
Despite the more than $100B spent each year fighting cybercrime, when we do an end of year look back and ask, “how did we do” — the answer is invariably the same; worse than last year. Pre-pandemic, the picture was disheartening. But since March of 2020 the situation has only worsened as cybercriminals have become increasingly sophisticated, better funded and
Breaking Analysis: Here’s Why AWS’ and Azure’s Cloud Momentum is Accelerating
Despite all the talk about repatriation, hybrid and multi-cloud opportunities and cloud as an increasingly expensive option for customers…the data continues to show the importance of public cloud to the digital economy. Moreover, the two leaders, AWS and Azure are showing signs of accelerated momentum that point to those two giants pulling away from the pack in the years ahead.
Breaking Analysis: Here's Why AWS' and Azure's Cloud Momentum is Accelerating
Despite all the talk about repatriation, hybrid and multi-cloud opportunities and cloud as an increasingly expensive option for customers…the data continues to show the importance of public cloud to the digital economy. Moreover, the two leaders, AWS and Azure are showing signs of accelerated momentum that point to those two giants pulling away from the pack in the years ahead.
Breaking Analysis: Cutting Through the Noise of Full Stack Observability
Full stack observability is the new buzz phrase. As businesses go digital, customer experience becomes ever more important. Why? Because fickle consumers can switch brands in the blink of an eye – or the click of a mouse. Every vendor wants a piece of the action in this market including companies that have provided traditional monitoring, log analytics, application performance
Breaking Analysis: What Could Disrupt Amazon?
What Could Disrupt Amazon? Weigh in and take the survey. Five publicly traded, US-based companies have market valuations over or just near one trillion dollars. As of Oct. 29th, Apple and Microsoft top the list, each at $2.5T, followed by Alphabet at $2T, Amazon at $1.7T and Facebook (now Meta) at just under $1T – off from its high of $1.1T
Breaking Analysis: Data Mesh…A New Paradigm for Data Management
Data mesh is a new way of thinking about how to use data to create organizational value. Leading edge practitioners are beginning to implement data mesh in earnest. Importantly, data mesh is not a single tool or a rigid reference architecture. Rather it’s an architectural and organizational model that is designed to address the shortcomings of decades of data challenges
Oracle MySQL Database Service with HeatWave & Autopilot Sets the Bar Orders of Magnitude Higher Than AWS, Azure, Google, & Snowflake
Oracle MySQL Database Service with HeatWave & Autopilot Sets the Bar Orders of Magnitude Higher Than AWS, Azure, Google, & Snowflake by, Marc Staimer October 2021 Research Premises Less than a year after Oracle completely shook up the MySQL cloud database service market with its introduction of the MySQL HeatWave integrated in-memory
Oracle MySQL Database Service with HeatWave & Autopilot Sets the Bar Orders of Magnitude Higher Than AWS, Azure, Google, & Snowflake
Oracle MySQL Database Service with HeatWave & Autopilot Sets the Bar Orders of Magnitude Higher Than AWS, Azure, Google, & Snowflake by, Marc Staimer October 2021 Research Premises Less than a year after Oracle completely shook up the MySQL cloud database service market with its introduction of the MySQL HeatWave integrated in-memory
Breaking Analysis: The Hybrid Cloud Tug-of-War Gets Real
It looks like Hybrid cloud is finally here. We’ve seen a decade of posturing, marketecture, slideware and narrow examples but there’s little question that the definition of cloud is expanding to include on-premises workloads in hybrid models. Depending on which numbers you choose to represent IT spending, public cloud accounts for less than 5% of the total pie. As such
Breaking Analysis: The Future of Semiconductors With Futurum’s Daniel Newman
Semiconductors are at the heart of technology innovation. For decades, technology improvements have marched to the cadence of silicon advancements in performance, cost, power and packaging. In the past ten years, the dynamics of the semiconductor industry have changed dramatically. Soaring factory costs, device volume explosions, fabless chip companies, greater programmability, compressed time to tape out, more software content, the
Breaking Analysis: The Future of Semiconductors With Futurum's Daniel Newman
Semiconductors are at the heart of technology innovation. For decades, technology improvements have marched to the cadence of silicon advancements in performance, cost, power and packaging. In the past ten years, the dynamics of the semiconductor industry have changed dramatically. Soaring factory costs, device volume explosions, fabless chip companies, greater programmability, compressed time to tape out, more software content, the
Breaking Analysis: UiPath…Fast Forward to Enterprise Automation
UiPath has always been an unconventional company. It started with humble beginnings as essentially a software development shop. It then caught lightning in a bottle with its computer vision technology and simplification mantra…creating easy to deploy software robots for bespoke departments to automate mundane tasks. The story is well known…the company grew rapidly and was able to go public earlier
CIOs Signal Hybrid Work Will Power Spending Through 2022
Throughout the pre-vaccine COVID era, IT buyers indicated budget constraints would squeeze 2020 spending by roughly 5% relative to 2019 levels. But the forced March to digital combined with increased cyber threats for remote workers, created a modernization mandate that powered Q4 spending last year. This momentum has carried through to 2021. While COVID variants have delayed return to work
Breaking Analysis: How Cisco can win cloud’s ‘Game of Thrones’
Cisco is a company at the crossroads. It is transitioning from a high margin hardware business to a software subscription-based model through both organic moves and targeted acquisitions. It’s doing so in the context of massive macro shifts to digital and the cloud. We believe Cisco’s dominant position in networking, combined with a large market opportunity and a strong track
Breaking Analysis: How Cisco can win cloud's 'Game of Thrones'
Cisco is a company at the crossroads. It is transitioning from a high margin hardware business to a software subscription-based model through both organic moves and targeted acquisitions. It’s doing so in the context of massive macro shifts to digital and the cloud. We believe Cisco’s dominant position in networking, combined with a large market opportunity and a strong track
Breaking Analysis: The Case for Buy the Dip on Coupa, Snowflake & Zscaler
Buy the dip has been an effective strategy since the market bottomed in early March last year. The approach has been especially successful in tech and even more so for those tech names that: 1) were well-positioned for the forced march to digital – i.e. remote work, online commerce, data-centric platforms and certain cybersecurity plays; and 2) already had the
Breaking Analysis: The Case for Buy the Dip on Coupa, Snowflake & Zscaler
Buy the dip has been an effective strategy since the market bottomed in early March last year. The approach has been especially successful in tech and even more so for those tech names that: 1) were well-positioned for the forced march to digital – i.e. remote work, online commerce, data-centric platforms and certain cybersecurity plays; and 2) already had the
Breaking Analysis: Thinking Outside the Box…AWS Signals a New Era for Storage
By our estimates, AWS will generate around $9B in storage revenue this year and is now the second largest supplier of enterprise storage behind Dell. We believe AWS storage revenue will surpass $11B in 2022 and continue to outpace on-prem storage growth by more than 1,000 basis points for the next three to four years. At its third annual Storage
Breaking Analysis: Tech Earnings Signal a Continued Booming Market
