Friday Tech News

9/22/2023 - Cisco's Big Week

Author

Phil Moroni
September 22, 2023

Good morning and Happy Friday!

Big week in Tech! Arguably one of the biggest with the #Splunk acquisition by Cisco. This weeks articles share the importance of cross collaboration between providers to enable choice and flexibility, as well as the use of Gen AI to enhance user experiences and provide insight and recommendations through contextual assistance. Finally, security and compliance is forefront per usual and we review some updates for Zero Trust Access, Data Protection, and Incident Response.

Thank you so much for making this a part of your Friday morning coffee time. I'm Phil Moroni, and I'm an Account Executive in the Information Technology Services Industry here with another edition of Friday Tech News!

What is this? This is a newsletter that provides updates and insights on the latest trends and developments in the technology industry. I am a professional who specializes in supporting IT leaders in evaluating, investing, and managing people, processes, and technology tools that support their businesses.

Each week, I summarize relevant industry updates from popular Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM's), software publishers, and managed providers. The goal of my research and newsletter is to keep you informed about current trends and events that may impact your business from a trusted and reputable source. It's just information I'm sharing, and, I follow and work with hundreds of partners in the industry, keeping track of their growth, changes, and evolution so that you don't have to.

Bottom Line: As you focus on improving your business through digital initiatives, my commitment is to keep you informed of the fast-paced changes and trends taking place so that you can plan ahead and stay ahead of the game.

Key areas of focus for me are:

  1. Cloud Computing, Security, Trends

  2. Developer & Security Tools

  3. Networking & Infrastructure Tools

  4. End User Tools & Workspace Tech

  5. Emerging Technologies and Future Concepts

If you have any questions, would like information about any specific vendors I follow, or would like to have a conversation about any topic that is challenging you, I invite you to engage with me! I value feedback immensely and would love to know what you find valuable about this newsletter so feel free to reach out!

Thank you for reading, and stay digitally and physically safe!

Phil

OEM News & Updates 📰

  • The major players are working together, and collaboration in increased cloud adoption between the hyperscale providers is essential. Glad to see this announcement as it just means more choice and flexibility for customers.

  • Really great to see from Open AI. Finding weaknesses in their systems before they’re exploited by malicious actors is absolutely critical with the rate at which people are adopting and using Generative AI in the workforce.

  • Massive announcement from ServiceNow to embed Gen AI across all workflows on the Now Platform. I’m really curious to see how Generative AI can help their customers make better decisions by providing insights and recommendations that humans otherwise wouldn’t detect. Very cool stuff. Expect to hear more from a friend of mine soon from ServiceNow.

  • This works by synchronizing secrets between Vault and Kubernetes. This means that secrets can be stored and managed in a centralized location and applications can access them securely from within k8s.

    • Great improvements in security posture and compliance for K8s applications.

  • A new, open and extensible platform for DevSecOps from code to cloud monitoring has been unveiled from CloudBees. It can help accelerate software delivery lifecycles, improve security, and compliance.

  • The combined solution aims to provide a hollistic view of the health of the workforce’s connection and a digital experience score that measures and scores the employee experience. It’ll enable IT teams to proactively detect and remediate experience issues before they impact the employees. Pretty cool.

  • Users can leverage a multitude of capabilities from both providers here. Use Aporia’s privacy first mode to ensure that no sensitive data leaves your snowflake environment, monitor your models without employing risky data sampling techniques, etc…

  • No more HyperFlex. Nutanix is a great option for those still in the data center that want to benefit from cloud capabilities. Expect Cisco servers, networking, security, and management with Nutanix’s cloud platform and software defined storage.

  • Pretty self explanatory, but I see more and more enterprises trying to utilize the storage they get with OneDrive, so hopefully this is a welcomed announcement. Offline mode will automatically sync changes made by the users when they restore internet connection and will be in preview by November 2023.

  • This integration allows customers to access data across both platforms as if they are housed in a single location, without the need to move or copy data, and to use their data and AI models to deliver better customer experiences.

  • There’s been a number of these type of partnerships, so I’m wondering if there’s growing demand in simplifying IT modernization for data requirements.

  • I’m a big fan of Cyolo and have been for a while. Their secure remote access solution is a game changer, and of course, it comes with an impressive founder pedigree. If you’re in the market for secure remote access for IT/OT/ICS, check them out for sure.

  • New platform capabilities include:

    • Smartsheet Control Center - allows customers to run more projects consistently at scale and with ease

    • Improved systems for data storage, sharing, loading, and processing

    • Enhanced views for data visualization such as Timeline View, Grid View, and Card View

    • Create modern, colorful, and data rich dashboards with ease from custom themes and widgets.

  • New services offerings from Cybellum.

  • Red Hat OpenShift on OCI is another great example of major OEM’s playing nicely. The partnership aims to provide customers with a consistent cloud operating model as well as performance, security, and cost benefits.

