Technology, Media & Telecommunications Research Agenda 2024
S&P Global Market Intelligence provides essential insight into the pace and extent of digital transformation across the global technology, media and telecom industries. Through the 451 Research and Kagan products, our team offers differentiated insight and data on adoption, innovation and disruption across the technology, media and telecom markets, backed by a global team of industry experts, and delivered via a range of syndicated qualitative and quantitative research, strategic consulting solutions, go-to-market services, and live events.
Our research is organized into channels that align with the prevailing topics driving digital transformation. The research agenda for each channel outlines key themes and questions our research will address and analyst coverage and planned deliverables over the coming year to support our clients’ critical business decisions. The nature of this transformation means that many trends, such as generative AI, span multiple channels. Our research approach encourages analyst collaboration both within and between channels and other deep sector business units across S&P, allowing us to surface emerging trends before anyone else.
Find more information on our Technology Research and request a demo of 451 Research.
Find more information on our Media and Telecommunications Research and request a demo of our research on S&P Capital IQ Pro.
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Applied Infrastructure & DevOps
Analyst Team
Research Areas
Hybrid cloud storage for a hybrid IT landscape
Coverage Analysts
Henry Baltazar, Craig Matsumoto, Jean Atelsek
Key topics & questions addressed
- Data repatriation is becoming more common for organizations and is driven by several factors including data sovereignty requirements and cost concerns.
- Egress charges continue to have a negative impact on the hybrid and multicloud aspirations of organizations.
- Rapid data growth and limited budgets are forcing organizations to look beyond on-premises storage and data protection resources to leverage cloud services.
Enterprise edge infrastructure: innovation and opportunity
Coverage Analysts
Tiny Haynes, Brian Partridge, Henry Baltazar, John Abbott, Mike Fratto, Dan Thompson, Kelly Morgan, Rich Karpinski
Key topics & questions addressed
- Which use cases are driving enterprise edge deployments?
- Which workloads are supporting (or will support) these deployments? Where will they be deployed (edge, cloud, hybrid), and how (VM, containers, bare metal)?
- What are the infrastructure requirements to support these deployments (compute, storage, networking, accelerators, power, footprint, noise level, ruggedization, etc.)?
- What is the business case for adopting edge?
- How will the colocation market need to adapt to meet edge demand?
- How will edge be orchestrated and run?
Securely and reliably interconnecting the edge
Coverage Analysts
Tiny Haynes, Mike Fratto, Craig Matsumoto, Brian Partridge
Key topics & questions addressed
- How will edge connectivity demands evolve over time?
- How will enterprises stitch together networking capabilities into a reliable, manageable and cohesive network?
- What is the competitive and cooperative landscape for edge networking?
- What is the role of software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN), cloud-native WAN, wireless and traditional connectivity for the edge?
- What is the opportunity for low-Earth orbit satellites when building edge networks?
Assessing workload venues for AI — the rise of the edge
Coverage Analysts
Tiny Haynes, Alex Johnston, Brian Partridge, Rachel Dunning, John Abbott, Rich Karpinski
Key topics & questions addressed
- Public cloud is the most popular venue for three stages of the machine learning process, but the edge is a key location for data collection used to build and train AI models.
- Edge can mean many things, whether device edge, enterprise edge or network edge. By any of these definitions, edge is important in the evolution of AI both as a point of data collection and model inference.
- What challenges do organizations face if they want to do more inference and training at the edge?
- What are the use cases for more AI at the edge?
- How will infrastructure be affected by efforts to support AI at the edge?
A total approach to enterprise automation — total automation
Coverage Analysts
Carl Lehman, Jay Lyman
Key topics & questions addressed
- How low-/no-code digital automation platforms and robotic process automation (RPA) technology are converging and assimilating with process discovery technologies, hybrid integration platforms and generative AI to enable a new breed of intelligent automation platform.
- The role of generative AI in process automation and how AI-driven processes get smarter as they execute to make recommendations, predictions and decisions.
- The emergence of event-driven application development and how it affects enterprise automation strategy.
The current and future state of hybrid integration platforms
Coverage Analysts
Carl Lehman, Alex Johnston
Key topics & questions addressed
- The ever-changing enterprise IT estate and the trends that drive the need for new forms of integration technology.
- The role of generative AI in application, data and process integration and its implications for the enterprise.
- The future state and capabilities of hybrid integration platforms.
Impact of AI on observability
Coverage Analysts
Mike Fratto
Key topics & questions addressed
- How is AI being applied to observability data and platforms?
- How are vendors improving enterprise confidence with AI?
- What are the differentiating use cases that are attractive to the enterprise?
Cloud-native networking to support dynamic connectivity
Coverage Analysts
Mike Fratto
Key topics & questions addressed
- What is driving the demand for cloud-native networking?
- How are the products and services positioned in the market?
- What differentiators are important to enterprise IT buyers?
Generative AI-assisted software development and IT operations
Coverage Analysts
Jay Lyman, Nick Patience, Alex Johnston
Key topics & questions addressed
- Whether it is code generation, testing, security, documentation, or other parts of the development process, generative AI holds the promise of reducing manual tasks to free software developers to focus on new applications, features and innovation.
- Generative AI is also playing an increasingly prominent role in IT operations, with a role in configuration, orchestration, reliability testing, incident response and other aspects of IT management.
- While these benefits are sure to drive generative AI in both software development and IT operations, there are legitimate concerns about the technology, including data privacy and security, measuring and proving effectiveness, lack of skills and vendor support.
Serverless matures and evolves in the enterprise
Coverage Analysts
Jay Lyman, Jean Atelsek, William Fellows
Key topics & questions addressed
- Adoption of serverless is growing in the enterprise, driven by maturing technology and adoption, open-source projects and a growing number of cloud-first companies seeking to offload traditional IT management tasks, such as configuration and provisioning.
- Serverless technology has evolved beyond functions as a service and compute. Additional serverless services including storage, database and monitoring are expanding the applicability of serverless to more software and teams.
- While deployment of serverless continues to grow across verticals, its traction comes alongside, rather than at the expense of, other cloud-native approaches. A growing number of organizations are leveraging serverless for new and existing applications, but this does not replace nor disrupt their existing cloud-native journey built on containers, microservices and Kubernetes.
Enterprise utility and readiness for a quantum future
Coverage Analysts
Ellie Brown
Key topics & questions addressed
- With different qubit architectures jockeying to be thought of as the “leading” quantum technology, how will these differences influence workload placement?
- Early attempts at networking quantum computers are gaining traction and meriting venture capital investment. How could a quantum internet impact the development of quantum cloud services?
- What are the latest developments in quantum technologies (hardware, software, cloud platforms, networking and internet, control and readout systems, and sensing)?
- As quantum technology develops, how do gains made in one area (i.e., quantum hardware) drive development and evolution across the entire field?
- What are some of the key business problems identified as quantum-suitable?
Semiconductor innovations and disruptions
Coverage Analysts
John Abbott, Eric Hanselman, Craig Matsumoto
Key topics & questions addressed
- How will the new world of “accelerated computing” affect the current general-purpose compute platforms that predominate in the enterprise and the cloud?
- What challenges do customers face in moving to accelerated platforms, and what are the timescales?
- How will global supply chains evolve to meet current demand and ensure national supplies and security in the future?
- Chiplets and tiles: the emergence and implications of a critical new silicon ecosystem.
The AI infrastructure arms race
Coverage Analysts
John Abbott, Nick Patience, Perkins Liu, Alex Johnston
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are the competitive advantages and disadvantages between the “GPU rich” and GPU poor”? How critical is timely access to modern infrastructure for large language model training and inference?
- Competition is mounting in a sector that has long been dominated by a single supplier. What are the options going forward?
- Routes to market: how generative AI infrastructure is playing out at high-performance computing research labs, hyperscale operators and specialist cloud service providers.
- Cloud-native silicon: How new approaches to silicon design married to a full-stack software model can influence the performance, flexibility and power efficiency of a giant cluster.
Tracking telecom industry transformation: Network cloudification must drive monetization
Coverage Analysts
Brian Partridge
Key topics & questions addressed
- When will O-RAN finally cross the chasm?
- What will accelerating 5GSA deployment globally impact areas such as network slicing, private networks and network exposure?
- How will telecom operators leverage secure access service edge and multi-access edge computing maturity to drive managed security/platform services tied to public telecom networks?
- What opportunities do emerging workloads such as generative AI and augmented reality/virtual reality/metaverse create for public/private 5G providers?
- How will operators take advantage of the CPaaS opportunity?