Tech earnings reports from key enterprise software and infrastructure players this week, underscore that IT spending remains robust in the post isolation economy. This is especially true for those companies that have figured out a coherent and compelling cloud strategy. Despite COVID variant uncertainties and hardware component shortages, most leading tech names outperformed expectations. That said, investors weren’t in the
Breaking Analysis: Can anyone tame the identity access beast? Okta aims to try…
Chief information security officers cite trust as the most important value attribute they can deliver to their organizations. And when it comes to security, identity is the new attack surface. As such, identity and access management continue to be the top priority among technology decision makers. It also happens to be one of the most challenging and complicated areas of
Breaking Analysis: Rethinking Data Protection in the 2020s
Techniques to protect sensitive data have evolved over thousands of years, literally. The pace of modern data protection is rapidly accelerating and presents both opportunities and threats for organizations. In particular, the amount of data stored in the cloud, combined with hybrid work models, the clear and present threat of cyber crime, regulatory edicts and ever-expanding edge use cases should
Breaking Analysis: Cyber, Cloud, Hybrid Work & Data Drive 8% IT Budget Growth in 2021
With Erik Bradley Every CEO is figuring out the right balance for new hybrid business models. Regardless of the chosen approach, which will vary, technology executives understand they must accelerate digital and build resilience as well as optionality into their platforms. This is driving a dramatic shift in IT investments at the macro level as we expect total spending to
Breaking Analysis: Cyber, Cloud, Hybrid Work & Data Drive 8% IT Budget Growth in 2021
With Erik Bradley Every CEO is figuring out the right balance for new hybrid business models. Regardless of the chosen approach, which will vary, technology executives understand they must accelerate digital and build resilience as well as optionality into their platforms. This is driving a dramatic shift in IT investments at the macro level as we expect total spending to
Breaking Analysis: ServiceNow is on a Collision Course With Salesforce.com…Here’s Why
ServiceNow is a company that investors love to love. But there’s caution in the investor community right now as confusion about transitory inflation and higher interest rates looms. ServiceNow also suffers from perfection syndrome and elevated expectations. The company has seen that the slightest misstep, or not beating earnings by a wide enough margin, can cause mini freakouts from the
Breaking Analysis: ServiceNow is on a Collision Course With Salesforce.com…Here's Why
ServiceNow is a company that investors love to love. But there’s caution in the investor community right now as confusion about transitory inflation and higher interest rates looms. ServiceNow also suffers from perfection syndrome and elevated expectations. The company has seen that the slightest misstep, or not beating earnings by a wide enough margin, can cause mini freakouts from the
Breaking Analysis: Survey Data Shows no Slowdown in AWS & Cloud Momentum
Despite all the chatter about cloud repatriation and the exorbitant cost of cloud computing, customer spending momentum continues to accelerate in the post isolation economy. If the pandemic was good for the cloud it seems that the benefits of cloud migration remain lasting in the late stages of COVID. And we believe this stickiness will continue. We expect IaaS revenue
Breaking Analysis: Survey Data Shows no Slowdown in AWS & Cloud Momentum
Despite all the chatter about cloud repatriation and the exorbitant cost of cloud computing, customer spending momentum continues to accelerate in the post isolation economy. If the pandemic was good for the cloud it seems that the benefits of cloud migration remain lasting in the late stages of COVID. And we believe this stickiness will continue. We expect IaaS revenue
Breaking Analysis: How JP Morgan is Implementing a Data Mesh on the AWS Cloud
A new era of data is upon us. The technology industry generally and the data business specifically are in a state of transition. Even our language reflects that. For example, we rarely use the phrase “Big Data” anymore. Rather we talk about digital transformation or data-driven companies. Many have finally come to the realization that data is not the new
Breaking Analysis: Mobile World Congress Highlights Telco Transformation
Mobile World Congress is on for 2021. theCUBE will be there and we’ll let you know if it’s alive and well. As we approach a delayed MWC it’s appropriate to reflect on the state of the telecoms industry. Let’s face it – the telcos have done a great job of keeping us all connected during the pandemic. Supporting the work
Breaking Analysis: AWS’ Secret Weapon is Revolutionizing Computing
Contributing Author: David Floyer AWS is pointing the way to a revolution in system architecture. Much in the same way that AWS defined the cloud operating model last decade, we believe it is once again leading in future systems. The secret sauce underpinning these innovations is specialized designs that break the stranglehold of inefficient and bloated centralized processing architectures. We
Breaking Analysis: AWS' Secret Weapon is Revolutionizing Computing
Contributing Author: David Floyer AWS is pointing the way to a revolution in system architecture. Much in the same way that AWS defined the cloud operating model last decade, we believe it is once again leading in future systems. The secret sauce underpinning these innovations is specialized designs that break the stranglehold of inefficient and bloated centralized processing architectures. We
Breaking Analysis: Learnings From the Hottest Startups in Cybersecurity & IT Infrastructure
As you well know by now, the cloud is about shifting IT labor to more strategic initiatives. Or as Andy Jassy posited at the first AWS re:Invent conference in 2012, removing the undifferentiated heavy lifting associated with deploying and managing IT infrastructure. Cloud is also about changing the operating model and rapidly scaling a business. Often overlooked with cloud, however,
Breaking Analysis: Learnings From the Hottest Startups in Cybersecurity & IT Infrastructure
As you well know by now, the cloud is about shifting IT labor to more strategic initiatives. Or as Andy Jassy posited at the first AWS re:Invent conference in 2012, removing the undifferentiated heavy lifting associated with deploying and managing IT infrastructure. Cloud is also about changing the operating model and rapidly scaling a business. Often overlooked with cloud, however,
Breaking Analysis: Chasing Snowflakes in Database Boomtown
Contributing Author: David Floyer Database is the heart of enterprise computing. The market is both growing rapidly and evolving. Major forces transforming the space include cloud and data – of course – but also new workloads, advanced memory and IO capabilities, new processor types, a massive push toward simplicity, new data sharing and governance models; and a spate of venture
Breaking Analysis: How Nvidia Plans to Own the Datacenter With AI
Contributing Author: David Floyer Nvidia wants to completely transform enterprise computing by making datacenters run 10X faster at 1/10th the cost. Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, is crafting a strategy to re-architect today’s on-prem data centers, public clouds and edge computing installations with a vision that leverages the company’s strong position in AI architectures. The keys to this end-to-end strategy include
Breaking Analysis: Why Your Online Assets Aren’t Safe – Is Cloud the Problem or the Solution?
The convenience of online access to bank accounts, payment apps, crypto exchanges and other transaction systems has created enormous risks, which the vast majority of individuals either choose to ignore or simply don’t understand. The Internet has become the new private network and unfortunately, it’s not so private. Open APIs, scripts, spoofing, insider crime, sloppy security hygiene by users and
Breaking Analysis: Why Your Online Assets Aren't Safe – Is Cloud the Problem or the Solution?
