Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

NAND Insider Newsletter: Week of April 28, 2025

Newspaper

Each week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, April 28, 2025.

Research Note: Palo Alto Networks Prisma AIRS for AI Protection

Palo Alto Networks Prisma AIRS

At RSAC 2025, Palo Alto Networks launched its new Prisma AIRS (AI Security), a comprehensive security platform targeting threats across enterprise AI ecosystems. Building upon their “Secure AI by Design” portfolio introduced last year, Prisma AIRS addresses emerging security challenges posed by the proliferation of AI applications, agents, and models.

Quick Take: Palo Alto Networks to Acquire Protect AI

Deal

Today, Palo Alto Networks announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Protect AI, which secures AI and ML applications. The deal is part of Palo Alto Networks’ broader strategy to expand its cybersecurity portfolio into AI risk management.

Research Note: Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSIAM 3.0

PANW Cortex AI 3.0

Palo Alto Networks recently released Cortex XSIAM 3.0, expanding its security operations platform with proactive exposure management and advanced email security capabilities. The update shifts the platform’s focus from primarily reactive to proactive security measures.

Research Note: Veeam’s VeeamOn Announcements

Veeam

At its annual VeeamON 2025 event, Veeam Software announced three significant expansions to its data resilience platform. The updates focus on identity protection, AI integration, and security partnerships.

Research Note: Atlassian Team ’25 Announcements

Atlassian Team '25

At Atlassian’s Team ’25 event in Anaheim, the company unveiled a comprehensive set of product updates that unify cross-functional collaboration, strategic execution, and service delivery capabilities under a single AI-enabled platform.

The key announcements focus on expanding the Rovo AI system, launching new strategic planning and workforce management tools, introducing a Customer Service Management solution, and bundling core collaboration tools into the new Teamwork Collection.

NAND Insider Newsletter: April 21 2025

Newsletter

Each week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, April 21, 2025.

Research Note: Scality-Veeam Unified Software Appliance

Scality-Veeam Appliance

Scality and Veeam have developed a unified software appliance that runs on commodity x86 servers. It combines Scality’s ARTESCA object storage with Veeam’s Backup and replication software.

The new integration promises to streamline deployment, enhance security, and reduce implementation costs. It also eliminates the need for separate physical or virtual infrastructure for Veeam while providing a hardened security environment with reduced attack surface.

Research Note: CrowdStrike Falcon Privileged Access

CrowdStrike Falcon Privileged Access

CrowdStrike recently introduced Falcon Privileged Access, a new component of its Falcon Identity Protection portfolio that adopts a just-in-time access model for privileged access management.

CrowdStrike also announced complementary capabilities, including integration between Falcon Identity Protection and Falcon Next-Gen SIEM, Charlotte AI Detection Triage for identity-based attacks, and new CrowdStrike Pulse Services for security maturity improvement.

Research Note: Hitachi Vantara’s CyberSense Integration

CyberSense

Hitachi Vantara is partnering with Index Engines to integrate CyberSense, an AI-powered ransomware detection solution, into its Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One). With this move, Hitachi joins Dell, IBM, and Infinidat as the fourth OEM to adopt Index Engines’ technology.

Research Note: IBM Updates Concert Platform

IBM Concert

IBM has introduced three significant updates to its IBM Concert platform, extending its capabilities in resilience management and hybrid infrastructure support. These updates allow IT organizations to shift operations from reactive to proactive posture by applying AI and workflow automation across observability, remediation, and mainframe operations.

Research Note: VMware Tanzu’s AI Makeover

VMware Tanzu AI

Broadcom’s VMware is repositioning Tanzu from a Kubernetes-centric application platform to a GenAI-first PaaS. The latest release introduces support for Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) for agentic AI, deepens integration with the Claude LLM, and introduces a rearchitected platform focused on private cloud AI workloads.

Research Note: Fortanix Armet AI Public Preview

Fortanix Armet AI

Fortanix recently launched a public preview of Armet AI, a turnkey generative AI platform that integrates confidential computing and enterprise-grade data governance.