- Hyperscale cloud providers are aggressively seeking to disrupt the telecom industry to capture more network workloads — beyond greenfield deployments such as DISH. Where are they seeing the most traction and why?
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Cloud & Managed Services Transformation
Analyst Team
Research Areas
Public cloud’s third decade: From disruptive technology to building block of the digital economy
Coverage Analysts
Melanie Posey, Liam Eagle, William Fellows
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are architectural approaches and “Day 0” thinking displacing basic migration and operations considerations?
- To what extent are shifting organizational dynamics creating new technology roles and better IT-business alignment?
- How are the solutions built on top of cloud leading to changes in the way cloud providers and cloud ecosystems operate?
- Which factors drive organizations’ decision-making on best execution venues for workloads, applications and data?
FinOps and the changing dynamics of cloud optimization
Coverage Analysts
Jean Atelsek, William Fellows, Melanie Posey
Key topics & questions addressed
- How can companies evaluate and implement trade-offs between cost, performance, complexity and convenience in public cloud environments?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of using first-party cloud provider tools for budgeting and forecasting public cloud spending?
- How can unit cost analysis in hybrid environments impact workload placement decisions?
- What are the prevalent causes of cloud budget overruns, and what tools can be used to better predict and control cloud costs?
- What factors need to be considered when evaluating the total cost of operations for on-premises and off-premises infrastructure, platform services and software?
Selective application modernization: The role of hybrid architectures
Coverage Analysts
Jean Atelsek, Melanie Posey, William Fellows
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are organizations approaching data architectures as part of their application modernization strategies?
- What is the potential for new AI models to accelerate application modernization projects?
- Which application components deliver the fastest return on investment for modernization projects?
- What are the advantages and drawbacks of modernizing applications in-house versus outsourcing the work to systems integrators, consultants or automation platforms?
It takes a village: The role of partner ecosystems and marketplaces in digital infrastructure
Coverage Analysts
Liam Eagle, Melanie Posey, Jean Atelsek, William Fellows
Key topics & questions addressed
- Who are the players in the emerging “cloudverse”?
- How are the hyperscalers leveraging their customer bases and market influence to shape the strategies and investments of their cloud-enablement partners?
- How are cloud ecosystem partners (particularly global systems integrators) engaging with verticals to deliver industry-specific solutions?
- How is the advisory/consulting/professional services space evolving to serve digital infrastructure requirements?
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Cloud Native
Analyst Team
Research Areas
Driving the next wave of cloud-native adoption
Coverage Analysts
William Fellows, Jean Atelsek, Jay Lyman, Melanie Posey
Key topics & questions addressed
- Customers and vendors are focused on moving ahead with IT modernization, taking advantage of cloud-native flexibility while shedding technical debt from years past.
- It is still early days in this market, and while deficiencies such as security, complexity, cost and skills are being addressed, it will take some time. We will look at how organizations are approaching these.
- We will examine the rising use of fully managed PaaS products (e.g., serverless) that is helping resolve the complexity of Kubernetes for developers and IT operations teams.
- How are the challenges being addressed and where are the opportunities for accelerated growth? What are the headwinds and tailwinds the cloud native sector faces?
- Enabling self-service access to compliant infrastructure is becoming an imperative, so how are successful organizations building this out?
The evolution of resiliency and disaster recovery
Coverage Analysts
Henry Baltazar, Jean Atelsek
Key topics & questions addressed
- Disaster recovery trends and resiliency expectations are rising. How are organizations refining their strategies and processes to meet these expectations?
- What has the evolution of hybrid data protection across on-premises and public cloud execution venues (i.e., the rise of cloud-based data protection such as disaster recovery as a service) looked like?
- Cloud-native resiliency strategies and the impact of site reliability engineering
- How is the rising ransomware threat changing recovery requirements and strategies?
Expanding cloud use cases for observability
Coverage Analysts
Mike Fratto
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are the integration capabilities that are sought after by IT?
- How are observability vendors addressing a more diverse set of needs?
- How are these differentiating features being accepted by the market?
The evolving role of platform engineering
Coverage Analysts
Carl Lehmann
Key topics & questions addressed
- This report will describe how platform engineering, site reliability engineering and DevOps come together to enable a cloud-native engineering framework.
- How do enterprises use each to improve the application development, create developer tool chains and enable infrastructure as code?
- What is the range of enabling technologies and the vendors developing them?
- This report will also detail the headwinds and challenges being faced and the means to overcome them.
Optimization: Governing and controlling cost in cloud native
Coverage Analysts
William Fellows, Jean Atelsek
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are the benefits and pitfalls of shifting left to put cost information into the hands of software engineers and DevOps teams during infrastructure provisioning?
- How can platform engineering teams help finance and engineering stakeholders negotiate the trade-offs between cost and performance enabled by modern FinOps tools?
- Which cloud-native technologies have the biggest impact for improving utilization of cloud resources and reducing idle capacity, therefore enhancing sustainability?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of having cloud-native governance and control separate from more traditional asset management techniques?
- Machine learning is already widely used in resource-optimization software to find configurations that optimize price-performance benefits for individual workloads. How will generative AI be deployed?
Applying AI for Application Modernization
Coverage Analysts
William Fellows, Jean Atelsek
Key topics & questions addressed
- To what extent are new models for application modernization emerging?
- How have recent AI advancements changed application modernization strategies?
- What technologies are being brought to bear in assessing and de-risking the shift to DevOps and cloud-native architectures?
- How do organizations prioritize app modernization versus building net-new systems for cloud-native deployment?
Cloud-native application protection platforms continue rapid growth as cloud security budgets increase
Coverage Analysts
John McNeice
Key topics & questions addressed
- Will vendors continue to raise venture capital funding for CNAPP and related cloud security platforms?
- Which vendors are likely to be acquired? Who are potential acquirers?
- Will the CNAPP market start to merge with other related cloud security markets such as application security, identity security and zero trust?
- Which types of CNAPP vendors will grow most rapidly now that the market is starting to mature?
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Consumer Tech
Analyst Team
Research Areas
Connected devices: Analyzing the evolution of smart products and connected media experiences
Coverage Analysts
Neil Barbour, Milan Alexis Ringol, Mike Paxton
Key topics & questions addressed
- In-depth analysis of leading consumer electronic products such as smartphones, smart TV sets, streaming media devices (SMDs) and video game consoles.
- Five-year device forecasts by geographic region, along with coverage of key market issues, product development trends, technology shifts, and end-user behavioral changes.
Broadband infrastructure and platforms: Tracking disruption and ecosystem opportunities
Coverage Analysts
Erik Keith
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are product and platform vendors, along with telecommunications service providers, providing enhanced broadband connectivity around the world?
- Quarterly and annual reports covering broadband CPE devices and key infrastructure platforms, highlighting market sizes and key events shaping the telco, cable, fiber and 5G mobile industries.
- How rapidly, or not so rapidly, are global service providers adopting next-gen technologies into their existing services?
- Results and analysis of an annual survey of global telco, cable and 5G service providers.
The development of the metaverse and other connected ecosystems
Coverage Analysts
Mike Paxton, Neil Barbour
Key topics & questions addressed
- Examination of ever-changing consumer technology ecosystems including the consumer IoT market, the video gaming market and the evolution of the metaverse.
- Our metaverse coverage includes an annual global consumer survey that tracks usage of and engagement with virtual environments.
Gaming and smart TV software platforms drive new business models
Coverage Analysts
Neil Barbour, Milan Alexis Ringol
Key topics & questions addressed
- Our software platform research coverage includes the connected TV OS market, tracking the growth of platforms such as Google TV/Android TV, Amazon Fire TV and Roku.
- We also cover the burgeoning market for video game software, including analysis and sizing of the video game content market.
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Customer Experience & Commerce
Analyst Team
Research Areas
The state of advertising technologies shifts to be more connected
Coverage Analysts
Zach Ciampa, Sheryl Kingstone
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are the key vendor differentiations for contextual advertising, retail media networks, creative engines, campaign targeting and audience measurement?
- How is generative AI changing?
- Do tech companies face threats from entertainment conglomerates building in-house tools?
- How are brands navigating personalization in the wake of user privacy?
- What pain points exist for consumers in their everyday advertising experience?
The age of the creator economy
Coverage Analysts
Zach Ciampa
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are the emerging social sites that consumers are valuing?
- What technologies help businesses leverage user-generated content, influencer marketing and social listening tools to improve customer experiences?
- What is the optimal mix of brand content between paid, earned and owned media?
- What available tools exist for companies to leverage the creator economy?