The convenience of online access to bank accounts, payment apps, crypto exchanges and other transaction systems has created enormous risks, which the vast majority of individuals either choose to ignore or simply don’t understand. The Internet has become the new private network and unfortunately, it’s not so private. Open APIs, scripts, spoofing, insider crime, sloppy security hygiene by users and
Breaking Analysis: Debunking the Cloud Repatriation Myth
Cloud repatriation is a term often used by technology companies that don’t operate a public cloud. The marketing narrative most typically implies that customers have moved work to the public cloud and, for a variety of reasons – expense, performance, security, etc. – are disillusioned with the cloud and as a result are “repatriating” workloads back to their safe, comfy
Breaking Analysis: Chaos Means Cash for Criminals & Cyber Companies
The pandemic not only accelerated a shift to digital, it highlighted a rush of cyber criminal sophistication, collaboration and chaotic responses from virtually every major company on the planet. The SolarWinds hack exposed digital supply chain weaknesses and appears to have accelerated so-called island hopping techniques that are exceedingly difficult to detect. Moreover, the will and aggressiveness of well-organized cyber
Breaking Analysis: Chaos Means Cash for Criminals & Cyber Companies
The pandemic not only accelerated a shift to digital, it highlighted a rush of cyber criminal sophistication, collaboration and chaotic responses from virtually every major company on the planet. The SolarWinds hack exposed digital supply chain weaknesses and appears to have accelerated so-called island hopping techniques that are exceedingly difficult to detect. Moreover, the will and aggressiveness of well-organized cyber
Breaking Analysis: Why Apple Could Hold the Key to Intel’s Future
Contributing Author: David Floyer The latest Arm Neoverse announcement further cements our opinion that its architecture, business model and ecosystem execution are defining a new era of computing; and leaving Intel in its dust. We believe the company and its partners have at least a two year lead on Intel and are currently in a far better position to capitalize
Breaking Analysis: Why Apple Could Hold the Key to Intel's Future
Contributing Author: David Floyer The latest Arm Neoverse announcement further cements our opinion that its architecture, business model and ecosystem execution are defining a new era of computing; and leaving Intel in its dust. We believe the company and its partners have at least a two year lead on Intel and are currently in a far better position to capitalize
Breaking Analysis: A Digital Skills Gap Signals Rebound in IT Services Spending
Contributing Author: Erik Porter Bradley Recent survey data from ETR shows that enterprise tech spending is tracking with projected U.S. GDP growth at 6% to 7% this year. Many markers continue to point the way to a strong recovery including hiring trends and the loosening of frozen IT project budgets. However, skills shortages are blocking progress at some companies, which
Breaking Analysis: UiPath’s Unconventional $PATH to IPO
UiPath is going public this coming week and will be the next hot software company to IPO. It has had a long strange trip to IPO. How so you ask? Well, the company was started in 2005 but its culture is akin to a frenetic startup. The firm shunned conventions and instead of focusing on a narrow geographic area to
Breaking Analysis: UiPath's Unconventional $PATH to IPO
UiPath is going public this coming week and will be the next hot software company to IPO. It has had a long strange trip to IPO. How so you ask? Well, the company was started in 2005 but its culture is akin to a frenetic startup. The firm shunned conventions and instead of focusing on a narrow geographic area to
Breaking Analysis: Moore’s Law is Not Dead & AI is Ready to Explode
Contributing Author: David Floyer Moore’s Law is dead right? Think again. While the historical annual CPU performance improvement of ~40% is slowing, the combination of CPUs packaged with alternative processors is improving at a rate of more than 100% per annum. These unprecedented and massive improvements in processing power combined with data and AI will completely change the way we
Breaking Analysis: Moore's Law is Not Dead & AI is Ready to Explode
Contributing Author: David Floyer Moore’s Law is dead right? Think again. While the historical annual CPU performance improvement of ~40% is slowing, the combination of CPUs packaged with alternative processors is improving at a rate of more than 100% per annum. These unprecedented and massive improvements in processing power combined with data and AI will completely change the way we
Breaking Analysis: Arm Lays Down the Gauntlet at Intel’s Feet
Contributing Author: David Floyer Exactly one week after Pat Gelsinger unveiled plans to reinvent Intel, Arm announced version 9 of its architecture and put forth its vision for the next decade. We believe Arm’s direction is strong and compelling as it combines an end-to-end capability, from edge to cloud to the datacenter to the home and everything in between. Moreover it
Breaking Analysis: Arm Lays Down the Gauntlet at Intel's Feet
Contributing Author: David Floyer Exactly one week after Pat Gelsinger unveiled plans to reinvent Intel, Arm announced version 9 of its architecture and put forth its vision for the next decade. We believe Arm’s direction is strong and compelling as it combines an end-to-end capability, from edge to cloud to the datacenter to the home and everything in between. Moreover it
Breaking Analysis: Why Intel is Too Strategic to Fail
Contributing Author: David Floyer Intel’s big announcement this week underscores the threat that the United States faces from China. The U.S. needs to lead in semiconductor design and manufacturing; and that lead is slipping because Intel has been fumbling the ball over the past several years. A mere two months into the job, new CEO Pat Gelsinger wasted no time
Breaking Analysis: Tech Spending Powers the Roaring 2020s as Cloud Leads the Charge
In the year 2020, it was good to be in tech. It was even better to be in the cloud as organizations had to rely on remote cloud services to keep things running. We believe tech spending will increase 7-8% in 2021 but we don’t expect investments in cloud computing to attenuate as workers head back to the office. This
Breaking Analysis: NFTs, Crypto Madness & Enterprise Blockchain
When a piece of digital art sells for $69.3M, more than has ever been paid for works by Paul Gauguin or Salvador Dali, making its creator the third most expensive living artist in the world, one can’t help but take notice and ask: “What is going on?” The latest craze around NFTs may feel a bit “bubblicious,” but it’s yet
Breaking Analysis: Satya Nadella Lays out a Vision for Microsoft at Ignite 2021…What it Means for the Company & the Cloud
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sees a different future for cloud computing over the coming decade. In his Microsoft Ignite keynote, he laid out the five attributes that will define the cloud in the next ten years. His vision is a cloud platform that is decentralized, ubiquitous, intelligent, sensing and trusted. One that actually titillates the senses and levels the playing
Breaking Analysis: Satya Nadella Lays out a Vision for Microsoft at Ignite 2021…What it Means for the Company & the Cloud
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sees a different future for cloud computing over the coming decade. In his Microsoft Ignite keynote, he laid out the five attributes that will define the cloud in the next ten years. His vision is a cloud platform that is decentralized, ubiquitous, intelligent, sensing and trusted. One that actually titillates the senses and levels the playing
Breaking Analysis: SaaS Attack, On-prem Survival & Re-defining Cloud
SaaS companies have been some of the strongest performers during this COVID era. They finally took a bit of a breather this month but remain generally well-positioned for the next several years with their predictable revenue models and cloud-based offerings. Meanwhile, the demise of on-prem legacy players from COVID shock seems to have been overstated, in part because of the
Breaking Analysis: SaaS Attack, On-prem Survival & Re-defining Cloud
SaaS companies have been some of the strongest performers during this COVID era. They finally took a bit of a breather this month but remain generally well-positioned for the next several years with their predictable revenue models and cloud-based offerings. Meanwhile, the demise of on-prem legacy players from COVID shock seems to have been overstated, in part because of the
Breaking Analysis: RPA Remains on a Hot Streak as UiPath Blazes the Trail
UiPath’s recent $750M raise at a $35B valuation underscores investor enthusiasm for robotic process automation. And why not? The pandemic has fueled a surge in automation initiatives as organizations re-tool their operations and prepare for a post-COVID environment. But reasonable people are asking – “is this market getting overheated?” In this Breaking Analysis we’ll explore the current trends in the
Breaking Analysis: How the SolarWinds Hack & COVID are Changing CISO Spending Patterns
Top security pros say that the SolarWinds hack and the pandemic have accelerated a change in their cyber security spending patterns. Not only must CISOs secure an increasingly distributed workforce, but they now must also be wary of software code coming from reputable vendors, including the very patches designed to protect them against cyber attacks. Organizations are increasingly prioritizing zero
Breaking Analysis: How the SolarWinds Hack & COVID are Changing CISO Spending Patterns
Top security pros say that the SolarWinds hack and the pandemic have accelerated a change in their cyber security spending patterns. Not only must CISOs secure an increasingly distributed workforce, but they now must also be wary of software code coming from reputable vendors, including the very patches designed to protect them against cyber attacks. Organizations are increasingly prioritizing zero
Breaking Analysis: Big 4 Cloud Revenue Poised to Surpass $115B in 2021
We’re seeing the emergence of four, and only four, A players in the IaaS/PaaS hyperscale cloud services space. AWS, Azure, Alibaba and Alphabet have the resources, momentum and stamina to outperform all others… indefinitely. Combined, we believe these companies will generate more than $115B in 2021 IaaS and PaaS revenue. That’s a substantial chunk of market opportunity that is growing
Breaking Analysis: Tech Spending Roars Back in 2021
Following a 4-5% contraction in 2020, we expect a 6-7% increase in 2021 technology spending. Key drivers are: 1) Continued fine-tuning of and investment in digital strategies– e.g. cloud, security, AI, data, and automation; 2) Application modernization initiatives (e.g. containers); 3) Steady remote workforce infrastructure investment; and 4) Pent up demand for data center infrastructure (e.g. servers, storage & networking on-prem).