  • StackPath now available in GCP marketplace

  • If you’ve been paying attention, this is a great announcement and one that everybody who runs cloud should pay attention to.

  • have fun playing 🙂 

  • Did somebody say Adobe Sign with M36, Azure, and D365? Yep. They did. Again - great cross collaboration between big players in cloud technology.

  • Copilot aims to provide users with personalized and contextual assistance across various applications and devices. Copilot will leverage NLP and LLMs to understand users’ request and generate or execute appropriate responses. It’ll work as an app or a right click option. It’ll roll out in Windows 11 starting on 9/26/2023.

  • The update here will enable Corelight to provide its NDR technology to support various GCP and Mandiant platforms such as Mandiant Managed Defense, Chronicle Security Operations, and Mandiant Consulting. Expect the usual here now with AI and LLMs being involved to create a unified AI companion experience across a users’ whole life.

  • Big announcement from Harness this week. 4 new modules include:

    • Harness Code Repository - a premium module based on open source Gitness. It adds features such as collaborative code reviews, advanced governance, policy enforcement, and seamless integration with other dev and deployent tools.

    • Harness Internal Developer Portal - helps orgs accelerate new service onboarding by simplifying the process of setting up infrastructure, configuring frameworks, establishing CI/CD pipelines, and more.

    • Harness Infrastructure as Code Management - IaC tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, and Pulumi for automation and provisioning management.

    • Harness Software Supply Chain Assurance - this helps orgs ensure the integrity and security of their software artifacts and dependencies throughout the software delivery lifecycle.

  • New offerings include:

    • Oracle Network Analytics Suite - a cloud native suite of analytics that combines network function data and ML and AI to help operators make more informed automated decisions around performance and stability of their entire 5G network core.

    • Autonomous Data Warehouse - an autonomous database powered by ML and optimized for analytics workloads. New innovations include a self-service data marketplace, a data integration service, a data quality service, and a data science service.

    • Analytics Cloud - a cloud based platform that provides self-service analytics, augmented analytics, and Gen AI interactions for business users. Expect AI powered document understanding, contextual insights, and collaboration software integrations.

Fal.con 2023 🦅 

I know it’s an eagle emoji, but, I couldn’t help but blast out some specific news from CrowdStrike’s big conference (Fal.con) this week. With their acquisition of Bionic, plus these announcements from great OEM’s, I’m eager to see what the future holds for the platform.

  • CrowdStrike has launched Falcon Foundry, the cybersecurity industry’s first no-code application development platform, which enables customers and partners to create their own customer applications using the data, automation, and cloud scale infrastructure of the Falcon platform. It’s intuitive, modern, and visual app development interface guides users through the process of building an app with step-by-step instructions and a drag-and drop studio. Very cool and unexpected from my end.

Other announcements from the conference and OEM’s:

Articles I Liked This Week 💡

  • Advantages: Platforms enable rapid application development, prototyping, and launching of apps quickly

  • Trade offs: Platforms may have limitations in customization, scalability, security, and integration with existing systems or other cloud services.

  • AI is becoming a critical part of the enterprise tool stack, especially for app, cloud native, and data security.

  • AI has increased the need for cybersecurity and stricter data storage and access measures.

  • AI has led to more cyber investments as cyber crime and regulation pose more challenges.

  • AI application security tools are in high demand but there is some conflict over who owns Gen AI responsibility in the enterprise.

Tech Funding & M&A 💸

  • Splunk is a California based cybersecurity platform that offers solutions such as application performance monitoring, data orchestration, SIEM, and threat detection for businesses.

  • This shook the internet and is the biggest acquisition Cisco has made to date.

  • Raises a NUMBER of questions around consolidation of vendor partners / contract vehicles, EA’s, and security. It’s a very interesting move for a premium by Cisco.

  • They also pulled out of talks with S1 which would be interesting. Clearly Cisco is trying to take on the likes of some of the big Software players out there.

  • Linear is a California based SaaS platform that provides solutions including issue tracking and project management for businesses.

  • Dragos is a Maryland based cybersecurity platform that offers solutions such as vulnerability management, and threat detection for businesses.

  • Cato Networks is an Israel based SASE platform that provides solutions such as DLP and SaaS optimization for enterprises.

  • Alcion is a California based AI-driven backup-as-a-service platform that provides solutions such as threat detection and backup scheduling for enterprises.

  • Legit Security is an Israel based cybersecurity platform that offers solutions such as cloud traceability and software supply chain security for enterprises.

  • Bionic is an Israel based application security posture management (ASPM) platform that reduces and mitigates security, data privacy, and operational risks for cloud applications.

  • Airkit.ai is a California based low-code AI platform that enables e-comm brands to build omnichannel customer engagement applications.

Meme of the week 🤣

Recommendations 👉🏻

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