Targeted at enterprises managing sensitive or regulated data, Armet AI addresses the challenges of building secure and compliant generative AI systems by combining Intel’s trusted execution environments (SGX, TDX) with fine-grained access control, policy enforcement, and AI-specific security mechanisms.

Research Note: NetApp Updates Google NetApp Cloud Volumes

NetApp Logo

At the recent Google Cloud Next event, NetApp and Google Cloud announced enhancements to Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, their fully managed file storage service. The updates focus on increasing scalability, performance, and integration capabilities while reducing complexity for enterprise workloads.

Key improvements include throughput increases to 30GiBps for Premium and Extreme service levels, independent scaling of capacity and performance for the Flex service level, integration with Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Platform, and support for Google Cloud Assured Workloads.

Research Note: Azure NetApp Files Enhancements

NetApp Logo

NetApp recently announced enhancements to their Azure NetApp Files (ANF) offering, introducing a new Flexible service level along with new capabilities to provide greater control over storage resources.

Quick Take: Databricks Acquires Fennel

Deal

Databricks announced the acquisition of Fennel, a specialized platform focused on feature engineering for machine learning applications. This acquisition bolsters Databricks’ capabilities in feature engineering, especially for real-time and streaming data applications.

Research Note: UALink Consortium Releases UALink 1.0

UALink

The UALink Consortium recently released its Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) 1.0 specification. This industry-backed standard challenges the dominance of NVIDIA’s proprietary NVLink/NVSwitch memory fabric with an open alternative for high-performance accelerator interconnect technology.

Research Note: Hammerspace $100M Series B to Accelerate AI Infrastructure Growth

Hammerspace

Hammerspace, which provides a high-performance data orchestration solution for AI and hybrid cloud environments, announced it’s raised $100 million in a Series B funding round.

The round, led by Altimeter Capital and including participation from ARK Invest and other strategic investors, values Hammerspace at more than $500 million.

Research Note: Dynatrace & AWS New Strategic Collaboration

Deal

Dynatrace and AWS announced a multi-year strategic collaboration agreement, deepening their decade-long partnership that began in 2014. This expanded collaboration aims to address enterprise challenges in digital transformation through enhanced AI-powered observability and security solutions.

OFC 2025: Optical Interconnects Take Center Stage in the AI-First Data Center

OFC 2025

AI is reshaping the data center, bringing networking along for the ride. It’s clear that optical networking is rapidly moving from a back-end concern to a front-line enabler of next-generation infrastructure.

AI workloads, with their massive datasets, distributed training pipelines, and high-performance compute requirements, demand interconnect solutions that combine extreme bandwidth with low power consumption and low latency. At last month’s OFC 2025 event in San Francisco, this shift was unmistakable.

Key Takeaways: Microsoft FabCon 2025

Microsoft Fabric

At Microsoft’s second annual Fabric Community Conference (FabCon) 2025, held earlier this month in Las Vegas, the company unveiled several significant announcements that together enhance its unified data platform. The updates to Fabric focus on improving data security, AI integration, and streamlined data management.

Research Note: HPE Updates Aruba Networking Central

HPE Aruba Buildling

Hewlett Packard Enterprise recently announced significant enhancements to its HPE Aruba Networking Central platform, which expand its deployment options and strengthen AI and analytics capabilities. The platform now supports four distinct deployment models: public cloud SaaS, virtual private cloud, on-premises, and network-as-a-service.  

Research Note: Cohesity’s Updates Cyber-Resilience for Google Cloud

Abstract image representing cybersecurity

At Google Cloud Next 2025, Cohesity announced several enhancements to its cyber resilience portfolio that provide deeper integrations with Google Cloud’s security capabilities. The announcements focus on AI-driven threat intelligence, incident response, secure recovery environments, and operational integration with Google Security Operations.

Research Note: Rubrik Expands Annapurna to GCP

Rubrik Annapurna

At Google Cloud Next 2025, Rubrik announced the expansion of Rubrik Annapurna, its API-driven AI data security and governance platform, to Google Cloud. The announcement sees Rubrik delivering Annapurna as a secure data access layer for AI-driven application development within Google’s Agentspace framework.

