IT Survey: Robust spend, GenAI boom, staffing cuts
Technology
Rosenblatt’s July survey of 100+ senior IT managers reveals a surprisingly robust IT spending outlook, with two-thirds of budgets being revised higher since the start of 2025, despite macro concerns. GenAI is the top investment priority, with 60% increasing spend and nearly 70% expecting a material organisational impact. Over 75% expect developer staffing cuts of 10%+. Cybersecurity remains a defensive spending priority with investment flowing towards securing modern, distributed environments (Cloud, SASE/SSE) and data itself - benefitting CrowdStrike, CyberArk, Palo Alto, Zscaler and Fortinet. AWS fared much better, ranking first in "cloud service provider best positioned in AI", with 28% (vs. 16% in Dec 24), surpassing Google and Microsoft. Infrastructure names like Snowflake, Rubrik and MongoDB are also well-positioned amid data estate modernisation.
Edition: 216
- 25 July, 2025
Technology Spending Intentions Survey: Tracking tech budget trends & vendor demand
Technology
ETR’s Jan TSIS, based on responses from 1,835 tech leaders, projects 5.3% Y/Y IT spending growth in 2025, the highest since Jul 22. 73% of organisations plan budget increases, driven by cloud expansion and project acceleration. Notably, only 6% cited new vendor adoption, while 12% focused on enhancing capabilities with existing vendors - reinforcing debates around platformisation vs. vendor sprawl. TSIS tracks hundreds of companies and each quarter ETR publishes 200+ vendor specific reports. In their most recent webinar, they highlighted 20 vendors including AWS, Google, Salesforce, Snowflake, Workday and Zscaler - 13 had positive outlooks, 2 were downgraded and 3 maintained their outlook.
Edition: 205
- 21 February, 2025
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
Technology
Feedback from channel contacts on the company's core PAM solution continues to be strong, while CYBR is also the standout beneficiary of the MGM breach. Pipeline generation is healthy. Sales Pulse has heard examples of reps “sitting on deals” to push into the next quarter… always a good sign. Some resellers they talked to shared that CYBR encouraged them to get their SE’s trained and certified on the new CYBR Workforce and Identity offerings, but so far these resellers, have not seen much professional services business based on this investment. Elsewhere, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto, Zscaler and Okta all look solid, while Fortinet and Tenable have the softest channel sentiment.
Edition: 171
- 13 October, 2023
Technology
Inflection Point Research, LLC
As if the cyber threat wasn’t substantial enough, this week cybersecurity experts demonstrated that ChatGPT can be used to create mutating malware that evades detection by EDR. The urgency to implement AI capability into cyber defence products just increased exponentially. It also dramatically increases the need for companies to either initiate or accelerate their zero trust implementation plans. IPR believes ZS will be one of the winners because its solution is cloud native, fully integrated, globally distributed and covers all the bases. Further, its Zero Trust Exchange is a key differentiator that is unique in the industry.
Edition: 163
- 23 June, 2023
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
Advanced AI: Sink or swim time for cybersecurity vendors
Technology
How are AI advancements and hype affecting the cybersecurity industry? What are data security vendors doing with AI/ML and cybersecurity automation, and can they protect their market from the major cloud operators with their investments in AI-driven security for their own platforms? During the interviews conducted by Blueshift, industry sources were also asked how they would play the sector near to mid-term and out over time. Companies discussed include Amazon, CrowdStrike, Cisco, CyberArk, Fortinet, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Okta, Palo Alto and Zscaler.
Edition: 158
- 14 April, 2023
Giant layoffs loom as Tech firms face customer budget freezes
Blueshift’s IT sector sources are pointing at Oracle’s plan to cut c.30k jobs as the crack in the dam that is going to trigger a resizing of workforces across all of tech - as one recruitment executive said, “They have literally been making up jobs for the past several years to beat each other to talent. It had nothing to do with rightsizing. It was a competition to impress investors.” Sources were unanimous that earnings forecasts for the rest of the year across most vendors in all verticals of DIY enterprise networking are going to be poor. Companies covered include Arista Networks, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Dell, Fortinet, IBM, Palo Alto and Zscaler.
Edition: 140
- 22 July, 2022
Security software earnings quality comparison
Technology
BTN’s earnings quality comparison on six of the major security software players (Cloudflare, Palo Alto Networks, Okta, Fortinet, Zscaler and CrowdStrike) examines factors such as relative dependence on stock options and policies regarding capitalised software, sales commissions, network depreciation, and aggressiveness of non-GAAP adjustments. The report ranks the company from most to least aggressive.
Edition: 137
- 10 June, 2022
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
Technology Trends: Change, disruption and opportunity in 2022
1) The acceleration from legacy security solutions to the newer generation of solutions - SASE / shake-up of enterprise networking and network security (Zscaler, Cloudflare, Palo Alto Networks).
2) Leverage of AI in cloud-based communications and collaboration (CCaaS) to the advantage of vendors who are separating themselves from commodity services and pricing (Five9, NICE). Changing competitive landscape as Zoom, Microsoft, and others collide in the large and growing UCaaS market.
3) Further strength in BI / Analytics / Observability to the benefit of vendors with the strongest cloud-based solutions (Datadog, Dynatrace), but more mixed results from vendors transitioning to SaaS (Teradata, Elastic).
Edition: 128
- 04 February, 2022
Channel contacts report further acceleration of spending on Cyber Security
Technology
High flying but volatile stocks like Zscaler and CrowdStrike are benefitting, but so are some less volatile vendors. Sales Pulse are seeing unexpected acceleration from…
Check Point (CHKP) - generates impressive cash flow but has lacked innovation and bled market share. Channels now see improvement in execution and benefit from spending by its massive installed base.
F5 (FFIV) - reaping the benefits of 3+ years of working on a broader security solution through organic development and acquisitions.
Tenable (TENB) - picking up a LOT of momentum based on the growing recognition by end users of the need to scan 100% of devices for vulnerabilities. This vendor is also the most direct beneficiary of efforts to address the Log4j vulnerability threat.
Edition: 127
- 21 January, 2022