- Which platforms, formats and use cases are proving the most successful for organizations?
- How important is authenticity for consumers?
Better B2B Sales and marketing through technology
Coverage Analysts
Bruce Daley
Key topics & questions addressed
- How will analytics and workflow automation contribute to customizing messaging across multiple channels?
- How do email automation, search engine optimization and social media apps work synergistically to nurture leads through the sales funnel?
- Which sales-enablement technologies will have the most impact?
- Are there any potential drawbacks and legal consequences of using such advanced technologies in B2B marketing?
- Will the adoption of different technologies affect the skill sets required for marketing teams in the future?
Composable architectures accelerate digital maturity
Coverage Analysts
Sheryl Kingstone, Bruce Daley, Zach Ciampa, Chris Marsh, Raul Castañon
Key topics & questions addressed
- Are businesses investing in more composable and/or headless architectures?
- What are the best use cases for deploying a headless versus composable architecture?
- What vendors are creating easier composable deployment capabilities?
- Does it increase or decrease total cost of ownership?
- What is the growth and maturity curve for composability capabilities?
Embedded commerce and its future for creating shoppable experiences anywhere
Coverage Analysts
Zach Ciampa, Sheryl Kingstone
Key topics & questions addressed
- Key topics: livestream shopping, shoppable TV, social commerce, shoppable ads, commerce tech.
- What movements are happening with shoppable commerce?
- Why have earlier efforts failed to bring it to life?
- Where are consumers in terms of adoption?
Data-driven experience economy
Coverage Analysts
Sheryl Kingstone, Zach Ciampa
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are businesses that allocated a larger portion of their IT budgets to digital transformation doing now? What is the pace of strategic projects such as cloud-native technologies and data analytics initiatives?
- What is needed to support real-time, data-driven goals?
- How is the continual degrading of third-party data tools such as cookies impacting the growth of first party data?
- How are organizations shifting to privacy-focused, homegrown data efforts such as first-party/zero-party data?
- What are the requirements for a modern customer 360-degree view and real-time profile to improve customer experience across the entire journey?
FinTech vs. financial institutions: Competing in the digital economy
Coverage Analysts
Sheryl Kingstone, Jordan McKee
Key topics & questions addressed
- What is driving consumers’ interest in newer fintech providers?
- How can traditional financial institutions compete by creating innovative digital experiences?
- What are the use cases for having a real-time, data-driven foundation?
The middle office tech stack is the future of B2B revenue generation
Coverage Analysts
Bruce Daley, Chris Marsh, Conner Forrest
Key topics & questions addressed
- What use cases in B2B revenue generation are being automated by Generative AI, and how does this impact the efficiency of the customer journey?
- How do "systems of action" differ from traditional CRM systems, and how do they enhance sales-enablement strategies?
- How does the emerging "middle office" market allow sales-enablement vendors to reclassify themselves?
- How are these next-generation sales-enablement tools integrating with existing workflows, and what challenges might organizations expect from their integration?
- What are the key performance indicators organizations should track to assess the impact of sales-enablement tools on revenue?
The growing maturity in the customer success market
Coverage Analysts
Bruce Daley
Key topics & questions addressed
- What factors contributed to the customer success market growing at only half its expected rate, and how are companies addressing these challenges?
- How do customer success groups influence other departments, such as product development and marketing?
- What are the critical features of customer success management platforms that make them essential for predictable growth?
- How are organizations measuring the return on investment of their increasingly mature customer success operations, and what KPIs are they using?
Service is the new marketing
Coverage Analysts
Sheryl Kingstone, Raul Castañon
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are the advancements in AI/machine learning, including generative AI, to improve customer service?
- How has the use of large language models and prompt-based interactions improved mundane tasks and agent assist?
- How are communications platform as a service, contact center as a service and customer service vendors improving the use of customer data to connect with customers?
- How is the role of digital channels changing the marketing and service interactions for mobile, social platforms and video channels?
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Data, AI & Analytics
Analyst Team
Research Areas
Enterprise data-driven decision-making in age of generative AI
Coverage Analysts
Krishna Roy
Key topics & questions addressed
- The emerging role of generative AI in data science and analytics.
- What use cases are currently being tackled and what is coming down the line?
- The benefits and challenges of using generative AI to make enterprise data-driven decision-making more widespread.
- Will generative AI-driven features really lower the barrier to data-driven decision-making?
- Which user personas will be targeted by generative AI capabilities and how?
DataOps value: business outcomes in data management
Coverage Analysts
Paige Bartley
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are the business outcomes most closely linked to data management and DataOps?
- Challenges, opportunities and approaches in orchestrating data tools and processes.
- Standard and emergent practices in data management, and what they mean.
- How can organizations better identify, measure, and track metrics for DataOps success?
- Current trends, technologies and roles that are influencing practices in the data management market.
The evolving discipline of AI governance
Coverage Analysts
Krishna Roy
Key topics & questions addressed
- The governance framework for ensuring the responsible use of AI has expanded beyond regulations, laws and internal corporate mandates — as well as data — to all types of models to create a new software category called AI governance.
- How are data science and analytics vendors embracing AI governance?
- What benefits and challenges does AI governance bring to enterprise data-driven decision-making?
- How will generative AI affect AI governance software?
- Why AI governance software is only part of the equation. The role of corporate culture, legislation, and regulatory guidance to ensure the equitable and ethical use of all types of AI for corporate data-driven decision-making.
Shifting blockchain from pilot projects to in-production networks
Coverage Analysts
Alex Johnston
Key topics & questions addressed
- What bottlenecks are challenging organizations seeking to scale up blockchain networks?
- Approaches to private/public/hybrid networks are shifting, driven in part by enhanced interoperability.
- Blockchain use-cases are evolving, which is reframing the value proposition of many enterprise-targeting blockchain technology and service providers.
- Evolutions in developer tooling, which will simplify the process of setting up and expanding networks.
Pivot for privacy and governance: From policy to tech?
Coverage Analysts
Paige Bartley
Key topics & questions addressed
- How is the enterprise privacy and governance function evolving to address tech innovation?
- State of the stack and supporting technologies associated with data governance and privacy.
- Where do data privacy and data governance intersect with information security practices?
- How will privacy and governance efforts address threats from emergent technologies?
- How will disruptive technologies like generative AI and metaverse affect privacy and governance efforts?
Vectors and large language models, a match made in generative AI heaven
Coverage Analysts
Jim Curtis
Key topics & questions addressed
- A new data model based on vectors is gaining traction as an enabler for LLMs.
- Both pure-play vector database and incumbent database vendors have embraced vectors.
- Need better context with your LLM prompt input? Call on your nearest vector store.
- LLMs provide have short-term memory, but vectors databases add long-term memory.
The immediacy mindset drives data architecture innovation
Coverage Analysts
Jim Curtis, Alex Johnston
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are data architectures evolving to address a drive toward faster-time-to-insight and greater reactivity in fast changing business environments?
- Real-time analytics — the ability to process data as soon as it becomes available to produce analytical insights.
- Stream processing — the in-motion processing of continuous streams of events.
- Real-time machine learning — ML systems that can process and respond to data with minimal delays,
A single cloud environment for all your database workloads and more
Key topics & questions addressed
- Database workloads — whether operational or analytical — have traditionally been systems-based.
- Gravity is pressing in on enterprise data and driving it to the cloud where it sits in object storage, instead of sitting separate systems based on workload.
- Cloud adoption, new data table formats and high enterprise interest in all things AI is flipping that model.
- Some larger industry leaders along with the cloud hyperscalers have openly embraced the so-called “data cloud” model where data resides in the cloud and multiple workloads can operate on it.
- Data clouds are also leading to data marketplaces and app stores as enterprises find new ways to leverage their data.
Regulating AI — do try to keep up
Coverage Analysts
Nick Patience, Alex Johnston
Key topics & questions addressed
- AI regulations have been evolving slowly in recent years.
- ChatGPT launch changed that and accelerated efforts due to national governments’ alarm.
- EU AI Act is a leading template, but lawmakers and regulators will expend effort trying to keep up with generative AI developments.
Shifting skills — end of the data scientist supremacy?
Coverage Analysts
Nick Patience, Krishna Roy
Key topics & questions addressed
- Generative AI is addressing the scarcity of data science skills in enterprise adoption of machine learning.
- Data science talent remains essential, particularly for building foundation models and fine-tuning existing ones.
- Generative AI is redefining the concept of “AI developer,” making it accessible to a broader range of application developers.
- Application developers now have access to code generation tools and APIs for using models, enhancing efficiency.
