Friday Tech News

12/30/2022

Author

Phil Moroni
December 30, 2022

Good morning and Happy Friday!

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 and procurement 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, and stay digitally and physically safe!

Phil

OEM News & Updates

Articles I Liked This Week

Tech Funding & M&A

2022 Analysis

Below, you'll find the top 25 vendors of 2022. No - this isn't some curated awards list...this is just a list of the number of mentions I tracked with significant OEM News & Update announcements, funding rounds, etc...

Not surprising to see the 3 hyperscalers up at the top of the stack respectively...Next year I'll likely curate it a bit further to specify Azure vs O365...but regardless, it's some interesting data to look at. I found it intriguing to see Palo Alto Networks and Wiz here and looked back through the data and loved what I saw...both vendors addressed a ton of real time needs for their clients in 2022 and released major enhancements to their portfolios rapidly to enhance the value they bring to their clients - great stuff to see.

In addition to this, I found it interesting to see PURE Storage up ahead of DELL. If you're still evaluating on-premises storage options, I'd love to hear from you on what you're using and why, and, if you're evaluating platforms from these providers. I've always been a fan of PURE storage - their entire experience is easy and their people are wonderful. With that said, what else do you find interesting about this data?

2023 Trends, Insights, and Predictions

Something I've long wanted to do with Tech News is analyze all the data that I've captured and form interpretations / opinions on my own. This year, I've decided to take a quick dive into some trends and predictions I think are relevant as we move into 2023. So...let's jump in.

Cloud Cost Optimization

  • Cloud Cost Optimization will be a top priority for businesses in 2023. The practice of continuously monitoring cloud costs and optimizing them to improve financial performance and management of the cloud is called FinOps. FinOps gained steam in 2022 and will become a top priority for businesses as cloud migrations continue and grow in 2023. FinOps involves a range of activities, including cost optimization, budget management, forecasting, and chargeback by subscription or service. With the adoption of Azure, GCP, and AWS, companies will look to drive cost optimization thru the enterprise to optimize their financial positions with cloud service providers. Expect FinOps to be a critical part of everyone's life in 2023 - not just the procurement team or CCoE (Cloud Center of Excellence).

  • FinOps works best when Reserved Instances and Savings Plans can be utilized. Therefore, in order to maximize your discounts, think about committing to long term use. This will require large scale application dependency mapping and hard exercises for your teams, but it will be worth it to plan out and understand. your committed use to one of the major providers. Your best bet is to work with a practitioner who's handled large scale investments like this and offers a programmatic approach to managing cloud assets and costs. If you need recommendations, ping me!

  • Finally, don't forget the marketplace(s). There are hundreds of qualified Independent Software Vendors (ISV) and growing in the AWS marketplace, which arguably is the leader in the marketplace space. If you need this list, holler! If you know your software catalog is flexible in where it can be purchased from, consider shifting that spend thru your contracted commitments to help bolster your Enterprise Discount Program (EDP) spend, and burn it down at the same time.

    • Plan this out with all necessary parties including application / software owner + security team contacts

    • Tagging is absolutely critical here to know where spend is coming from. How you group subscriptions and services they utilize is all part of FinOps, and knowing where to extrapolate marketplace bloat is important for your finance team.

    • It's an art and a science and will take time to get good at - keep going and work the problems you encounter one by one.

  • Goals here include establishing the CCOE, shifting responsibility of costs to developers, and obviously reducing costs and spend to an optimal state.

Tool Consolidation

  • IT Tool consolidation is the process of simplifying an organization's information technology (IT) infrastructure by reducing the number of tools and systems in use. This can be achieved through a variety of methods, such as replacing multiple tools with a single, more comprehensible tool or platform service.

  • Enterprise businesses should make IT Tool Consolidation a priority in 2023 to help reduce costs and complexity through the enterprise. Did you know the average security program is using anywhere from 30 to 70 tools? How are you supposed to gain context from that many interfaces and processes?

  • It's amazing how much good software and technology is out there. That said, buying the next great shiny thing won't be what Security teams or Infrastructures need to do in 2023. Rather, they'll look inward to consolidate, exploring how some tools offer more robust services that meet multiple use cases and can be used across teams and business units. Tool sprawl and IT asset management (ITAM) must be taken more seriously in 2023. IT leaders should look at their existing investments and work with a consultative Value Added Reseller (VAR) or System Integrator (SI) who can help you:

    • Identify redundancy

    • Identify platform plays and multi-use case technologies

    • Train you on how to better utilize the tools you'll keep

    • Work Work with large amounts of Software vendors for best pricing considerations

  • Goals here include improved efficiency, reduced complexity, and lower costs in total.

That's it! I just wanted to leave a couple predictions and thoughts for 202And that's it for me this year. I've really enjoyed getting to write more and track vendors, trends, and insights in 2022.

If you've read my work this year, please know how grateful I am to you and will continue to work hard to bring you the most relevant, concise news briefing the industry has to offer on a weekly basis.

Take care, and have a safe and happy New Year with your friends, family, and loved ones.

Phil

Meme of the week