Research Note: Anthropic/Databricks Partnership

Deal

Anthropic recently announced a new five-year strategic partnership with Databricks to integrate its Claude language models, including the newly released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, into the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.

The deal, valued at approximately $100 million, will allow Databricks’ enterprise customers to build, deploy, and govern AI agents that operate directly on their proprietary enterprise data. Databricks will offer Claude models natively through its platform across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

Research Note: IBM QisKit 2.0

IBM Quantum

IBM recently released Qiskit SDK v2.0, a major update to its open-source quantum software development kit. The new release is a key element of IBM’s long-term strategy to support utility-scale quantum computing by delivering architectural improvements, higher performance, and expanded interoperability with classical HPC systems.

Dryad Networks: Using LoRaWAN to Protect Forests and Promote Sustainability

Dryad

Dryad Networks is making waves in the growing realm of environmental technology with its innovative use of LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network). Self-described as an “impact for profit” company, Dryad is on a mission to deploy ultra-early fire detection and environmental monitoring systems into remote, densely forested regions throughout the world. 

Research Note: Enhanced Google Cloud NetApp Volumes

NetApp Logo

At the 2025 Google Cloud Next event, NetApp and Google Cloud announced a significant expansion of capabilities for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, their jointly developed fully managed file storage offering.

The updates provide enhance performance, scalability, and integration with AI and compliance frameworks, targeting large-scale enterprise workloads

NAND Insider Newsletter: April 6 2025

Newspaper

Each week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, April 6, 2025.

Quick Take: IBM Acquires Hakkoda, Expands Consulting Reach

Deal

IBM has announced its acquisition of Hakkoda, a New York-based data and AI consultancy, as part of its strategy to expand its consulting services, particularly in the financial services, public sector, and healthcare and life sciences industries.

Research Note: OpenText Titanium X in CE 25.2

OpenText

OpenText recently launched Titanium X, part of its Cloud Editions (CE) 25.2 release, its most comprehensive AI-native upgrade across all major product clouds. The release introduces new AI agents, expanded automation capabilities, and integrated cloud security enhancements.

Quick Take: Qualcomm Acquires VinAI’s MovianAI Division

Deal

Qualcomm last week announced its acquisition of MovianAI, the generative AI division of VinAI, a leading Vietnamese AI research firm within the Vingroup ecosystem. The acquisition will enhance Qualcomm’s generative AI R&D capabilities by bringing VinAI’s deep expertise in AI, machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing to its already-strong arsenal.

Research Note: Portworx Enhanced Kubernetes VM Support

Portworx KC EMEA 25

At this week’s Kubecon event, Portworx announced significant updates to its Enterprise 3.3 and Portworx Backup solutions, focused on enabling virtualization administrators to run virtual machines natively in Kubernetes environments.

NAND Insider Newsletter: March 30 2025

Newsletter

Every week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, March 30, 2025.

Research Note: Siemens Acquires Altair Engineering

Deal

Siemens AG recently announced the acquisition of Altair Engineering, a leading provider of industrial simulation and HPC software, for an enterprise value of approximately $10 billion.

This is Siemens’ largest acquisition to date and expands the company’s industrial software portfolio with core technologies in mechanical and electromagnetic simulation, data science, AI, and HPC.

Research Note: Verizon Trusted Connection

Abstract image representing cybersecurity

Earlier this month at MWC 2025, Verizon Business announced the release of its new Verizon Trusted Connection, a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and Security Service Edge (SSE) platform that unifies secure connectivity and policy enforcement across enterprise devices, networks, and applications.

The new offering sees Verizon targeting midsize enterprises seeking to consolidate security and networking services under a single provider and management interface.

Research Note: Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE for 5G

Palo Alto Networks Prisma 5G SASE

Earlier this month at MWC 2025, Palo Alto Networks announced the general availability of Prisma SASE 5G, its new cloud-delivered cybersecurity solution for enterprises leveraging 5G connectivity.