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Datacenter Services & Infrastructure
Analyst Team
Research Areas
Datacenter growth: Locations, impacts and demand drivers
Coverage Analysts
Kelly Morgan, Mai Barakat, Filippo Bonanno, Soon Chen Kang, Leika Kawasaki, Perkins Liu, Jonathan Schroth, Pedro Schweizer, Dan Thompson, Stefanie Williams
Key topics & questions addressed
- Which datacenter markets will see the fastest growth, and why? How will cloud providers impact markets?
- Which providers are offering datacenter services in each market?
- What trends impact the datacenter industry in each location? How do tax incentives, regulations and other policies impact the market?
- Who are the primary datacenter customers? Are cloud providers customers in the market?
- What has happened in the market regarding supply, demand, utilization rates and pricing, and what developments do we forecast?
- Where are cloud providers building their own facilities vs. leasing them, and why?
- What does the entry of a cloud provider mean for a local datacenter market?
The impact of artificial intelligence on infrastructure requirements
Coverage Analysts
Perkins Liu, Dan Thompson, Kelly Morgan
Key topics & questions addressed
- How will AI and HPC workloads drive demand for underlying infrastructure?
- Will AI and HPC workloads push density per rack to the extent that liquid cooling becomes widespread?
- How do potential customers perceive datacenter requirements, and how are their needs changing?
- Will enterprises implementing AI and HPC workloads use public cloud infrastructure or owned infrastructure, or both? What impact will this have on the datacenter industry?
- What are the barriers to adoption of new technical approaches?
- What technology innovations has the industry made, and how are these being commercialized? Who are the main vendors?
- What are the roles of the various players in the ecosystem?
- What are the key technologies used for datacenters, and why might these need to change?
- What is the market size and potential growth for new technology?
Sustainability requirements will transform the datacenter industry
Coverage Analysts
Dan Thompson, Perkins Liu, Kelly Morgan, Jonathan Schroth
Key topics & questions addressed
- How do organizations measure the carbon emitted from building/operating datacenters?
- How important to enterprises is datacenter efficiency/sustainability in core datacenters and at the edge? How is this changing?
- When datacenters say they are becoming more sustainable, what is real and what is greenwashing?
- How are regulations changing regarding sustainability, and how will that impact the datacenter industry?
- How do datacenters impact a country’s ability to achieve its sustainability targets?
- What technology innovations in the datacenter will make the facility more efficient and sustainable (e.g., AI-enabled management, different battery types, alternatives to generators)?
Datacenter providers and business models
Coverage Analysts
Kelly Morgan, Mai Barakat, Filippo Bonanno, Soon Chen Kang, Leika Kawasaki, Perkins Liu, Jonathan Schroth, Pedro Schweizer, Dan Thompson, Stefanie Williams
Key topics & questions addressed
- Which are the top datacenter providers in the world, by revenue and by in-service power?
- Which providers are present in each region (Asia-Pacific; Europe, Middle East & Africa; North America; Latin America)?
- What are the main business models, and how are these changing?
- What innovations are providers undertaking around financing?
- How has M&A activity transformed the market, and what can we expect going forward?
- What are providers’ costs to build and operate facilities?
Cloud in Asia-Pacific
Coverage Analysts
Agatha Poon, Soon Chen Kang, Perkins Liu, Yulitza Peraza, Dan Thompson
Key topics & questions addressed
- How does cloud adoption differ between countries, and why?
- Who are the main public cloud providers in each country, and what determines their differentiation/success?
- What is the cloud market size, and how is it growing?
- What infrastructure is required for cloud companies in Asia-Pacific?
Edge computing: Impacts for datacenter providers
Coverage Analysts
Craig Matsumoto, Dan Thompson, Tiny Haynes
Key topics & questions addressed
- How do we define the edge?
- Which use cases are driving enterprise edge deployments?
- How will network innovations impact what data will be processed and stored at the edge and what can be moved elsewhere?
- What are the infrastructure requirements to support these deployments (compute, storage, networking, accelerators, power, footprint, noise level, ruggedization, etc.), and how do they impact datacenter requirements?
- What will the requirements be for edge datacenter sites?
- Who are the main edge datacenter players?
Blockchain and cryptocurrency: Pros and cons for the datacenter industry
Coverage Analysts
Jonathan Schroth, Alex Johnston, Filippo Bonanno
Key topics & questions addressed
- What infrastructure do cryptocurrency miners need?
- How is blockchain different from cryptocurrency when it comes to infrastructure?
- How are governments treating cryptocurrency mining, and what impact does that have on the datacenter industry?
- What other workloads can benefit from similar infrastructure requirements?
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Fintech
Analyst Team
Research Areas
The future of embedded financial experiences
Coverage Analysts
Jordan McKee, Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, McKayla Wooldridge, Sophia Furber
Key topics & questions addressed
- What is the appetite of consumers and enterprises to consume financial services through non-bank providers?
- Which are the key vendors providing fintech-as-a-service infrastructure for embedded finance?
- How should software and technology platforms that want to embed payments evaluate the business case, vendors and deployment models?
- How are payment service providers and banks responding to embedded finance, and which ones are best positioned?
Converting payments into a competitive advantage
Coverage Analysts
Jordan McKee
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are merchants’ top payment initiatives and pain points, and what are their priorities when selecting payment service providers?
- What are the value propositions and differentiators of established and emerging payment service providers?
- Which payment service providers are best positioned to help merchants meet their growth, customer experience and operational goals?
- What is the business case for using multiple payment processors, and how does payment orchestration help to support it?
- Which consumer payment experiences and factors have the biggest influence on conversion?
Taking a CX-centric approach to fraud prevention
Coverage Analysts
Jordan McKee, Sophia Furber
Key topics & questions addressed
- Which areas of the customer journey are becoming growing fraud vectors?
- What are the key vendors providing advanced fraud-prevention tools that help to drive conversions and streamline the customer experience?
- What type of impact is fraud having on the CX, including areas such as onboarding, false declines, cart abandonment and customer lifetime value?
- What are the top fraud challenges facing fintechs and merchants, and what are their priorities in vendor selection?
- How is the regulatory technology (regtech) landscape evolving, and what technology innovations are happening in areas such as anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC)?
Fintech end-user needs and requirements
Coverage Analysts
Jordan McKee, Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, McKayla Wooldridge, Sophia Furber
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are the top financial pain points of SMBs, enterprises and consumers?
- What types of financial services are SMBs looking to consume via software platforms and applications?
- In what areas do enterprises believe their payment partners are missing the mark?
- What are consumers’ unmet financial needs, and what are their top financial goals?
- Where do banks need to increase focus to deliver a more compelling digital experience?
How are emerging topics such as cryptocurrency and real-time payments factoring into end users’ financial needs and requirements?
Streamlining B2B payments to create operational efficiencies
Coverage Analysts
McKayla Wooldridge, Jordan McKee, Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, Sophia Furber
Key topics & questions addressed
- Who are the leading B2B payments providers, and what capabilities do they bring to the market?
- What is driving innovation in B2B payments?
- What are the key opportunities for stakeholders in this market?
- What are the trends in accounts receivable and accounts payable?
- Who are the leading B2B financing providers, and what is the market opportunity?
The rise of bank and fintech partnerships
Coverage Analysts
McKayla Wooldridge, Jordan McKee, Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, Sophia Furber
Key topics & questions addressed
- How can banks and fintechs best collaborate to enhance the customer experience?
- Who are the key stakeholders facilitating collaboration between banks and fintechs?
- How is regulation impacting bank and fintech partnerships?
- How can banks and fintechs navigate partnership challenges and set themselves up for success?
- What are the partnership opportunities for community banks and credit unions?
Financial health and inclusion initiatives drive innovation in financial services
Coverage Analysts
McKayla Wooldridge, Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, Sophia Furber
Key topics & questions addressed
- Which technologies, strategies and vendors are helping to drive more equitable lending?
- What are the opportunities to better serve emerging markets?
- How is the digitization of banking services improving financial inclusion?
The perennial challenge of cross-border payments
Coverage Analysts
Sophia Furber, Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri
Key topics & questions addressed
- How can fintechs balance the need for speed in cross-border payments with compliance responsibilities such as AML, KYC and anti-terrorism finance rules?
- How is the fintech industry meeting the cross-border transaction needs of SMBs that are going international at an increasingly early stage?
- What role could stablecoins and blockchain play in the world of cross-border payments?
- How are leading payment gateways innovating in the realm of cross-border acceptance?