Breaking Analysis: Best of theCUBE on Cloud
Best of theCUBE on Cloud The next ten years of cloud will differ dramatically from the past decade. The early days of cloud deployed virtualization of standard off-the-shelf components to scale out and build a large distributed system. The coming decade will see a much more data-centric, real time, intelligent, hyper-decentralized cloud that will comprise on-prem, hybrid, cross cloud and
Breaking Analysis: Pat Gelsinger Must Channel Andy Grove and Recreate Intel
Much of the discussion around Intel’s current challenges is focused on manufacturing issues and its ongoing market share skirmish with AMD. Of course that’s understandable. But the core issue Intel faces is it has lost the volume game, forever. When it comes to silicon, volume is king. As such, incoming CEO Pat Gelsinger faces some difficult decisions. On the one
Breaking Analysis: 2021 Enterprise Technology Predictions
In our 2020 Enterprise Technology Predictions post we said that organizations would slow down experimentation this year and begin to operationalize their digital transformation PoCs. We also said that, based on spending data, cyber security companies like Crowdstrike and Okta were poised to rise above the rest in 2020 along with an accelerated pace of cloud migrations. And we said
Breaking Analysis: Cloud Momentum & CIO Optimism Point to a 4% Rise in 2021 Tech Spending
New data suggests that tech spending will be higher than we previously thought for 2021. COVID learnings, a faster than expected vaccine rollout, productivity gains and broad-based cloud leverage, lead us to raise our outlook for next year. We now expect a 3-5% increase in 2021 technology spending, roughly double our previously forecasted growth rate. In this Breaking Analysis we’ll
Breaking Analysis: Cloud Momentum & CIO Optimism Point to a 4% Rise in 2021 Tech Spending
New data suggests that tech spending will be higher than we previously thought for 2021. COVID learnings, a faster than expected vaccine rollout, productivity gains and broad-based cloud leverage, lead us to raise our outlook for next year. We now expect a 3-5% increase in 2021 technology spending, roughly double our previously forecasted growth rate. In this Breaking Analysis we’ll
Breaking Analysis: Legacy Players Feel the Heat as AWS Storage Revenue Approaches $10B
Legacy Players Feel the Heat as AWS Storage Revenue Approaches $10B. The storage business as we know it has changed forever. On premises, external storage was once a virtually unlimited and untapped bastion of innovation, VC funding and lucrative exits. Today it is a shadow of its former self and the glory days of storage in the data center will
Breaking Analysis: Cloud, Containers, AI & RPA Support Strong Rebound in 2021
Spending data shows that cloud, containers, AI & automation initiatives are setting the stage for a strong rebound in tech spending next year. The year 2020 has acted as a hasty but effective proof of concept for how to digitally transform businesses. CIOs report that generally, technology spending levels have either rebounded or will do so in the near future,
Breaking Analysis: Cloud, Containers, AI & RPA Support Strong Rebound in 2021
Spending data shows that cloud, containers, AI & automation initiatives are setting the stage for a strong rebound in tech spending next year. The year 2020 has acted as a hasty but effective proof of concept for how to digitally transform businesses. CIOs report that generally, technology spending levels have either rebounded or will do so in the near future,
Breaking Analysis: Cloud 2030…From IT, to Business Transformation
Cloud computing has been the single most transformative force in IT over the last decade – what will Cloud 2030 look like? As we enter the 2020s, we believe that cloud will become the underpinning of a ubiquitous, intelligent and autonomous resource that will disrupt the operational stacks of virtually every company in all industries. This Breaking Analysis is a
Breaking Analysis: Sparked by COVID, CISOs see Permanent Shift in Cyber Strategies
CISOs see Permanent Shifts in Cyber Strategies due to COVID & Remote Work As we’ve reported extensively, the pandemic has affected cyber security markets perhaps more than any other. Remote work has caused CISOs to shift spending priorities toward identity access management, endpoint and cloud security. COVID has been a benefactor for nextgen security companies that participate in these sectors.
Breaking Analysis: How Snowflake Plans to Change a Flawed Data Warehouse Model
Fixing A Flawed Data Warehouse Model Snowflake will not grow into its valuation by simply stealing share from the on-prem data warehouse vendors. Even if it got 100% of the data warehouse business it wouldn’t come close to justifying its market cap. Rather Snowflake must create an entirely new market based on completely changing the way organizations think about monetizing
Breaking Analysis: Cloud Revenue Accelerates in the COVID Era
Despite softer tech spending, cloud revenue shows continued momentum into 2021. As we watch an historic election unfold before our eyes, we look back at the early days of this millennium and the memorable presidential race of 2000. That decade was defined by 9/11, which permanently re-shaped our thinking. We exited the ’00s at the tail end of a massive
Breaking Analysis: Azure Cloud Powers Microsoft’s Future
Azure cloud is the linchpin of Microsoft’s go forward innovation strategy. As we reported last week, we believe that in the next decade, changes in public policy will restrict the way in which big Internet companies are able to appropriate user data. Big tech came under fire again this week with the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google going toe
Breaking Analysis: Azure Cloud Powers Microsoft's Future
Azure cloud is the linchpin of Microsoft’s go forward innovation strategy. As we reported last week, we believe that in the next decade, changes in public policy will restrict the way in which big Internet companies are able to appropriate user data. Big tech came under fire again this week with the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google going toe
Breaking Analysis: Google’s Antitrust Play…Get Your Head out of Your Ads
Google’s Antitrust Play Should be a Massive Pivot… Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice, along with Attorneys General from 11 states, filed a long-expected antitrust lawsuit accusing Google of being a monopoly gatekeeper for the Internet. The suit draws on section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which makes it illegal to monopolize trade or commerce. Of course
Breaking Analysis: Google's Antitrust Play…Get Your Head out of Your Ads
Google’s Antitrust Play Should be a Massive Pivot… Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice, along with Attorneys General from 11 states, filed a long-expected antitrust lawsuit accusing Google of being a monopoly gatekeeper for the Internet. The suit draws on section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which makes it illegal to monopolize trade or commerce. Of course
Breaking Analysis: CIOs Report a Cautious Outlook for Q4 Tech Spending
As we reported in our last update, tech spending overall continues to be significantly muted relative to 2019– CIOs Report a Cautious Outlook for Q4 Tech Spending. We currently project a 4 to 5 percent decline in 2020 spending and a tepid 2 percent increase in 2021. Nonetheless, there continue to be some sector and vendor bright spots in an
Breaking Analysis: CIOs Report Slow Thaw of Spending Freezes – Expect 2% Growth in 2021
CIOs Report Slow Thaw of Spending Freezes. In the most recent September ETR spending survey, CIOs expect a slight sequential improvement in Q4 spending relative to Q3– but still down 4% from Q4 2019. So the picture is still not pretty but not bleak either. Firms are adjusting to the “new abnormal” and are taking positive actions that can be
Breaking Analysis: Application Performance Management…From Tribal Knowledge to Digital Dashboard