The offering expands the company’s SASE portfolio to provide integrated Zero Trust security for 5G-enabled infrastructure, including mobile users, IoT/OT devices, and SD-WAN endpoints.

Research Note: Lenovo AI Announcements @ GTC 2025

Lenovo logo

At NVIDIA GTC 2025, Lenovo showed off its latest Hybrid AI Factory platforms in partnership with NVIDIA, focused on agentic AI.

The Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage framework integrates a full-stack hardware and software solution, optimized for both private and public AI model deployments, and spans on-prem, edge, and cloud environments.

NAND Insider Newsletter: March 24, 2025

Newspaper

Every week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, March 24, 2025.

Research Note: NetApp AI Data Announcements @ GTC 2025

NetApp

At the recent GTC 2025 event, NetApp announced, in collaboration with NVIDIA, a comprehensive set of product validations, certifications, and architectural enhancements to its intelligent data products.

The announcements include NetApp’s integration with the NVIDIA AI Data Platform, support for NVIDIA’s latest accelerated computing systems, and expanded availability of enterprise-grade AI infrastructure offerings, including NetApp AFF A90 and NetApp AIPod.

Metadata: The Silent Bottleneck in AI Infrastructure

IT Engineers

One of the most impactful but underappreciated architectural changes impacting storage performance for AI is how these solutions manage metadata. Separating metadata processing from data storage unlocks significant gains in performance, scalability, and efficiency across AI workloads. Let’s look at why metadata processing matters for AI.

Research Note: WEKA Augmented Memory Grid

WEKA Augmented Memory Grid

At the recent NVIDIA GTC conference, WEKA announced the general availability of its Augmented Memory Grid, a software-defined storage extension engineered to mitigate the limitations of GPU memory during large-scale AI inferencing.

The Augmented Memory Grid is a new approach that integrates with the WEKA Data Platform and leverages NVIDIA Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage (GDS) to bypass CPU bottlenecks and deliver data directly to GPU memory with microsecond latency.

Research Note: HPE’s New Full-Stack Enterprise AI Infrastructure Offerings

At the recent NVIDIA GTC 2025, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and NVIDIA jointly introduced NVIDIA AI Computing by HPE, full-stack AI infrastructure offerings targeting enterprise deployment of generative, agentic, and physical AI workloads.

The solutions span private cloud AI platforms, observability and management software, reference blueprints, AI development environments, and new AI-optimized servers featuring NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture.

Liquid Cooling is Front & Center at GTC 2025

Heatwave

One thing was clear at the just-wrapped NVIDIA GTC event: the race to cool the next generation of HPC and AI systems is intensifying.

Let’s take a quick look at some of our favorite announcements.

Research Note: HPE Storage Enhancements for AI

HPE AI Storage

At NVIDIA GTC 2025, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a slew of new storage capabilities, including a new unified data layer. These capabilities are designed to accelerate AI adoption by integrating structured and unstructured data across multi-vendor and multi-cloud environments.

NVIDIA GTC 2025: The Super Bowl of AI

NVIDIA GTC 2025 Storage

If you thought AI was already moving fast, buckle up, Jensen Huang threw more fuel on the fire. NVIDIA’s GTC 2025 keynote wasn’t just about new GPUs; it was a full-scale vision of computing’s future, one where AI isn’t just a tool — it’s the foundation of everything.

Let’s look at what Jensen talk about during his 2+ hour keynote.

Quick Take: Google’s $32B Wiz Acquisition

Deal

Google today announced its intent to acquire cybersecurity start-up Wiz for a staggering $32 billion in an all-cash deal. This acquisition is one of the largest ever cybersecurity deals.

Research Note: VDURA V5000 All-Flash AI Storage Appliance

VDURA Architecture

VDURA recently announced its new V5000 All-Flash Appliance, a high-performance storage solution engineered for AI and high-performance computing workloads. The system integrates with the VDURA V11 Data Platform for a combination of high throughput, low-latency access, and seamless scalability.