CBDCs — payments in a world of “two-tier” money
Coverage Analysts
Sophia Furber
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are major payment companies and fintechs responding to the arrival of CBDCs? What products, services and experiences could they build around them?
- What challenges do CBDCs pose to traditional models of banking and payments?
- How are live CBDC projects faring, and what lessons can early adopters offer?
- How are major economies such as the UK and India faring with CBDC pilots? What has the public reaction been, and what capabilities will CBDCs have?
Banks, fintechs must prepare for the reality of instant payments
Coverage Analysts
Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri
Key topics & questions addressed
- Which geographical markets are witnessing rapid growth in instant payments in retail?
- What are the popular P2P, B2C and B2B use cases in real-time payments (RTP)?
- What are banks’ strategies to turn on real-time payment capabilities at FedNow and The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments?
- Which software providers are gaining traction in helping banks implement instant payments?
- What are the emerging models for fintechs to access RTP rails within the frameworks of both direct participation and working with sponsor banks?
- Which fintechs are leveraging instant payment rails to propel real-time collections or disbursements for businesses?
- Which fintech specialists are helping banks modernize their legacy systems and raise safeguards as incumbents cope with the large amounts of transaction flows and a potential spike in fraud?
Evolution of the Asia-Pacific fintech landscape
Coverage Analysts
Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are the venture capital and M&A trends in key geographical markets?
- What are the popular payment methods and emerging solutions in the region?
- Who are the leading fintech-first players in various financial services categories: payments, insurtech, digital lending, investment tech, neobanks and fintech infrastructure?
- What are the product offerings of major players, and what are their growth strategies (build versus partner versus buy) to expand into newer verticals, geographies and value-added services, and to rebalance customer portfolio composition?
- What are the payments strategies of global card networks and tech giants in Asia-Pacific?
- What are the evolving fintech regulatory trends and their implications for the industry?
- How are banks deepening collaborations with fintechs?
Following the fintech money
Coverage Analysts
Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, Jordan McKee, McKayla Wooldridge, Sophia Furber
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are the top venture funding trends in fintech?
- How much venture capital is being raised by fintechs across various segments and geographies?
- What are the largest fintech funding rounds?
- Which emerging fintech segments are investors gravitating toward?
- What specific challenges are fintechs facing when looking to raise venture funding?
Tracking the progress of open banking
Coverage Analysts
Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, Jordan McKee, McKayla Wooldridge, Sophia Furber
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are the latest open banking initiatives, and how do they compare with other markets across dimensions, including products and covered entities?
- What are the business models propelling third-party payment initiation services as part of open banking frameworks?
- What are the value propositions and differentiators of various open banking providers?
- Which open banking providers and ecosystems are attracting venture capital?
- Which consumer payment experiences and factors have the biggest influence on open banking uptake?
The role of banking technology vendors in driving digital transformation at financial institutions
Coverage Analysts
Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, Jordan McKee, McKayla Wooldridge, Sophia Furber
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are banks’ top digital transformation initiatives and pain points, and which factors are causing banks to embrace modernization?
- What are banks’ priorities and considerations when selecting technology vendors?
- What are the value propositions and differentiators of established and emerging banking technology vendors?
- Which banking technology segments and go-to-market strategies are gaining traction?
- Which consumer payment experiences and factors have the biggest influence on digital transformation agendas of banks?
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Global Media Research
Analyst Team
Research Areas
OTT goes global as the streaming model evolves
Coverage Analysts
Seth Shafer, Michail Chandakas, Kym Nator, Jessica Fuk, Keith Nissen, Brian Bacon, Kiro Raynes
Key topics & questions addressed
- How quickly will advertising revenues for Netflix, Disney, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery ramp up as they expand their ad-supported viewing audiences in the US and abroad?
- Will a newfound focus on profitability over subscriber growth at any cost lead to some global streamers scaling back marketing and content production efforts in some markets?
- Can free, ad-supported TV (FAST) services thrive outside the US in markets where consumers have had easy access to free ad-supported content from local broadcasters for years?
- Can subscription video operators keep increasing prices to improve their bottom lines, or will consumers start pushing back and churn out at higher rates?
Digital transformation in TV distribution and economic models
Coverage Analysts
Justin Nielson, Peter Leitzinger, Scott Robson, Ron Marcelo, Gino Amora, John Paul O'Sullivan, Richard Berndes, Victor Heng, Seth Shafer, Kym Nator, Keith Nissen, Brian Bacon, Kiro Raynes
Key topics & questions addressed
- Market-sizing the TV networks industry by estimating subscribers on a network level.
- As multichannel operators face margin pressures on video products, will they look to drop lower-rated networks or negotiate for lower rates?
- How will declining subscribers impact affiliate revenue and advertising revenue across different TV networks?
- How will the growth of virtual multichannel platforms mitigate losses from traditional operators?
- How will the shift in multichannel subscribers to streaming platforms impact broadcasters' retransmission fee revenue? What will be the revenue impact of broadcasters' own digital initiatives?
Sports rights evolve with emergence of broadcast and streaming distribution models
Coverage Analysts
Justin Nielson, Scott Robson, Ron Marcelo, Gino Amora, John Paul O'Sullivan, Richard Berndes, Victor Heng, Seth Shafer, Michail Chandakas, Keith Nissen, Brian Bacon
Key topics & questions addressed
- Will TV networks and streaming platforms increase investments in sports rights?
- Will local sports rights stay with the regional sports networks, or will teams look to diversify distribution across local broadcast stations or streaming partners?
- What degree of price increases can the professional leagues get for national rights from the major broadcast and cable networks?
- As the legalization of sports gambling continues to grow, how will the influx of capital from online sportsbooks affect advertising revenue and marketing deals?
- During the last year, sports broadcasters have partnered with telecom providers and e-commerce platforms (e.g., DAZN and TIM, Viacom18 and Jio) to strengthen distribution. Will further high-profile strategic partnerships emerge to advance sports streaming in the US?
Broadcasting could see a resurgence as free over-the-air TV and radio gain in popularity
Coverage Analysts
Justin Nielson, Peter Leitzinger, Volker Moerbitz, Keith Nissen, Brian Bacon
Key topics & questions addressed
- Will the nationwide rollout of NextGen TV attract more OTA viewers? What will be the impact on OTA viewership with sports rights going back to local TV stations?
- How will the broadcast station affiliate network model evolve in the age of streaming, and what is the impact on retransmission consent fee growth in a declining traditional multichannel video subscriber environment?
- How will broadcasters’ shift to digital initiatives such as live station streaming, FAST services and podcasting impact revenue growth? Will digital multicast networks grow in popularity and influence through the growth of free ad-sponsored TV including broadcast?
- Streaming music and podcasting have grown exponentially over the past decade. What is the outlook for the segment? And how will this affect radio ad revenue in the long term?
- What is the outlook for broadcast M&A, and what are the prospects for US Federal Communications Commission broadcast ownership cap relaxation?
Global advertising outlook based on changing demographics and shifts in media consumption
Coverage Analysts
Justin Nielson, Peter Leitzinger, Scott Robson, Ron Marcelo, Gino Amora, Seth Shafer, Michail Chandakas, Jessica Fuk, Kym Nator, Victor Heng, Keith Nissen, Brian Bacon, Kiro Raynes, John Paul O'Sullivan
Key topics & questions addressed
- Are increasing investments in live sports rights resulting in equivalent growth in ratings? Can US news networks continue to attract large audiences as alternative streaming news outlets grow? Have ad-supported tiers from subscription video on demand operators taken advertising revenue share from linear TV networks?
- US TV station advertising is expected to be more volatile with the ebbs and flows of political ad spending in election years. How will new ad categories, proliferation of sports betting and the prospects of interactive NextGen TV support non-election-year ad revenue growth?
- What impact will competitive pressures and cost of living increases have in the US and international markets?
- US radio's lower ad cost, local audience and high return on investment compared to other media will likely keep it relevant; how will digital investments point to growth opportunities?
- European broadcasters are adopting hybrid distribution models (linear TV channels alongside free video-on-demand and subscription services) to grow stagnant ad revenues. Will this digital strategy succeed as the popularity of linear continues to fade?
The outlook for the US and international film industry, and the global studio production sector
Coverage Analysts
Wade Holden, Seth Shafer, Victor Heng, Kiro Raynes, John Paul O'Sullivan
Key topics & questions addressed
- Will the domestic box office recover to pre-pandemic level?
- How are the major theater chains performing? Are their margins improving?
- Which films are still drawing crowds, even as a segment of the population is still getting comfortable returning to theaters? Will box office be affected by shorter release windows? Will profitability suffer from films moving to streaming faster?