Application performance management (APM) has been around since the days of the mainframe. As systems architectures became more complex, the technology evolved to accommodate client server, Web tier architectures, mobile and now cloud-based systems. A spate of new vendors emerged to solve the sticky problems associated with ensuring consistent and predictable user experiences. The market has grown and is approaching
Breaking Analysis: Snowflake’s IPO…Here’s What’s Next
Snowflake’s IPO has eyes popping and the industry buzzing. We’ve had several dozen inbound PR from firms trying to hook us, offering perspectives on the Snowflake IPO so they can pitch us on their product. People are pumped up…and why not? An event like this doesn’t happen that often. In week’s Wikibon CUBE Insights, Powered by ETR, we’ll give you
Breaking Analysis: Snowflake's IPO…Here's What's Next
Snowflake’s IPO has eyes popping and the industry buzzing. We’ve had several dozen inbound PR from firms trying to hook us, offering perspectives on the Snowflake IPO so they can pitch us on their product. People are pumped up…and why not? An event like this doesn’t happen that often. In week’s Wikibon CUBE Insights, Powered by ETR, we’ll give you
Breaking Analysis: Market Recoil Puts Tech Investors at a Fork in the Road
Stock market recoil pulls the rug out from many tech investors. Leaving them wondering what’s next? The steepest drop in the stock market since June 11th flipped the narrative and sent investors scrambling. Tech got hammered after a 2-month run and people are asking questions. Is this a bubble popping or a healthy correction? Are we now going to see
Breaking Analysis: Enterprise Software Download in the Summer of COVID
Enterprise software markets are dominated by mega cap companies like SAP, Oracle, Salesforce and Microsoft. SaaS leaders like ServiceNow and Workday have solidified their market positions by to a great extent, replicating the Salesforce model in their respective domains. There is still room for innovative upstarts that are introducing new cloud native services and value pricing models but the traditional
Breaking Analysis: Tectonic Shifts Power Cloud, IAM & Endpoint Security
Cloud, IAM & Endpoint Security are rocking the markets. Over the past 150 days, everyone in the technology industry has become an expert on COVID in some way shape or form. We have all lived the reality that COVID-19 has accelerated by at least 2 years, many trends that were in motion well before the virus hit. The cyber security
Breaking Analysis: Tectonic Shifts Power Cloud, IAM & Endpoint Security
Cloud, IAM & Endpoint Security are rocking the markets. Over the past 150 days, everyone in the technology industry has become an expert on COVID in some way shape or form. We have all lived the reality that COVID-19 has accelerated by at least 2 years, many trends that were in motion well before the virus hit. The cyber security
Breaking Analysis: Cloud Remains Strong but not Immune to COVID
Cloud Remains Strong but not Immune to COVID. While cloud computing is generally seen as a bright spot in tech spending, the sector is not immune from the effects of COVID-19. It’s better to be cloud than not cloud, no question, but recent survey data shows that the V-shaped recovery in the stock market looks much more like a square
Breaking Analysis: RPA Competitors Eye Deeper Business Integration Agenda
RPA competitors vie for a bigger prize… RPA Leads all Sectors in Spending Intentions Robotic process automation (RPA) solutions remain one of the most attractive investments for business technology buyers. This despite our overall 2020 tech spending forecasts, which remain at the depressed levels of -4% to -5% for the year. Relative to previous surveys, we do see some softness
Breaking Analysis: Five Questions Investors are Asking about Snowflake’s IPO
According to reports, Snowflake recently filed a confidential IPO document with the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission. Sources suggest that Snowflake’s value could be pegged as high as $20B. In this week’s Breaking Analysis we address five questions that we’ve been getting from theCUBE, Wikibon and ETR communities. ETR’s Erik Bradley provides data and insights from customer roundtable discussions and
Breaking Analysis: Five Questions Investors are Asking about Snowflake's IPO
According to reports, Snowflake recently filed a confidential IPO document with the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission. Sources suggest that Snowflake’s value could be pegged as high as $20B. In this week’s Breaking Analysis we address five questions that we’ve been getting from theCUBE, Wikibon and ETR communities. ETR’s Erik Bradley provides data and insights from customer roundtable discussions and
Oracle Cloud@Customer Brings Full Cloud Experience On-Premises
Oracle Autonomous Database on Exadata Cloud@Customer and Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer is a radical approach at bringing cloud services on-premises. Our initial take is those substantial customers running mission-critical Oracle applications can cut costs by up to 40% with this offering. This strategy is the most ambitious attempt we’ve seen in the industry to bring a full public cloud experience to organizations’ premises.
Global 2000 customers running mission-critical large-scale applications on Oracle Databases should assume that they will migrate to one of Oracle’s new Cloud@Custmer offerings. Wikibon recommends that CxOs begin engaging with Oracle to conduct their TCO/ROI/IRR analyses now.
Breaking Analysis: Google Cloud Rides the Wave but Remains a Distant Third Place
Despite its faster growth in infrastructure-as-a-service relative to AWS and Azure, Google Cloud Platform remains a third wheel in the race for cloud dominance. Google begins its Cloud Next online event starting July 14th in a series of nine rolling sessions through early September. Ahead of that, we want to update you on our most current data on Google’s cloud
Breaking Analysis: COVID’s New Rules for Virtual Events
COVID-19 Creates New Rules for Virtual Events– Many Aren’t so New… The first “modern” trade show was held in 1851. Many things have changed…some haven’t but should. For years, marketers have been pushing for more digital, especially with their big conferences. We’ve heard forward thinking CMOs say, “the war will be won with digital. But the sales teams love belly
Breaking Analysis: COVID's New Rules for Virtual Events
COVID-19 Creates New Rules for Virtual Events– Many Aren’t so New… The first “modern” trade show was held in 1851. Many things have changed…some haven’t but should. For years, marketers have been pushing for more digital, especially with their big conferences. We’ve heard forward thinking CMOs say, “the war will be won with digital. But the sales teams love belly
Breaking Analysis: Here are Five Strategic Options for Dell and VMware
We’ve identified five strategic options for Dell and VMware that we believe are under consideration: Buy the remaining ~19% of VMware shares and take full control of the company. Sell VMware to a strategic company or private equity firm. Spin off VMware by transferring Dell’s ~81% VMware ownership to Dell shareholders. Make no change in structure. Sell ~20% of VMware
Breaking Analysis: Emerging Tech Vendors Face COVID Headwinds as Buyers Choose ‘Safe Bets’
Are emerging tech companies facing a tougher road ahead due to the pandemic? The data suggests that’s the case. CIOs and IT buyers are fleeing to safer bets in the post-COVID economy. This is a key finding of the latest survey from ETR’s Emerging Technology Study. This trend continues the theme we highlighted coming into 2020 that organizations were experimenting
Breaking Analysis: Emerging Tech Vendors Face COVID Headwinds as Buyers Choose 'Safe Bets'
Are emerging tech companies facing a tougher road ahead due to the pandemic? The data suggests that’s the case. CIOs and IT buyers are fleeing to safer bets in the post-COVID economy. This is a key finding of the latest survey from ETR’s Emerging Technology Study. This trend continues the theme we highlighted coming into 2020 that organizations were experimenting
