Technology
Tomer Weingarten’s declining engagement and mercurial behaviour a poor fit for a public company CEO - Paragon’s analysis includes interviews with former senior executives who worked with Weingarten for more than 18 years combined. They described him as volatile and abrasive, lacking integrity and prone to impulsive decision making, which has led to the departure of a previously strong C-suite. Repeated shifts in financial guidance have lowered his credibility with investors, with sources noting the company would be better off acquired or run by a new CEO, although neither option is likely given Weingarten’s control of the board and voting shares.
Edition: 200
- 29 November, 2024
Security Spending: Trends remain healthy
Technology
Key takeaways from SPR’s latest field work include: CrowdStrike - seeing some deal slippage, but most respondents believe few customers will actually switch vendors following the global IT outage. SPR has heard of renewal discounts that include buy 3-yr and get 1-yr free. SentinelOne - benefitted from winning more deals at the end of the quarter, assisted by CRWD’s crash. Zscaler - mostly positive input but some concern re. the maturing of the SASE market and possible disruption to sales from the shuffling of sales personnel between ZS to Wiz and from ServiceNow to ZS. Fortinet - industry contacts are positive about its acquisition of NextDLP but less enthusiastic about Laceworks.
Edition: 193
- 23 August, 2024
Cybersecurity: Potential SEC investigations
Technology
Last October the SEC charged SolarWinds and its chief information security officer with fraud. This report looks at other companies in the cybersecurity industry that may have similar risks to an SEC investigation. Based on Veritas' Freedom of Information Act work, they received confirmations from the SEC pertaining to 15 publicly-listed cybersecurity stocks. Out of the 15 issuers confirmed, 2 attracted SEC scrutiny. Stocks mentioned: Palo Alto, CrowdStrike, Fortinet, Zscaler, Cloudflare, Check Point, Okta, Gen Digital, CyberArk, SentinelOne, Qualys, Tenable, Varonis, Rapid7 and SecureWorks.
Edition: 186
- 17 May, 2024
2024 Enterprise Tech Demand: Technology Spending Intentions Survey
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.
Edition: 178
- 26 January, 2024
Technology
SPR’s latest channel checks have picked up more examples of ZS being replaced, primarily by Palo Alto, but also by Netskope as well as customers switching to Cloudflare and Cato Networks. One regional VAR commented "ZS is looking worse, more discounting and deal flow is slowing”, while another said “Customer feedback, or perception, is that ZS functionality in CASB, DLP, and Zero Trust is falling behind PANW and Netskope". Elsewhere, SPR has picked up some signs of improvement for SentinelOne, while views on CrowdStrike have been fairly positive and a little better than the mixed views from the past few quarters.
Edition: 160
- 12 May, 2023
Security channels continue to see strong growth for most vendors
Technology
While channels see security budgets as strong for the rest of the year there is concern that the time required to implement some projects has become extended because of a lack of skilled resources. This may result in delays of add-on orders in 2H. US Fed spending which had seen some delays due to operation under CR (Continuing Resolution) is now back on track. Sales Pulse has also found no evidence that Okta lost accounts following its recent breach, however they did hear of some new deals being delayed. Other stocks featured include CrowdStrike, Palo Alto, SentinelOne and Zscaler.
Edition: 136
- 27 May, 2022
Further acceleration in cyber security; other areas of IT spending are mixed
Technology
SPR's preliminary survey results report strong momentum in Q1, and the majority see continued, or accelerated growth for the rest of the year - consistent with previous views and recent reports, those Security Vendors most called out as seeing strong growth are Palo Alto, Zscaler, CrowdStrike, Fortinet and SentinelOne. Also consistent with views from last quarter, vendors with improving checks include Tenable, Ping Identity and Check Point. In contrast, SaaS vendors are having to work much harder to achieve their goals - SPR’s channels noted that SaaS projects were among those that were being pushed out.
Edition: 134
- 29 April, 2022
SentinelOne (S)
Technology
Exciting IPO in the next generation cyber security end point protection market. SentinelOne has emerged as one of the strongest competitors in the sector. It benefits from the same market drivers that have provided a great opportunity for CrowdStrike, including a large and growing market that has a desperate need for a next generation solution and a competitive environment that includes legacy vendors (Symantec, McAfee, etc) who have fallen behind. Sales Pulse’s channel partners confirm growing win rates due to the vendor’s leading technology and aggressive channel programs.
Edition: 113
- 25 June, 2021