Research Note: Pure Storage FlashBlade//EXA

Pure Storage FlashBlade//EXA

Pure Storage recently announced the launch of its new FlashBlade//EXA, a high-performance storage platform designed for AI and HPC workloads. FlashBlade//EXA extends the company’s Purity operating environment and DirectFlash technology to provide extreme performance, scalability, and metadata management that addresses the increasing demands of AI-driven applications.

NAND Insider Newsletter: March 10, 2025

Newsletter

Every week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, March 10, 2025.

Research Note: Couchbase Edge Server for Offline-First Data Processing

Couchbase Edge Server

Couchbase recently announced its new Couchbase Edge Server, a lightweight, offline-first database and sync solution designed for edge computing environments. The new solution extends Couchbase’s mobile data synchronization capabilities to resource-constrained deployments where full-scale database solutions are not feasible.

CoreWeave’s Wild Ride Towards IPO

CoreWeave

CoreWeave, the AI-focused cloud provider that’s that was early in catching and riding the generative AI boom, is officially gunning for the big leagues. The NVIDIA-backed company has filed for an IPO, looking to capitalize on the insatiable demand for AI compute.

That’s big news for the AI infrastructure world, where CoreWeave has rapidly positioned itself as a major player, taking on the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

But before you start picturing ringing bells on Wall Street and champagne toasts, there’s more to the story. A lot more.

Research Note: ServiceNow to Acquire Moveworks

Deal

ServiceNow has agreed to acquire Moveworks, an enterprise AI assistant and search technology provider. The cash-and-stock transaction, expected to close in the second half of 2025, is ServiceNow’s largest acquisition.

The acquisition strengthens ServiceNow’s agentic AI strategy and expands its capabilities in AI-driven enterprise automation, employee experience, and search.

Research Note: IBM FlashSystem C200 High-Capacity Flash Archive

IBM FlashSystem C200

IBM recently announced its FlashSystem C200, a new storage platform integrating 46 TB QLC NAND drives to provide an archive tier within a FlashSystem grid. The C200 expands IBM’s FlashSystem portfolio with a high-density flash solution that competes with traditional nearline HDD storage.

IBM claims the C200 provides flash-like performance with QLC-level economics, enhanced endurance, and seamless grid integration.

March Survey Round-Up: AI is Booming, But Data Quality & Security Haunt Leaders

Survey Says

Who doesn’t love a good survey? We’ve combed through a bumper crop of new surveys on AI and tech trends for 2025 to find the bottom line: Executives can’t pump the brakes on AI spending — but lousy data, security holes, and an alarming skills gap could cause serious headaches.

Let’s look at what we’ve learned from February’s batch of surveys tell us about the state of enterprise IT.

Research Note: Rubrik Expanded Cyber-Resilience Capabilities

Rubrik recently announced new cyber-resilience features to strengthen data protection across public cloud, SaaS, and on-premises environments. The latest enhancements focus on threat detection, data protection, identity recovery, and automated recovery processes to mitigate cyberattack risks.

Research Note: Check Point & Wiz Enter Strategic Partnership

Deal

Wiz and Check Point recently announced a strategic partnership to integrate cloud network security with cloud-native application protection. The collaboration will merge Check Point’s AI-driven cloud security and networking capabilities with Wiz’s Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP).

NAND Insider Newsletter: March 3, 2025

Newspaper

Every week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, March 3, 2025.

Research Note: NVIDIA & Cisco Partner on Spectrum-X

NVIDIA Spectrum-X

Cisco and NVIDIA announced an expanded partnership to unify AI data center networking by integrating Cisco Silicon One with NVIDIA Spectrum-X.

The companies will create a joint architecture that supports high-performance, low-latency AI workloads across enterprise and cloud environments.

Quick Take: Ambient IoT Alliance

Deal

The newly launched Ambient IoT Alliance aims to develop and promote a global ecosystem for ambient IoT, which refers to battery-free, energy-harvesting devices that seamlessly connect to existing wireless networks. These devices can track real-time data such as location, temperature, humidity, and more—all without requiring traditional power sources.

