Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante

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) Cautious consumption patterns; and 2) Aggressive cloud optimization, which is being promoted by the big three cloud vendors in an attempt to lock in customers to longer term commitments. There is still no clear evidence in the numbers that repatriation is a factor. Rather, the ability to quickly dial down spending and pause projects is an attractive feature of cloud computing and one that, until now, has never really been seen on a broad market basis.In this Breaking Analysis we try to explain the implications of this seemingly simple but nuanced dynamic. We’ll review the latest hyperscale cloud data for the big three players, share our analysis of certain comments made by cloud executives and show you the latest ETR data on spending and market presence in the cloud. 

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 said, Q1 saw a rebound in tech but for the most part cyber lagged. The tech rally was largely attributable to an uptick in semis, a leading indicator in normal times. But these aren’t normal times and RSA gives us a nice opportunity to assess the situation in the market.In this Breaking Analysis we’ll update you on the latest trends in the market and what to expect at RSA this year. We’ll also share the latest ETR spending data and drill into the areas of cybersecurity that are seeing the most action. As always we’ll highlight those companies with the strongest (and weakest) momentum and close with a look at some of the emerging technology players in security that might be ripe for acquisition. To do all this we once again welcome in our colleague Erik Bradley from ETR. 

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 share our takeaways from HPE’s event, held in Houston, Texas, which included attendance at Antonio Neri’s quarterly all-hands meeting. We’ll try to emphasize areas that have not necessarily been the focus of most press and industry analyst write ups to date. We’ll also take a look at the latest ETR survey data to put HPE’s market position in context across several of its major segments.Best articles:Nice analysis by Steve McDowell on Forbes:https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevemcdowell/2023/04/06/hpe-kicks-off-its-year-of-storage-with-help-from-vast-data/?sh=6a548ee45b3bChris Mellor’s summary has all the newshttps://blocksandfiles.com/2023/04/04/hpe-greenlake-vast-data/CRN’s channel perspective emphasizing the consumption model:https://www.crn.com/news/storage/alletra-storage-mp-puts-hpe-far-ahead-of-competitors-in-hybrid-cloud-storage-management-battle?itc=refreshSiliconANGLE writeup by Paul Gillin:https://siliconangle.com/2023/04/04/hpe-greenlake-gets-hybrid-block-file-storage-expanded-data-protection/TechTarget article w/ quotes from Marc Staimer, Ray Luchessi & Scott Sinclair w/ an emphasis on how well Vast is doing:https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/365534832/Vast-dips-into-HPE-GreenLake-with-new-file-storage-serviceVast Data press release that emphasizes AI workloads:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230404005358/en/VAST-Data-Announces-Strategic-Partnership-with-Hewlett-Packard-Enterprise-to-Provide-Software-for-HPE-GreenLake-for-File-Storage

A 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 50%. Even the beleaguered Intel is up 22%. But key enterprise software names have not yet rebounded and according to this week’s guest, the divergence between semis and B2B software is getting hard to ignore. In this Breaking analysis we examine the the bifurcation between the performance of semis and broader enterprise tech. And we’ll try to answer the question: Is the uptick in semiconductors an early indicator of a broader enterprise tech recovery, or is this a false signal that warrants continued caution? To examine these issues we welcome back Ivana Delevska, the founder and chief investment officer of SPEAR Invest. All statements made regarding companies or securities are strictly beliefs, points of view and opinions held by SiliconANGLE Media, Enterprise Technology Research, other guests on theCUBE and guest writers. Such statements are not recommendations by these individuals to buy, sell or hold any security. The content presented does not constitute investment advice and should not be used as the basis for any investment decision. You and only you are responsible for your investment decisions.Disclosure: Many of the companies cited in Breaking Analysis are sponsors of theCUBE and/or clients of Wikibon. None of these firms or other companies have any editorial control over or advanced viewing of what’s published in Breaking Analysis.

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 GPT models could cannibalize some, if not many use cases initially targeted by RPA vendors. This reality is causing customers to rethink their automation strategies and vendors to rapidly evolve their messaging to position foundation models as an accelerant to their platforms. In this Breaking Analysis we provide you with a perspective on how foundation models could impact automation platforms. We review ETR data that quantifies the ascendency of OpenAI. We also show survey data that measures the overlap between ML/AI systems and automation platforms. Then we review the recent quarterly performance of UiPath and share how we think the company must position itself with respect to the onslaught of noise and potential disruption from GPT models.

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 GPT models could cannibalize some, if not many use cases initially targeted by RPA vendors. This reality is causing customers to rethink their automation strategies and vendors to rapidly evolve their messaging to position foundation models as an accelerant to their platforms. In this Breaking Analysis we provide you with a perspective on how foundation models could impact automation platforms. We review ETR data that quantifies the ascendency of OpenAI. We also show survey data that measures the overlap between ML/AI systems and automation platforms. Then we review the recent quarterly performance of UiPath and share how we think the company must position itself with respect to the onslaught of noise and potential disruption from GPT models.FULL ARTICLE: https://wikibon.com/breaking-analysis-gpt-models-are-a-two-edged-sword-for-automation-platforms/

With George GilbertWhen 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 platform among data scientists and data engineers. However, emerging customer data requirements and market forces are conspiring in a way that we believe will cause modern data platform players generally and Databricks specifically to make some key directional decisions and perhaps even reinvent themselves. In this Breaking Analysis we do a deeper dive into Databricks. We explore its current impressive market momentum using ETR survey data. We’ll also lay out how customer data requirements are changing and what we think the ideal data platform will look like in the mid-term. We’ll then evaluate core elements of the Databricks portfolio against that future vision and close with some strategic decisions we believe the company and its customers face. To do so we welcome in our good friend George Gilbert, former equities analyst, market analyst and principal at Tech Alpha Partners. FULL ARTCILE: https://wikibon.com/breaking-analysis-databricks-faces-critical-strategic-decisionsheres-why/

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 enterprise-class technologies than ever before. Semiconductor manufacturers, network equipment players, infrastructure companies, cloud vendors, software providers and a spate of startups are eyeing the trillion dollar plus telecommunications industry as one of the next big things to watch this decade. In this Breaking Analysis we bring you part 2 of our ongoing coverage of MWC 2023. With some new data on enterprise players specifically within large telco environments. We’ll also take a brief glimpse at some of the pre-announcement news from the show and corresponding themes ahead of MWC. We’ll close with the key innovation areas we’ll be covering at the show on theCUBE. FULL ARTICLE: https://wikibon.com/breaking-analysis-mwc-2023-goes-beyond-consumer-deep-into-enterprise-tech/

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 in infrastructure, cloud, data, AI and apps? It’s become table stakes for carriers to evolve their hardened, proprietary infrastructure stacks to more open, flexible, cloud-like models. But doing so brings risks that telcos must carefully balance as they strive to deliver consistent quality of service while at the same time moving faster and avoiding disruption. In this Breaking Analysis and ahead of MWC23, we explore the evolution of the telco business and how the industry is in many ways, mimicking a transformation that took place decades ago in enterprise IT. We’ll model some of the traditional enterprise vendors using ETR data and investigate how they’re faring in the telecomms vertical. And we’ll pose some of the key issues facing the industry this decade.