- As major groups continue to pick off small to medium-sized specialist production companies, what is the impact of further consolidation in the sector?
- How quickly can studios and production companies capitalize on generative AI opportunities to streamline costs, boost creativity, and unearth new TV and film content formats?
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Global Mobile Research
Analyst Team
John Fletcher
Bruno do Amaral
Theodore Vincent Calaor
Erik Keith
Lynnette Luna
Julber OsioResearch Areas
Mobile industry leverages new revenue streams with 5G development
Coverage Analysts
Bruno do Amaral; Lynnette Luna; Julber Osio, CFA; Theodore Vincent Calaor
Key topics & questions addressed
- What are the developments in telecom companies’ revenue streams (mobile service revenue, other mobile revenue)? How are these impacting ARPU?
- Are operators focusing on certain business segments to boost growth? Are there expansions to develop new revenue streams?
- How have telecom companies deployed commercial 5G services (spectrum bands used, tower ownership, technology vendors)? Have they deployed enterprise 5G?
- Are telecom companies using new technologies (network slicing, private 5G, new 5G use cases, IoT, machine-to-machine [M2M], eSIM) to augment their 5G service offerings?
Expanding 5G commercial services: stand-alone deployment, open RAN, millimeter wave
Coverage Analysts
Key topics & questions addressed
Erik Keith; Julber Osio, CFA
Key topics & questions addressed
- Which operators and which markets have launched commercial 5G services?
- Which spectrum bands (low-band, mid-band, and high-band or millimeter wave) are popular for commercial 5G developments?
- How are commercial 5G networks moving from non-stand-alone to stand-alone deployment?
- Which technology vendors are mobile operators partnering with for their 5G core and RAN networks?
State of the global tower and small cell market
Coverage Analysts
Bruno do Amaral; John Fletcher; Lynnette Luna; Julber Osio, CFA; Theodore Vincent Calaor
Key topics & questions addressed
- Inventory of towers among mobile operators and tower companies in the US and Asia-Pacific.
- Market consolidation: tracking significant tower sales and tower company mergers and acquisitions.
- Measuring tower network congestion: are there enough towers for mobile subscriptions in each market?
- Projecting growth of towers, small cells and distributed antenna systems in North America, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.
Tracking the US mobile industry
Coverage Analysts
John Fletcher, Lynnette Luna
Key topics & questions addressed
- Who are the primary operators, and how are they faring each quarter? What market segments are outperforming others?
- What carriers are most profitable, and where are carrier pain points?
- Where will the mobile industry be in 10 years?
- How will IoT/M2M and mobile virtual network operators impact the market in the next decade?
- Which 5G use cases are resonating with end users?
Mobile industry in Latin America
Coverage Analysts
Bruno do Amaral
Key topics & questions addressed
- Who are the primary groups in the region?
- What developments are likely in the next 10 years?
- How much of the spectrum will be available?
- Will 5G finally take off in the most advanced markets?
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Global Multichannel and Broadband
Analyst Team
Lynnette Luna
Fed Mendoza
Kym Nator
Julber Osio
Mau Rodriguez
Tomás Sarmiento
Theodore Vincent Calaor
Xiuxi ZhuResearch Areas
Fiber cements its position as preferred broadband service
Coverage Analysts
Mohammed Hamza, Julija Jurkevic, John Fletcher, Natalie Colakides, Georgia Jordan, Tomás Sarmiento, Piotr Gaber, Mau Rodriguez, Xiuxi Zhu, Fed Mendoza
Key topics & questions addressed
- Which countries and operators are leaders in fiber deployments?
- What challenges are telcos facing in expanding their fiber networks?
- How are fiber deployments influencing average consumer broadband speeds?
M&A trends: telco groups divesting infrastructure in Europe and Latin America
Coverage Analysts
Mohammed Hamza, Natalie Colakides, Georgia Jordan, Tomás Sarmiento, Piotr Gaber
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are major telco groups changing their corporate structure and assets in response to changing competitive dynamics, government regulations, new technologies and changing consumer preferences?
- Will small ISP M&A trends in Latin America continue?
- How are mergers and acquisitions affecting consumer services?
Traditional multichannel industry expedites transformation
Coverage Analysts
Mohammed Hamza, Julija Jurkevic, John Fletcher, Natalie Colakides, Georgia Jordan, Tomás Sarmiento, Piotr Gaber, Mau Rodriguez, Xiuxi Zhu, Fed Mendoza
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are traditional multichannel operators changing their strategies in response to declining subscriptions and revenues from pay TV services?
- Are operators launching their own streaming video services or partnering with third-party providers?
- Which countries and regions are expected to be most affected by cord-cutting?
Federal funds are here: Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program
Coverage Analysts
John Fletcher, Mau Rodriguez
Key topics & questions addressed
- How many homes passed can BEAD fund?
- How much BEAD funding will operators win in each state?
- With BEAD currently partial to fiber, will fiber deployments accelerate? Will there be a substantial consumer shift to fiber versus cable?
Closing the US digital divide with fixed wireless and low-Earth orbit (LEO) broadband
Coverage Analysts
John Fletcher, Mau Rodriguez
Key topics & questions addressed
- How much does it cost to pass a home with fixed wireless compared to cable and fiber?
- What is the 10-year outlook for the US broadband market?
- Which local markets have the greatest overlap of fiber and cable networks?
- What portion of broadband subscribers are residential versus enterprise?
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Information Security
Analyst Team
Research Areas
AI for security, security for AI: Disruptive intersections reshaping the technology landscape
Coverage Analysts
Scott Crawford
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are recent AI innovations influencing the evolution of security technologies?
- What new opportunities for security and risk management are being introduced by new approaches to artificial intelligence?
- Is generative AI moving faster than security and risk management can keep up? If not, where are security and risk mitigation having a positive impact?
- What are the areas of focus for security for AI? Where are companies making investments in this trend – and are they seeing traction?
Threat detection and response: Disruption and evolving architecture in security operations
Coverage Analysts
Scott Crawford, John McNeice
Key topics & questions addressed
- What does emerging security operations and analytics architecture look like? What are the key components and trends shaping this evolution?
- Generative AI is transforming much of the technology landscape. Will it have the same impact on SecOps and security analytics?
- How is risk management affecting the nature of security analytics? Will risk-oriented trends achieve their objective of making security analytics more strategic to the business, as well as more tactically actionable?
- Where do observability and security technologies intersect — or do they? What types of practice and experience can unite security operations expertise with experience in cloud-native technology?
Managed detection and response: Reshaping both security technology and managed services
Coverage Analysts
John McNeice
Key topics & questions addressed
- Who has an advantage in MDR? Emerging or established managed services providers? Or product vendors that recognize the need to ensure success with new technology?
- Which providers are shaping these trends? Newer startups or widely adopted incumbents that see new opportunity?
- What is the future for MDR as technology attractive to attackers continues to expand in the cloud and at the edge?
Cloud-native application protection platforms continue rapid growth as cloud security budgets increase
Coverage Analysts
John McNeice
Key topics & questions addressed
- Will vendors continue to raise venture capital for CNAPP and related cloud security platforms?
- Which vendors are likely to be acquired? Who are potential acquirers?
- Which types of CNAPP vendors will grow most rapidly now that the market is maturing?
Cloud-native privileged access management
Coverage Analysts
Garrett Bekker
Key topics & questions addressed
- How will these offerings manage access for a diverse set of users that need various levels of access to increasingly varied infrastructure, including developers and cloud engineers that have their own apps and workflow tools such as Chef, Puppet, Jenkins and Jira?
- How will organizations deliver just-in-time access to critical resources that eliminates the need for standing privileges and “shared secrets,” such as SSH passwords that are stored in traditional password vaults and shared among multiple people using admin accounts?
- How will organizations leverage short-lived, identity-based certificates instead of static credentials such as passwords?
- How can businesses replace privileged credentials and accounts with existing enterprise identities and roles?
Passwordless authentication’s holy grail: Improved security and user experience
Coverage Analysts
Garrett Bekker
Key topics & questions addressed
- How will emerging approaches extend "strong" or multi-factor authentication to applications and resources that may not support standard authentication protocols?
- How can providers improve the security of MFA methods while also improving the user experience?
- How can organizations make it easier for developers to incorporate strong authentication methods during the app development process?
- How can enterprises broaden the range of users of strong authentication beyond remote and privileged workers?
Authorization: Access management’s next frontier
Coverage Analysts
Garrett Bekker
Key topics & questions addressed
- How can developers more easily incorporate authorization logic into the application development process?