Research Note: IBM to Acquire DataStax

Deal

IBM recently announced its intent to acquire DataStax, which specializes in NoSQL and vector database solutions built on Apache Cassandra.

The acquisition aligns with IBM’s broader strategy to enhance its watsonx enterprise AI stack by integrating advanced data management capabilities, particularly for handling unstructured and semi-structured data.

Research Note: OpenText Core Threat Detection & Response

OpenText Cyber Cloud

OpenText recently announced its new Core Threat Detection and Response, an AI-driven cybersecurity solution that will become generally available with its Cloud Editions 25.2.

The new platform integrates with Microsoft security tools, including Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Entra ID, and Microsoft Security Copilot, to enhance threat detection and response capabilities.
The solution operates as an Open XDR (Extended Detection and Response) platform, enabling enterprises to integrate telemetry from multiple security tools and applications.

Research Note: IBM Granite 3.2 Models

IBM sign

IBM recently introduced Granite 3.2, bringing significant new capabilities to its AI model lineup that brings enhanced reasoning, multimodal capabilities, improved forecasting, and more efficient safety models.

Research Note: WEKA & HPE Set SpecStorage Records

Data Center

WEKA and HPE recently announced record-breaking results across all five benchmark workloads in the SPECstorage Solution 2020 suite. The results were achieved using the WEKA Data Platform on the HPE Alletra Storage Server 4110, powered by Intel Xeon processors.

The results show the system’s ability to handle data-intensive workloads, including AI, genomics, software development, and video analytics, with high efficiency and low latency.

NAND Insider Newsletter: February 17, 2025

Newsletter

Every week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, February 17, 2025.

Research Note: HPE ProLiant Gen12 Servers

HPE ProLiant Gen12

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) recently introduced eight new ProLiant Compute Gen12 servers for enhanced security, performance optimization, and AI-powered management. These servers will feature the upcoming Intel Xeon 6 processors and are built for data centers and edge environments.

Research Note: SAP Business Data Cloud & Databricks Partnership

SAP BDC

SAP recently announced SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC), a fully managed SaaS platform that unifies SAP and third-party data while embedding AI-driven analytics and governance capabilities.

The new solution expands upon SAP Datasphere and integrates with Databricks’ Lakehouse technology to improve data unification, AI adoption, and advanced analytics.

Quick Take: Juniper Network’s Q4 Earnings

Juniper Networks

While waiting for its pending acquisition by Hewlett Packard Enterprise to become unstuck by recent regulatory scrutiny, Juniper Networks reported strong earnings that showa return to revenue growth, posting a 3% year-over-year increase and a 5% sequential jump.

Research Note: Deloitte & May Mobility Partner on Transparent Autonomous Vehicle Safety

Deal

Deloitte and May Mobility recently announced a strategic partnership to improve safety in autonomous transportation through data analytics. By combining Deloitte’s expertise in data analysis with May Mobility’s autonomous vehicle (AV) technology, the two companies will track safety events, provide actionable insights, and help cities and businesses optimize their AV systems.

Research Note: Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud

Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud

Palo Alto Networks recently introduced Cortex Cloud, its integrated cloud security and security operations (SecOps) platform that consolidates the capabilities of Prisma Cloud and Cortex CDR.

The new platform provides a unified approach to managing cloud security risks, real-time threat prevention, and automated response workflows.

Quick Take: CQ4’24 Cloud Earnings

Image of a Cloud

The top three US public cloud providers — Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud — each reported strong but slightly decelerating growth for calendar Q4 2024. The increasing importance of AI workloads, rising capital expenditures, and shifts in customer spending patterns all impacted earnings and guidance for the quarter.

Research Note: Delinea Platform Enhancements

Abstract image representing cybersecurity

Delinea recently introduced new features to its cloud-native identity security platform, focusing on centralized identity lifecycle management, credential security, and behavioral analytics.

The updates give enterprises enhanced visibility, automation, and security control over human and non-human identities. They also include mobile access via the new Delinea Platform App, which supports remote identity and access management (IAM).

