Report by ETR

ETR highlights the vendors best and worst positioned for the year ahead based on spending intentions data collected from their Jan 24 TSIS, which saw participation from 1766 IT Decision-Makers, including 308 Fortune 500 and 423 Global 2000 organisations. Respondents are, on average, more optimistic on 2024 spending than 3 months ago, with full year spend anticipated to grow +4.3% vs. 2023. However, Q1 is slightly tempered, now sitting at +2.4% y/y growth. Vendor outlook upgrades include Gitlab (has seen a sharp rebound in its Net Score), SentinelOne, Elastic and IBM. While there are downgrades for Datadog (Net Score hits an all-time low), CyberArk and HashiCorp.

Technology

Report by Summit Insights Group

Former software engineer, Srini Nandury, who was the original bear on Nutanix and JFrog, highlights three names that continue to offer material downside…

Gitlab (GTLB) - Reminds Srini of JFrog; market fragmentation and intense competition will limit growth.
HashiCorp (HCP) - Growth to slow more quickly than investors realise; VMware catching on faster as it did with Nutanix. Stock could easily fall to $22.
UiPath (PATH) - Turned bearish with the stock at $70 last June. Expensive solution in a commoditising market; Microsoft is quickly vaulting to the leadership position in RPA.