- Will developers be willing to invest the time to learn new standards and programming languages such as Cedar, OPA and Rego?
- Will new authorization standards and languages coexist peacefully, or will one emerge victorious?
Customer identity and access management: Onboarding, retaining and managing external identities
Coverage Analysts
Megan Goodwin
Key topics & questions addressed
- How will registration flows and authentication methods being used during onboarding aid in both completing registration and retaining customers?
- Not many vendors have both customer and workforce identity offerings under one umbrella. Is it necessary or strategic to do so?
- How might a customer’s persona and requirements vary through different verticals (e.g., fintech versus gaming versus online retail) while still supporting industry standards such as GDPR and OPA?
- How can vendors push or encourage customers past the point of registration?
Secure access service edge/security service edge vendors vie for the high ground
Coverage Analysts
Eric Hanselman, Garrett Bekker
Key topics & questions addressed
- How will stand-alone ZTNA vendors (or cloud access security brokers and secure web gateway vendors, for that matter) adapt to the broader SASE/SSE frameworks?
- What are the frontiers of secure network access in operational technology, industrial IoT and the evolving network edge?
- Can a single vendor check all the SASE/SSE boxes?
- How many SASE/SSE vendors can the market support?
- What about the role of managed service providers, telcos and systems integrators?
Trends in data security: Universally essential, diverse in implementation and practice
Coverage Analysts
Justin Lam
Key topics & questions addressed
- What role will line-of-business users have in interpreting, implementing and living with data security requirements and regulations?
- Given security’s shift left in the data utility life cycle as well as in DevOps, how will data usability controls adapt for different practitioners across different disciplines?
- What other enterprise "coattails" can data security initiatives ride on?
- How can stand-alone organizations thrive when larger platform providers increasingly build in their own data security offerings?
DevSecOps, “shift left” and the evolution of application protection
Coverage Analysts
Daniel Kennedy
Key topics & questions addressed
- How does security integrate sufficient testing into developer pipelines without compromising developer experience?
- How will regulatory initiatives such as “secure by design” influence testing requirements?
- Will today’s tools be compatible with these new trends? Or will they continue to face the same challenges they had to overcome to integrate into CI/CD pipelines?
- How will emerging production platforms such as API security and application security posture management influence prioritization of issues left of production? How will securing open source fit into the overall nature of security in the IT software supply chain?
A pure-play market emerges to secure web APIs
Coverage Analysts
Daniel Kennedy
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are pure plays addressing the specific challenges of tracking, assessing and preventing attacks against APIs?
- Where do existing approaches fit? These include web application firewalls in the shift-right strategy and code scanning in shift-left strategies.
- Even if this space emerged from shortcomings in existing web application protection, does it belong alongside those solutions — for inline blocking, for example — and what does that mean for M&A?
- How do APIs represent unique web application security challenges, separate from the testing of applications themselves?
The evolving intersection of insurance and cybersecurity
Coverage Analysts
Scott Crawford, Daniel Kennedy
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are relationships between cybersecurity technology and service providers developing as their common interests mature?
- What impact is that evolution having on cybersecurity implementation and practice?
- What organizations are most likely to benefit?
- Are businesses seeing real advantages from the increased alignment of cybersecurity technology with cyber insurance providers and processes?
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Internet of Things
Analyst Team
Research Areas
The evolution of the IoT edge
Coverage Analysts
Rich Karpinski, Tiny Haynes, Ian Hughes
Key topics & questions addressed
- How have on-premises IoT servers and gateways evolved?
- Are beefed-up industrial IoT servers doing yeoman’s work today, or have those workloads navigated upstream?
- How are datacenter, colocation and cloud providers evolving their services to cater to the needs of the IoT edge?
The new IT + OT equation
Coverage Analysts
Rich Karpinski, Ian Hughes, Johan Vermij, Tiny Haynes
Key topics & questions addressed
- Who is “in charge” of IoT and OT deployments today? Budgets? Deployments? Outcomes? And how has that dynamic evolved?
- In what ways has IT become more OT-knowledgeable, and OT more IT-savvy? Where is there still room to grow?
- An update on the concept of IT+OT digital engineering and how it impacts enterprise IoT deployments.
IoT platforms revisited
Coverage Analysts
Rich Karpinski, Ian Hughes, Dave Immerman, Melanie Posey, Liam Eagle
Key topics & questions addressed
- How has the market map for IoT platform vendors — once numbering in the multiple hundreds of firms — evolved?
- Given the choice between IoT SaaS, PaaS and IaaS, what is the infrastructure of choice to support IoT workload requirements?
- While some IoT platforms have faded into the background, others — especially connectivity management platforms — have become more important than ever. How is that sector evolving?
The evolution of OT security
Johan Vermij, Scott Crawford, John McNeice
Key topics & questions addressed
- How has the market map for OT security evolved?
- Given the fact that security has been the No. 1 concern in scaling IoT deployments for four years in a row, where are companies in their OT security journey?
- How has the regulatory framework changed during the last five years?
IIoT to industrial metaverse evolution
Coverage Analysts
Ian Hughes, Neil Barbour, Bobby Clay
Key topics & questions addressed
- What is the state of the art for industrial metaverse?
- What impact does industrial digital transformation have on the bottom line and on environmental, social and governance efforts?
- Is industrial metaverse the driver for evolution of enterprise and consumer applications?
- Has digital transformation led to digital silos, or unified applications and data?
Where is the enterprise and consumer metaverse?
Coverage Analysts
Ian Hughes, Neil Barbour, Bobby Clay
Key topics & questions addressed
- Is interoperability between platforms going to happen — and does it need to?
- Does GenAI empower everyone to be a metaverse creator, and does that dilute or enhance experiences?
- Real-time interaction in enterprise remote/hybrid working tools: is it where it needs to be?
- AR and VR headsets are improving, but not essential. How is the market for them changing?
- Brands have numerous platform choices to try to find customers where they are — but where is that?
Automotive IoT and the software-defined vehicle opportunity
Coverage Analysts
Beatriz Minamy, Zoe Roth, John Abbott, Johan Vermij
Key topics & questions addressed
- What is the state of auto OEMs’ connected services today, and what are the future trends? What are the market opportunities for digital infrastructure vendors?
- Is 5G a revolution or an evolution for auto OEMs? How will V2X impact autonomous driving, smart cities, infrastructure providers and the connected ecosystem?
- What is the state of software-defined vehicles (SDVs), and what are the implications in vehicle onboard and off-board data management? How are technology companies and hyperscalers disrupting the cockpit?
- What is the role of public and private infrastructure providers in developing and expanding the new ecosystem for electric, automated, connected and shared mobility?
- How are AI, machine learning and analytics driving innovation in SDVs, and what are the implications for infrastructure technology suppliers?
Electric vehicles: The digital opportunity
Coverage Analysts
Beatriz Minamy, Johan Vermij
Key topics & questions addressed
- What is the state of EV connected services today? What are the likely trends? Who are the key players? What are the implications in the digital infrastructure supply chain?
- What are the digital infrastructure requirements to enable EV smart charging? What is the market trend for cloud-based smart charging in the coming years?
- What is the market trend for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and battery management solutions, and what are the IoT market implications?
Autonomous operations in critical infrastructure
Johan Vermij, Ian Hughes, Mark Fontecchio
Key topics & questions addressed
- Can autonomous operations improve energy use and operational efficiency?
- How can autonomous operations help to decarbonize operations and improve sustainability?
- How can autonomous operations contribute to health, safety and environmental risk management?
Digital twins in energy
Johan Vermij, Ian Hughes
Key topics & questions addressed
- Can digital twins improve energy efficiency and increase grid capacity?
- How can digital twins help to decarbonize operations and improve sustainability?
- How can digital twins contribute to health, safety and environmental risk management?
Advanced telematics in transportation and supply chain
Coverage Analysts
Mark Fontecchio, Zoe Roth, Beatriz Minamy
Key topics & questions addressed
- Developing a working, industry-specific generative AI model from the increasingly massive volume of vehicle telematics data.
- Can telematics data from vehicles and other devices help supply chains become more sustainable?
- Ensuring physical security and freight quality.
- Identifying various financial technology opportunities in shipping and logistics using telematics data.
The maturation of intelligent transportation systems
Coverage Analysts
Zoe Roth, Beatriz Minamy, Mark Fontecchio
Key topics & questions addressed
- What is the state of intelligent transportation systems (ITS)? Who are key vendors, both in applications and full-stack systems?
- What role do V2X, MEC and other IT infrastructure play in enabling intelligent transportation systems? Which vendors support it?