Breaking Analysis: Cyber Security Tailwinds in the Post-Isolation Economy
Which companies are benefitting from the cyber security tailwinds created by the coronavirus pandemic? The isolation economy has created substantial momentum for certain cyber security companies. Notably, as of the big stock market selloff on June 11, relative to our last cyber report in February, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are off 11% and 3% respectively. Yet the valuations of
Breaking Analysis: How Snowflake Competes with Cloud Native Database Giants
In this Breaking Analysis we dig into the cloud database market and take a closer look at how Snowflake competes with Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery and Microsoft Synapse, among others. New Cloud Workloads As we’ve reported, there is a new class of workloads emerging in the cloud. Early cloud was all about infrastructure-as-a-service ( IaaS). That is, the spinning up
Breaking Analysis: Most CIOs Expect a U-Shaped Recovery from COVID-19
Data shows that most CIOs expect a U-Shaped recovery from COVID-19. Specifically, 44% of roughly 700 executives surveyed believe revenue declines will continue through most of 2020 with growth returning next year. This is a key finding of the latest flash survey data from ETR. Not surprisingly however, the shape of the recovery will be mixed and vary substantially by
Breaking Analysis: RPA Adoption Looking Strong in a Post-COVID World
CIOs and IT execs report strong RPA adoption plans in a post-pandemic environment. We’ve been reporting that the COVID pandemic has created a bifurcated IT spending outlook. Legacy on-prem infrastructure and traditional software licensing models are giving way to approaches that enable more flexibility and business agility. Automation initiatives that reduce human labor that is not value add has been gaining
Breaking Analysis: Big Three Cloud Momentum in the Post-COVID Era
AWS, Azure & Google Cloud Momentum in the Post-COVID Era Analysis from company earnings reports and customer surveys continues to show that Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are closing the gap on AWS’ cloud dominance. While reporting definitions of cloud remain fuzzy, it’s clear that the big three U.S. cloud players are leading the steady march into the
Breaking Analysis: Pandemic Paints a Bifurcated IT Spending Picture
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a bifurcated IT spending climate. Several vendors taking advantage of cloud and work from home tailwinds are thriving while others relying on legacy stacks and maintenance streams are struggling to show momentum. This story of the haves and have nots is playing out in several sectors that we examine in this week’s Breaking Analysis. Here
Breaking Analysis: IBM’s Future Rests on its Innovation Agenda
IBM’s Future Rests on its Innovation Agenda IBM’s new CEO has an opportunity to reset the direction of the company. Outgoing CEO Ginni Rommety inherited a strategy put in place over two decades, which fossilized into a lower margin services-led model that she helped architect. Ginni spent a large portion of her tenure shrinking the company so it could grow…unfortunately
Breaking Analysis: IBM's Future Rests on its Innovation Agenda
IBM’s Future Rests on its Innovation Agenda IBM’s new CEO has an opportunity to reset the direction of the company. Outgoing CEO Ginni Rommety inherited a strategy put in place over two decades, which fossilized into a lower margin services-led model that she helped architect. Ginni spent a large portion of her tenure shrinking the company so it could grow…unfortunately
Breaking Analysis: COVID-19 Drags 2020 Spending Outlook to Minus 5%
COVID-19 Drags 2020 Spending Outlook to Minus 5%. IT spending is now projected to decline by 5% in 2020. This according to the latest survey data and analysis by ETR. While the drop represents a 900 basis swing from 4% consensus growth entering 2020, tech spending remains bifurcated with some suppliers and sectors showing significantly stronger spending momentum than others.
Breaking Analysis: How CIOs and CISOs are Taking the COVID-19 Budget Hit
How CIOs and CISOs are Taking the COVID-19 Budget Hit CIOs and CISOs in some of the hardest hit industries see significant near-term and many permanent shifts to their IT and security strategies. This was the consensus of four technology executives at leading companies that are feeling the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic. Welcome to this week’s CUBE Insights, Powered
Breaking Analysis: Tech Execs Optimistic but COVID-19 Wreaking Havoc on Small Businesses
Tech Execs Optimistic but COVID-19 Wreaking Havoc on Small Businesses – April 11, 2020 Welcome to this week’s CUBE Insights, Powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis we want to accomplish three things: First we will recap the current IT spending outlook. Next we want to share some of the priorities, sentiment and outlooks from leading tech execs that we’ve
Breaking Analysis: CIOs Now Expect Budget Declines of 4% in 2020
COVID-19 Fallout: Latest survey data calls for budget declines of 4% in 2020. In this week’s Breaking Analysis we will update you on the latest spending data from ETR. Last week, we reported ETR results from over 1,100 CIOs and IT practitioners and took the forecast to a slight negative based on CIO expectations at that time. As we conveyed
Breaking Analysis: Big Data in the Fight Against COVID-19
The role of big data in the fight against COVID-19. We’ve been reporting weekly on CIO sentiment and the IT spending outlook in the face of coronavirus. We’re tracking a couple of developments from analytic database companies that are notable. Snowflake and Starschema Announce Free Public Data Set Last week, cloud analytic software company Snowflake announced a free, analytics-ready public
COVID-19 IT Spending Impact – March 26, 2020
Assessing the COVID-19 IT Spending Impact In this week’s Breaking Analysis we’re changing the format a bit in an effort to get current information into your hands as soon as possible. Last week, we reported ETR results from over 1,000 CIOs and IT practitioners, and made a call that surprisingly, a large number of respondents – about 40% – indicated they
Breaking Analysis: COVID-19 IT Budget Impact 2020
What is COVID-19 IT budget impact for 2020? In this week’s Breaking Analysis we’re going to share fresh data from the latest Enterprise Technology Research spending survey. In particular, ETR added a drill down question to assess the COVID-19 IT budget impact. This week we had the pleasure of hosting ETR Director of Research Sagar Kadakia who took us through
Breaking Analysis: Coronavirus – Advice on Running Digital Events
Coronavirus – Advice on Running Digital Events. Note: Since the date of this report much has changed and our industry is assuming no travel and no f2f contact. Until further notice theCUBE is operating in an all-remote digital format using its call-in video platform. ETR is updating its spending outlook and surveying on the impact of COVID19 but those results
Breaking Analysis: Multicloud…Symptom or Cure?
Is multicloud a symptom or a cure? Welcome to this week’s Wikibon CUBE Insights, Powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis, we want to dig into the so-called multicloud arena. Some of the questions we get from our community include: What is multicloud? Do we really need it? What problems does it solve? What problems does it create? Is there
Breaking Analysis: Cyber Security Update – Expectations for RSA 2020
Preparing for RSA 2020. Welcome to this week’s Wikibon CUBE Insights, Powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis, ahead of the RSA Conference, we want to update you on the cyber security sector. This year’s event is underlined by two major news stories: 1) Coronavirus fears – IBM has pulled out of the event and cited the epidemic as the
Breaking Analysis: Robotic Process Automation: Overhyped or the Next Big Thing?