Research Note: Databricks Acquires BladeBridge

Deal

Databricks announced the acquisition of BladeBridge, a provider of AI-powered migration solutions, to facilitate the transition of enterprise data warehouses to Databricks SQL (DBSQL).

BladeBridge automates the migration of workloads from over 20 different data warehouses and ETL platforms, using large language models for code analysis, conversion, and validation.

Research Note: CyberArk/SentinelOne Partnership

Deal

CyberArk and SentinelOne have formed a strategic partnership to integrate CyberArk’s Endpoint Privilege Manager (EPM) with SentinelOne’s Singularity XDR platform.
The collaboration enhances endpoint security by combining privilege management with advanced threat detection and response capabilities.

Research Report: Understanding VMware Alternatives

Digital Transformation

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has left a lasting impact on the enterprise IT landscape. Promising simplification, Broadcom’s licensing and bundling changes have instead created confusion, increased costs, and led to widespread dissatisfaction among VMware customers. Many of these customers are actively exploring alternatives, driven by frustration and the need to future-proof their IT environments. This Research Report takes a look at how to best approach looking for a VMware alternative.

Research Note: AMG Systems’ New Hardened NTP Time Servers

Time

AMG Systems recently introduced its new line of NTP Servers aimed at closed industrial networks needing a secure and industrial hardened time synching solution. The product line consists of four models allowing for AC/DC power flexibility and both DIN Rail and 19-inch rack mounting options.

Infrastructure News Roundup: January 2025

Datacenter

January isn’t usually a big month for announcements related to enterprise infrastructure, but then this isn’t a normal January. Let’s look at what happened.

Research Note: ServiceNow Unveils New AI Agent Capabilities

ServiceNow

ServiceNow announced the expansion of its agentic AI capabilities by introducing the AI Agent Orchestrator and AI Agent Studio. The new capabilities provide centralized coordination of AI agents within enterprise workflows, integrating with the ServiceNow Platform to improve automation and task execution across IT, HR, customer service, and other business functions.

Research Note: Kioxia’s Open Source AiSAQ ANN Search

Kioxia RAG SSD

Today, Kioxia announced the open-source release of All-in-Storage ANNS with Product Quantization (AiSAQ), an approximate nearest neighbor search (ANNS) technology optimized for SSD-based storage. AiSAQ enables large-scale retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workloads by offloading vector data from DRAM to SSDs, significantly reducing memory requirements.

Research Note: Komprise PII Protection Capabilities

Komprise recently introduced new capabilities in its Smart Data Workflow Manager, enhancing its ability to detect and protect personally identifiable information (PII) within unstructured data environments.

The enhanced features are currently in early access and are expected to be generally available by the end of Q1 2025 as part of the Komprise Intelligent Data Management Platform.

Research Note: Cisco AI Defense

Cisco logo

Cisco recently introduced its Cisco AI Defense, its new enterprise security solution to address the growing risks associated with AI adoption in multi-cloud and multi-model environments.

Research Note: DeepSeek’s Impact on IT Infrastructure Market

DeepSeek

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek recently introduced an AI model, DeepSeek-R1l that the company claims that it matches or surpasses models from industry. The move created significant buzz in the AI industry. Though the claims remain unverified, the potential to democratize AI training and fundamentally alter industry dynamics is clear.

The AI Debate at Davos: Concerns and Controversies Surrounding Stargate

World Economic Forum

The annual World Economic Forum in Davos is known for sparking high-profile discussions on global challenges, and this year was no exception. Against the backdrop of the recently announced $500 billion Stargate Project — an ambitious AI infrastructure initiative led by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle—prominent figures in artificial intelligence (AI) raised concerns about the future of the technology and its societal implications.

Meta’s AI Ambitions in the Wake of Stargate

Meta AI

As the tech world buzzes about Project Stargate, Meta has quietly, but assertively, announced its own transformative AI initiatives. While the $500 billion Stargate Project promises to build exclusive, centralized AI infrastructure for OpenAI, Meta is charting a different course. With a focus on scalability, accessibility, and open-source innovation, Meta’s AI moves reflect a strategic vision that balances ambition with practicality.