- What are the top ITS use cases today? How do cities buy ITS — application by application or full stack?
- How are OEMs approaching digital readiness as it relates to V2X capabilities?
- How do connected, automated and electric mobility contribute to ITS and smart cities? What are the implications for digital infrastructure?
Smart cities empowered by AI
Coverage Analysts
Zoe Roth, Nick Patience, Alex Johnston
Key topics & questions addressed
- How do cities approach the use of AI and GenAI? Which internal stakeholders are engaged, and what is the policy basis for AI deployments?
- What role will data governance programs play in preparing cities for broad-scale AI adoption?
- For what key IoT use cases can AI drive enhancements?
- Which vendors will provide public-sector-focused AI and GenAI capabilities?
- How will public sector entities leverage generative AI to optimize processes and service delivery?
- How does the public sector differ from the private sector when it comes to generative AI and large language model adoption and requirements such as privacy and security?
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Mergers & Acquisitions
Analyst Team
Brenon Daly
Melissa Incera
Iuri Struta
Samantha Tomaszczyk
Stephanie TurnerResearch Areas
The “new normal” for tech M&A
Coverage Analysts
Brenon Daly, Samantha Tomaszczyk, Melissa Incera, Iuri Struta
Key topics & questions addressed
- What is the "new normal" in terms of both tech deal volume and pricing?
- Will valuations fall in 2024?
- How will increasing regulatory scrutiny impact tech M&A?
- Will stagnant growth, compounded by efforts from activists, drive companies to revisit or even unwind transactions from years past?
- Which groups of acquirers will be the most competitive?
The role of financial sponsors
Coverage Analysts
Brenon Daly, Samantha Tomaszczyk, Melissa Incera, Iuri Struta
Key topics & questions addressed
- How will higher interest rates impact financial buyers and their sources of financing?
- How does the potential for increased regulatory scrutiny of private equity and venture capital dealmaking influence M&A appetite?
- How will financial sponsors (both PE and VC) manage portfolio expectations amid a dampened environment for exits?
- Financial sponsors are increasingly acting as strategic consolidators across the technology landscape — how does that impact the structure of key tech subsectors?
- How does sponsor activity vary across geographies?
AI as a driver of deal flow
Coverage Analysts
Nick Patience, Brenon Daly, Melissa Incera, Iuri Struta, Samantha Tomaszczyk
Key topics & questions addressed
- How will changes in the labor market impact the demand for AI tools, and which sectors will see the greatest demand for AI solutions?
- With the definition of AI companies still somewhat amorphous, how will players differentiate themselves to stand out from the pack?
- After the buzz around ChatGPT, what will be the next killer AI app?
- As the sector grows, how is M&A likely to fill gaps in portfolios? Who is likely to buy, and who is likely to be bought?
Software’s growing share
Coverage Analysts
Samantha Tomaszczyk, Melissa Incera, Iuri Struta
Key topics & questions addressed
- Last year, business intelligence, commerce and HR tech software were the segments that saw the biggest lifts in activity. Which subsectors will be primary drivers of growth this year?
- How will a cooling venture capital climate impact the outlook and opportunities for software companies?
- How will valuations be impacted as investor priorities shift from growth to profitability?
The state of information security M&A
Coverage Analysts
Brenon Daly, Scott Crawford, Garrett Becker
Key topics & questions addressed
- Will the infosec M&A market remain immune to downturn in a weaker macroeconomic environment?
- Who will emerge as a consolidator in 2024? Will it be a strategic buyer or a private one?
- What new threats are emerging that could drive new acquisitions?
- Will enterprises continue to deploy third-party software to protect their work and digital assets, or will those capabilities become baked into the digital infrastructure of the cloud?
- Are enterprises budgeting more money on infosec in 2024 versus 2023?
M&A KnowledgeBase (MAKB) tracks global tech transactions
Coverage Analysts
Brenon Daly, Samantha Tomaszczyk, Melissa Incera, Iuri Struta, Stephanie Turner
Key topics & questions addressed
- Which sectors will see continued M&A?
- Which sectors will see a pullback in dealmaking amid a weaker economic environment?
- How will emerging sectors such as fintech fare, especially after the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX?
- Will investment in the metaverse drive an uptick in M&A?
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Workforce Productivity and Collaboration
Analyst Team
Research Areas
The experience economy increasingly informs technology investments
Coverage Analysts
Chris Marsh, Raul Castañon, Conner Forrest, Rosanna Jimenez, Sheryl Kingstone, Bruce Daley, Zach Ciampa
Key topics & questions addressed
- What tools will help businesses organize, build and scale in the experience economy?
- Where and how are the employee and customer experience technology stacks integrating?
- How are changing business incentives for engagement shaping technology choices?
- What will the converged enterprise business systems be in a mature experience economy?
- How is the experience economy transforming the back, middle and front offices within organizations and the technologies sold into them?
Frontline digitization integrates employee and customer experience outcomes
Coverage Analysts
Raul Castañon, Chris Marsh, Sheryl Kingstone
Key topics & questions addressed
- What capabilities and experiences do frontline workers most want from their tools?
- Which productivity and collaboration vendors will power the frontline workforce?
- How will person-to-person and application-to-person communications play a role?
- What are the principal business outcomes organizations seek as they digitize their frontline operations?
- How are digital operations in verticals such as manufacturing, healthcare, hospitality, transportation and logistics being transformed?
HR shifts its focus to talent, skills and the digital employee experience
Coverage Analysts
Conner Forrest
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are HR’s technology investments shifting, and what does that say about the business outcomes HR is focused on?
- What capabilities are driving HR to become a strategic business partner?
- How is a growing focus on the digital employee experience influencing overall employee experience strategies?
- As AI reaches critical mass, what are the main use cases and challenges?
- What opportunities and risks are posed by the growing sophistication of people analytics and workforce data?
Innovation across the project, portfolio and work management categories
Coverage Analysts
Chris Marsh, Rosanna Jimenez
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are project and portfolio management tools modernizing to meet the needs of the project management office (PMO)?
- What is powering the continuing rise of collaborative work management (CWM) tools?
- How might technology consolidation and specialization challenge CWM tool adoption?
- What are the opportunities in an experience economy where more velocity, precision and scale across work are needed?
- What role will innovation, acquisition, integration and partnerships play in the evolution of these categories?
Strategic planning processes become modular, integrated and agile
Coverage Analysts
Conner Forrest, Chris Marsh
Key topics & questions addressed
- What new planning workflows are uniting finance, sales, operations, HR and other domains?
- What role will intelligence, predictive and scenario modeling play in agile planning?
- Corporate performance management versus financial, planning and analysis platforms — separate, complementary or “frenemies”?
- Do planning and work execution processes need to integrate?
Product management tools unite business and technical domains
Coverage Analysts
Chris Marsh, Rosanna Jimenez
Key topics & questions addressed
- How is the product life cycle consolidating, and which companies will own the enabling technologies?
- How are tools integrating with other business applications?
- What are the strategic partnership opportunities?
- Where does differentiation lie across a growing supply-side of vendor tools?
- What role will innovation, acquisition and integration play in the category’s evolution?
Workplace collaboration tools become more strategic and visual
Coverage Analysts
Raul Castañon, Chris Marsh, Rosanna Jimenez
Key topics & questions addressed
- Beyond conversation to strategy, planning, culture building and professional development — how are the incentives for collaboration changing?
- What are the main implications from the consolidation of business communication tools?
- What is the next set of use cases and market opportunities for visual collaboration tools?
- Is the “democratization of design” a sound bite, or does it have transformational potential?
- Which vendors will be the next centers of gravity for workplace collaboration?
Artificial intelligence reshapes legacy content and document management
Coverage Analysts
Conner Forrest
Key topics & questions addressed
- How will content management and document processing specialize for vertical industries?
- How will robotic process automation and digital automation platforms shape intelligent content services?
- What is the potential for generative AI in content generation and summarization?
Growing automation powers the content supply chain
Coverage Analysts
Conner Forrest, Chris Marsh
Key topics & questions addressed
- What is the demand for more personalized content in the experience economy?
- What are the key challenges, and what capabilities are needed to manage content assets through their life cycle?
- Digital asset management, work management and intelligence platforms — the holy trinity of the content supply chain?
Increasing risks focus attention on secure and compliant communications
Coverage Analysts
Raul Castañon
Key topics & questions addressed
- How are business communications a security blind spot for organizations?
- What impact does hybrid work have on security and compliance for business communications and collaboration?
- How can communications and collaboration technologies focus on cybersecurity risk mitigation?