Is robotic process automation overhyped or the next big thing? Welcome to this week’s episode of Wikibon’s CUBE insights, powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis we take a deeper dive into the world of robotic process automation or RPA, one of the hottest sectors in software today. In this session we want to address three
Breaking Analysis: How AWS, Azure and GCP Compete for Cloud Leadership in the 2020’s
In this Breaking Analysis we look at how AWS, Azure and GCP (Google Cloud Platform) are positioned to compete in the 2020’s. We’ll look deeper into the cloud market and specifically the business results and momentum of the big three US cloud players. Google last week opened up a bit and not only broke out Youtube revenues, but also its cloud
Breaking Analysis: How AWS, Azure and GCP Compete for Cloud Leadership in the 2020's
In this Breaking Analysis we look at how AWS, Azure and GCP (Google Cloud Platform) are positioned to compete in the 2020’s. We’ll look deeper into the cloud market and specifically the business results and momentum of the big three US cloud players. Google last week opened up a bit and not only broke out Youtube revenues, but also its cloud
Breaking Analysis: Data Storage 2020 – Icebergs Ahead
Data storage has always been a very lucrative market. In this week’s Breaking Analysis we look into the storage market. Storage has been soft lately, as we’ve been reporting. Spending has been on the back burner. In this segment we want to highlight those few companies with momentum, understand why there’s a softness, drill into the various segments and forecast
Breaking Analysis: Cisco Systems – Navigating Cloud, Software & Workforce Change
Welcome to this week’s Breaking Analysis. In this episode of theCUBE Insights, Powered by ETR, we dig into the business of Cisco Systems. theCUBE is in Barcelona this week to cover Cisco Live Europe with an expected attendance of about seventeen thousand. For the past several weeks we’ve been reviewing Cisco’s long history of acquisitions and setting our editorial agenda for
Breaking Analysis: Cisco Systems – Navigating Cloud, Software & Workforce Change
Welcome to this week’s Breaking Analysis. In this episode of theCUBE Insights, Powered by ETR, we dig into the business of Cisco Systems. theCUBE is in Barcelona this week to cover Cisco Live Europe with an expected attendance of about seventeen thousand. For the past several weeks we’ve been reviewing Cisco’s long history of acquisitions and setting our editorial agenda for
Breaking Analysis: The Trillionaire’s Club – Powering a New Tech Economy
In this week’s episode of theCUBE Insights, Powered by ETR, we dig into the”Trillionaire’s Club.” This Breaking Analysis looks at how the big tech companies have changed the recipe for innovation in the enterprise. Specifically, as we enter the next decade we believe it’s important to reset how we look at innovation and the factors that will determine winners and
Breaking Analysis: The Trillionaire's Club – Powering a New Tech Economy
In this week’s episode of theCUBE Insights, Powered by ETR, we dig into the”Trillionaire’s Club.” This Breaking Analysis looks at how the big tech companies have changed the recipe for innovation in the enterprise. Specifically, as we enter the next decade we believe it’s important to reset how we look at innovation and the factors that will determine winners and
Breaking Analysis: Unpacking Veeam’s $5B Exit
In this week’s episode of theCUBE Insights, powered by ETR, we want to provide an analysis of the recent announcement that Insight Partners was acquiring Veeam for $5B. There’s lots of information on the announcement in press releases and news articles so what we really want to focus on is what it means for the industry generally and the data
Breaking Analysis: Unpacking Veeam's $5B Exit
In this week’s episode of theCUBE Insights, powered by ETR, we want to provide an analysis of the recent announcement that Insight Partners was acquiring Veeam for $5B. There’s lots of information on the announcement in press releases and news articles so what we really want to focus on is what it means for the industry generally and the data
Breaking Analysis: Predictions 2020 – Cloud, Kubernetes & Cyber Security Continue to Power the Tech Economy
In this episode of theCUBE Insights, Powered by ETR, we put forth our 2020 predictions using insights gleaned from theCUBE blended with the ETR spending data. 2019 marked our tenth year of doing theCUBE. Over that time we’ve had the pleasure of covering nearly a thousand events and milestones including the exit from the great softness of 2008 2009 and
Breaking Analysis: Predictions 2020 – Cloud, Kubernetes & Cyber Security Continue to Power the Tech Economy
In this episode of theCUBE Insights, Powered by ETR, we put forth our 2020 predictions using insights gleaned from theCUBE blended with the ETR spending data. 2019 marked our tenth year of doing theCUBE. Over that time we’ve had the pleasure of covering nearly a thousand events and milestones including the exit from the great softness of 2008 2009 and
VMware’s Past, Containerware Today, and All the Clouds for the Future
2019 is the tenth year of theCUBE at VMworld (see theCUBE.net for this year’s event)! I’ve had the pleasure of working with VMware since 2002: when their most popular product was Workstation; when they were starting to offer server virtualization, but before vMotion; and well before we were talking about cloud computing. In this article I’m going to take a
VMware's Past, Containerware Today, and All the Clouds for the Future
2019 is the tenth year of theCUBE at VMworld (see theCUBE.net for this year’s event)! I’ve had the pleasure of working with VMware since 2002: when their most popular product was Workstation; when they were starting to offer server virtualization, but before vMotion; and well before we were talking about cloud computing. In this article I’m going to take a
Breaking Analysis: Arm Acquires Treasure Data
Notes from the Wikibon Research Meeting – Thoughts on Arm’s acquisition of Treasure Data Read the Arm press release. Implications for IoT, Intel and the three tiered edge… Arm (formerly ARM) today announced it has acquired Treasure Data, a cloud-based big data management company. Bloomberg reported the transaction value, which was not disclosed by the companies, at $600M. Arm is
Server SAN Projections 2016-2026
Premise Server SAN continues to grow fast, and is projected to replace most traditional storage arrays by 2026. Wikibon projects Enterprise Hyperscale Server SAN will migrate to True Private Cloud (TPC) Server SAN. Wikibon also projects that True Private Cloud Server SAN will make some headway together with Hyperscale Server SAN in public cloud storage. Definitions for the Wikibon Server SAN classifications are
A Guide to Concepts in Digital Twins
Premise. The digital twin programming concept will extend well beyond IoT. It presents a richer representation of real things that traditional programming technologies. Users need conventions for core concepts and how they fit together. In our conversations with the Wikibon community, we hear both interest and confusion regarding the notion of digital twins. We believe digital twins will have enormous
Further Evidence of IBM’s Strategic Retrenchment in Enterprise Analytics
If you’ve been following IBM’s strategic moves over the past 6 months in data and analytics, it’s hard not to have some concerns. The announcements they’ve been making this year err on the side of excessive caution. What they illustrate is IBM Analytics’ ongoing retrenchment into mainframes, private clouds, and end-to-end data governance. IBM seems to be re-crafting its core
Will 3D XPoint make it against 3D NAND?
Wikibon projects that 3D XPoint will not make it in volume in either the enterprise or consumer markets; it may reside in some specialist application niches. The areas of uniqueness claimed for 3D XPoint will be addressed by DRAM, 3D NAND, and innovative non-volatile combinations of DRAM and 3D NAND.
CIOs and CTOs should assume 3D XPoint will NOT be important to the enterprise, and not evaluate it further. The focus should be on deployment of 3D NAND technologies, and expect a rapid cadence of increases in performance, density, form factor, and volume. Hybrid DIMMs with DRAM and 3D NAND should also be evaluated as the technologies mature, as well as UniGrid Architectures.
NAND Vendors put all their chips on TLC 3D NAND
Premise By mid 2018, 3D NAND will become the backbone of almost all deliveries and all vendors of NAND flash, to both the consumer and enterprise markets, with a clear path to increased density, higher performance, and decreasing cost. Consumer NAND announcements are a leading indicator of enterprise NAND capabilities. Toshiba Consumer SSD NAND Announcement
True Private Cloud Projections 2015-2026
The concept of Private Cloud has been in the market since 2008, but the ability of IT organizations to build Private Cloud services that match Public Cloud have been limited. Wikibon forecasts the Private Cloud market revenues from 2015-2026, as well as introducing the enhanced concept of “True” Private Cloud.
Disruptive Trends in Cloud Computing (2015-2025)
As more companies transition into digital businesses, it is critical to understand the business and technology trends that will shape Cloud Computing for the next decade. Wikibon examines the critical elements to help companies understand this rapidly evolving landscape and marketplace.
Simplifying and Future-Proofing Hadoop
Customers are asking how to choose from the rich and growing array of tools in the Hadoop ecosystem. Part of the consideration centers on how to insulate them from fragmentation in the continually evolving Hadoop ecosystem. The incredibly rapid pace of innovation distinguishes the ecosystem but it also has its downsides. The mix and match richness of choice introduces complexity for administrators and developers.
At some point it makes sense for customers to consider investing in tools that can hide much of that complexity in data ready for analysis. To be clear, there is no magic product that can hide all these technologies. But when customers take the perspective of simplifying specific end-to-end processes, solutions are available to address the problem.
