Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante

In this special Breaking Analysis we're pleased to host our third annual data predictions power panel with some of our collaborators in theCUBE Collective and members of the data gang. With us today are five of the top industry analysts focused on data platforms. Sanjeev Mohan of Sanjmo, Tony Baer of dbInsight, IDC's Carl Olofson, Dave Menninger who is with Ventana Research, now part of...

In this Breaking Analysis we grade the 2023 predictions we made with ETR's Erik Bradley. We look back at what we said in January about the macro IT spending environment, cost optimization, security, generative AI, cloud, blockchain, data platforms, automation and tech events.

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, this t...

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 generally accepted state of...

In this episode of Breaking Analysis, theCUBE analyst Dave Vellante focuses on the evolving landscape of enterprise tech, driven by generative AI, and its implications for AWS. The discussion emphasizes how AWS must adapt its powerful playbook, known for agility, developer choice, power, scale, reliability and security, to accommodate the growing demand for simplicity and coherence among mainstrea...

Conventional wisdom says Microsoft Corp. 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 last Thursday, prior to the firing of OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman and the ongoing public drama that ensued. Microsoft and OpenAI had a huge lead in market momentum, artificial intelligence adoption and feature accel...

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 be a major player in the Generative AI era. Specifically, in our o...

Power Law Explained Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law Heavy tailed power laws: Why are Power Law distributions called 'Heavy-tailed'? Explainer video for power laws in statistics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC71ZazlMR0 Power law in economics: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/34651705/68262294.pdf What is retrieval augmented generation (IBM Research) https:...

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 patter...

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 debt levels. This is one o...

In this week’s CUBE Insights, Powered by ETR. George Gilbert and I welcome Ryan Blue to this, our 201st episode. Ryan is the co-creator and PMC chair of Apache Iceberg and a co-founder & the CEO of Tabular, a universal open table store that connects to any compute layer built by the creators of Iceberg.

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 7.5%. Eleven fed int...

theCUBE host Dave Vellante is joined by George Gilbert and Bob Muglia for this weeks Breaking Analysis

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 week. A still challenging enviro...

UiPath’s recent earnings beat and raise provides some evidence that thus far, Gen AI has not been diluitive for the company. As an early leader that is transforming beyond RPA toward end-to-end enterprise automation, UiPath, like all automation providers, has always faced adoption headwinds beyond isolated deployments. In this sense, Gen AI should bolster adoption and be a positive force. The flip...

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. Google also showed off an expanded ecosystem of...

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 renewal with Microsoft better aligns sa...

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 incumbents. If preserving competition is truly the agenda of the U.S. government...

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 matters, developers...

After a tough 2022, the first half of 2023 has shown impressive strength and many technology bets have paid off. For sure investors in the so-called Magnificent Seven, i.e. Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla have been rewarded. But sharp investors have sought alpha beyond these issues, riding the wave of secular trends in AI, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure and software as well as...

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 AWS’ big 4...

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 fund AI...