Research Feed: Steve McDowell
Domino Data Lab Winter Release 2026: The Agentic AI Development Lifecycle
Domino Data Lab recently announced its Winter Release, becoming the first vendor to offer a fully governed, end-to-end platform for operationalizing agentic AI systems. The release features a new Agentic Development Lifecycle (ADLC) experience along with LLM hosting capabilities.
HPE Connectivity and Compute Announcements (MWC 2026)
At MWC 2026, Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced a significant expansion of its service provider portfolio, its broadest set of announcements following its acquisition last year of Juniper Networks.
The announcements focus on three primary pillars: ultra-high-density routing for AI backbones, modular compute for the telecommunications edge, and an integrated cloud operations stack. HPE is positioning these releases to address the “bursty” and high-bandwidth nature of AI training and inference workloads that are increasingly distributed across regional data centers.
Call Notes: Quarterly Semiconductor Update (March 2026)
Every quarter I participate in a call for buy-side investment analysts focused on the broader datacenter/hyperscaler semiconductor ecosystem. Here, I’m sharing the raw notes I used to drive that call.
NVIDIA Strategic Investments in Optical Interconnects
NVIDIA has committed over $4 billion in direct strategic investments across two optical interconnect companies, Lumentum and Coherent, supplemented by multibillion-dollar purchase agreements and equity participation in the optical startup Ayar Labs
Memory & Flash Crisis Update (March 2026)
The global memory market entered 2026 in a state of structural supply constraint. AI infrastructure demand has reallocated semiconductor manufacturing capacity toward HBM for GPU accelerators, creating scarcity in conventional DRAM and NAND flash products.
How to Think about VAST Data
If you’ve been tracking the enterprise infrastructure space for the past few years, you’ve probably encountered VAST Data. And if you’re like most IT practitioners I talk to, you’ve probably filed them in the “high-performance storage vendor” folder in your brain.
Everpure: Pure Storage’s Rebrand & Evolution to Data Management Platform
Pure Storage has rebranded as Everpure, reflecting a multi-year evolution from storage management into broader data management, and is also acquiring 1touch: Executive Summary Pure
SUSE Acquires Losant: Extending the Open Edge Stack into Industrial IoT
SUSE announced the acquisition of Losant, a Cincinnati-based industrial IoT (IIoT) platform. The acquisition marks a material expansion for SUSE, moving the company from being primarily an edge infrastructure provider (built around SUSE Linux Micro and K3s) to the application and orchestration layer, where operational data from industrial devices is aggregated, visualized, and acted on.
Dell Expands Private Cloud Portfolio with Nutanix AHV Support
Dell Technologies recently announced the expansion of its Dell Private Cloud offering to support Nutanix AHV as a third hypervisor option, complementing existing support for VMware vSphere and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.
IBM FlashSystem: Next Generation, Autonomous Storage Meets Agentic AI
IBM recently announced a significant refresh of its FlashSystem all-flash storage portfolio, replacing the 5300, 7300, and 9500 product lines with new 5600, 7600, and 9600 models. The company also introduced its new FlashSystem.ai, an agentic AI administration layer that IBM claims can reduce manual storage management effort by up to 90%.
Verizon’s Pivot Opens the Door: Why Private 5G Pioneers Are Prime M&A Targets in 2026
Real, paying customers are driving demand for edge inference in manufacturing and logistics, and Verizon is backing that with One Fiber.
Why Cisco Builds Silicon for the Data Center but Buys It for Wi‑Fi
Two domains. Two silicons. One intentional strategy.