Making Sense of Hortonworks’ Dataflow
IT leaders can no longer treat stream processors as esoteric functionality employed solely by leading-edge consumer Internet services. They are becoming core functionality that works side-by-side with the more familiar batch processing engines such as Hive, HBase, or Impala. Application developers that need near real-time functionality can start to evaluate stream processors as part of design patterns. However, their analytics functionality is still a bit primitive and most of them need a lot of hardening in order to be resilient enough for mainstream customers.
Making Sense of Hortonworks' Dataflow
IT leaders can no longer treat stream processors as esoteric functionality employed solely by leading-edge consumer Internet services. They are becoming core functionality that works side-by-side with the more familiar batch processing engines such as Hive, HBase, or Impala. Application developers that need near real-time functionality can start to evaluate stream processors as part of design patterns. However, their analytics functionality is still a bit primitive and most of them need a lot of hardening in order to be resilient enough for mainstream customers.
Unpacking the Public Cloud Market
Wikibon Research has forecasted Public Cloud revenues from 2015 through 2026; with the expectations that 33% of all IT spending ($500B) will move to Public Cloud services within the next decade. The impact this will have on IT vendors and IT strategy will be significant as more applications focus on mobile and real-time data analytics.
Server SAN 2012-2026
In this research paper, Wikibon looks back at the introductory Server SAN research, adjusts the Server SAN definition to include System Drag, and increases the speed of adoption of Server SAN based on very fast adoption from 2012 to 2014. The overall growth of Server SAN is projected to be about a 23% CAGR from 2014 to 2026, with a faster growth from 2014 to 2020 of 38%. The total Server SAN market is projected to grow to over $48 billion by 2026. The traditional enterprise storage market is projected to decline by -16% CAGR, leading to an overall growth in storage spend of 3% CAGR through 2026. Traditional enterprise storage is being squeezed in a vice between a superior, lower cost and more flexible storage model with Enterprise Server SAN, and the migration of IT towards cloud computing and Hyperscale Server SAN deployments. Wikibon strongly recommends that CTOs & CIOs initiate Server SAN pilot projects in 2015, particularly for applications where either low cost or high performance is required.
Systems of Intelligence Part 2: Foundation Platform
Mainstream IT, LoB execs and application development professionals each provide different yet critical perspectives to Systems of Intelligence. IT exes must be in a position to deliver the right infrastructure (e.g. cloud, on-prem, etc.) with the proper performance and SLA profile to support LoB requirements. Line-of-Business execs must have enough knowledge to specify the real-time needs of applications while application development pros must ensure the right skills are in place to deliver and maintain services to Systems of Intelligence over a full life cycle.
Big Data Vendor Revenue and Market Forecast, 2011-2026
The Big Data market continued its maturation in 2014, experiencing both significant growth as measured by vendor revenue and increased adoption of Big Data tools and technologies by large enterprises across vertical markets. In this exclusive report for Wikibon Premium members, Wikibon details Big Data vendor revenue and extends its groundbreaking market forecast through 2020.
The Next Phase of Converged Infrastructure
Converged infrastructure is a trend that has been growing for over 5 years and is rapidly transforming the way that users consume IT. In 2012, Wikibon forecasted (see Converged Infrastructure Takes the Market By Storm) that 2/3 of infrastructure for enterprise applications would be packaged as some form of converged infrastructure by 2017. Now there are billions of dollars of
Breaking Down the Hortonworks S-1
Hortonworks plans to go public in 2015 and its S-1 filing, revealed to the world yesterday, says a lot about the state of the Hadoop market generally and, obviously, Hortonworks specifically. First, a mea culpa. In Wikibon’s latest Big Data market forecast, my colleagues and I provided our estimate for Hortonworks’ 2013 revenue (along with revenue estimates of all the other players
The Pivotal Move for EMC and VMware
See Primer on the EMC Federation for an update including new information from EMC World 2014 Contents 1 The EMC, VMware, Pivotal Federation 2 VMware sticks to virtualization 2.1 SDDC 2.2 Hybrid Cloud 2.3 PC to Mobility 3 EMC II 4 Pivotal Inc The EMC, VMware, Pivotal Federation Can a market leader also lead a transformation? EMC is the market
#theCUBE @ #BigDataSV
theCUBE’s next stop is the Hilton Santa Clara for #BigDataSV. The show takes place February 11-13, 2014 and you can catch all the action live at SiliconANGLE.tv. We’ll have analysis of all the news breaking at Strata Conference, as well as in-depth conversations with leading Big Data and Data Science thought-leaders. In addition to the broadcast, we’re also throwing a
Cloud and Big Data Upending IT Stalwarts
IBM’s annual revenue last year dropped below $100 billion for the first time since 2010. The company’s fourth quarter results were particularly weak, coming in 5.5% below expectations. This was due in large part to IBM’s struggling hardware business, with revenue dropping a staggering 27%. Much of the blame can be attributed to the cloud, or I should say to IBM’s slowness
Cloud and Big Data Upending IT Stalwarts
IBM’s annual revenue last year dropped below $100 billion for the first time since 2010. The company’s fourth quarter results were particularly weak, coming in 5.5% below expectations. This was due in large part to IBM’s struggling hardware business, with revenue dropping a staggering 27%. Much of the blame can be attributed to the cloud, or I should say to
How Convergence Moves From Tactical Savings to Strategic Foundation
See Wikibon’s software-led infrastructure page for more on how converged infrastructure fits into the SDDC at Wikibon.com/SLI. Converged Infrastructure Moving to Early Majority The growth of converged infrastructure solutions is impossible to miss in conversations across the marketplace (see videos from the recent VMworld conference). Customers, however, are not looking to buy “convergence”; rather, IT is in desperate need for solutions
Time to Create a Hypervisor Strategy
While VMware is still dominant in the x86 server virtualization market, there are clear signs that the hypervisor is being commoditized and that competing solutions are closing the functionality gap. Over half of respondents to Wikibon’s survey last year were running multiple hypervisors. Wikibon is digging deeper into customer adoption including both multi-hypervisor environments and what is driving customers to
Sizing Up Google Compute Engine, Amazon AWS and the Cloud Field
Web Giant Targets the Cloud Google has spent the last 14 years building one of the largest networks and most scalable architectures in the world. The Google Compute Engine (GCE) is a public cloud now generally available that brings Google’s architecture to the masses. While it is undeniable that Google has immense resources (having spent over $2.9B on infrastructure) and
Big Data Database Revenue and Market Forecast, 2012-2017
The research behind this article drills down into the database components, Big Data SQL database revenue, and Big Data NoSQL database revenue. The total represents 10.4% of total Big Data in 2012, and remains at about 10% of total through 2017.
Rack Level Architectures and Hyperscale Operations
Last week at the Open Compute Summit Winter 2013 event, Facebook shared insight into its IT infrastructure. While hyperscale companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook are quite different from the typical enterprise, it is Wikibon’s belief that those companies are driving key changes to how infrastructure is consumed that will filter down to the service provider and enterprise worlds in the
The Big Data Manifesto
Providing effective business analytics tools and technologies to the enterprise is a top priority of CIOs and for good reason. Effective business analytics – from basic reporting to advanced data mining and predictive analytics — allows data analysts and business users alike to extract insights from corporate data that, when translated into action, deliver higher levels of efficiency and profitability to the enterprise.
Underlying every business analytics practice is data. Traditionally, this meant structured data created and stored by enterprises themselves, such as customer data housed in CRM applications, operational data stored in ERP systems or financial data tallied in accounting databases. But the volume and type of data now available to enterprises — and the need to analyze it in near-real time for maximum business value — is growing rapidly thanks to the popularity of social media and networking services like Facebook and Twitter, data-generating sensor equipped and networked devices, both machine- and human-generated online transactions, and other sources of unstructured and semi-structured data. We call this Big Data.
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