Moor Insights & Strategy Weekly Update Ending April 19, 2024

By Patrick Moorhead - April 23, 2024

The Moor Insights & Strategy team hopes you had a great couple of weeks!

Last week, Robert attended Appian World 2024 in DC. Matt attended Datacenter World. Melody attended the Avaya Analyst Conference in LaJolla.

This week, Will will be attending Extreme Networks Connect in Fort Worth. Robert and Matt will attend the San Francisco Oracle Analyst Database Summit. Melody will be attending the Oracle Applications and Industries Analyst Summit.

Next week, Anshel will be attending MediaTek Analyst Day in Scottsdale.

Our MI&S team published 24 deliverables:

7 Forbes Insight columns
4 MI&S Research Notes
4 MI&S blogs
7 podcasts 
2 research papers

Over the last two weeks, the press quoted us with 15 citations. They wanted to hear about AI & Smartphone, Google, Intel, Michael Dell SXSW, TSMC, and ZK Research.

MIS Quick Insights: `

A.I./Machine Learning (Paul Smith-Goodson)

Gemini 1.5 Pro is one of the advanced AI models Google announced in the past six months. It is the newest addition to the Gemini series. It is a foundation model designed to accommodate multiple modes of data. It can interpret visuals, categorize information, summarize content, and generate new content based on images, audio, and video inputs. It can handle various visual and textual data forms, including photos, written documents, infographics, and screenshots.
Gemini 1.5 Pro differentiates itself with a mixture-of-experts architecture. This architecture provides better performance by dividing problems into segments and then using specialized expert sub-models to solve each segment. It has the largest commercial context window size of one million tokens and almost perfect retrieval for up to 10 million tokens.
Meta recently released Meta Llama 3, possibly one of the most advanced LLM. Llama 3 comes in two sizes, 8B and 70B parameters. Llama 3 did well in benchmarking. In the MMLU 5-shot, Llama 3 topped Google’s Gemma 7B and Anthropic’s Claude 3 Sonnet and showed it has complex language skills. It answered graduate-level questions in the GPQA 0-shot with accuracy. In the HumanEval 0-shot, which tests code generative models, Llama 3 showed multilingual capabilities and potential for coding applications. Llama 3 excelled in mathematical and word problem-solving benchmarks of the GSM-8K 8-shot and Math 4-shot, CoT, which means it has advanced reasoning skills.
Meta’s plans include expansion of its capabilities, becoming multilingual and multimodal, longer context windows, more model sizes, and further performance enhancements. A research paper is in progress.

AR/VR/XR (Anshel Sag)

Carrier/Wireless (Will Townsend)

Client Computing (Anshel Sag)

CRM (Melody Brue)

Salesforce has withdrawn from discussions for a potential takeover of Informatica due to disagreements over terms – reportedly the price. Despite earlier reports indicating progress, the talks have stalled, raising questions about the viability of the merger. Critics, including Gaurav Dhillon, cofounder of Informatica, expressed concerns about the deal’s impact, particularly regarding integrating Informatica’s technology with Salesforce’s existing platform, MuleSoft. While both companies experienced share price drops during the negotiations, Informatica has seen positive growth in 2024, driven by its adoption of AI in enterprise solutions. For Salesforce, the focus remains on innovations, with recent launches such as Public Sector Einstein 1 for Service and continued expansion and enhancement for UC offerings.
Microsoft announced updates to Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Microsoft Copilot for Service, extending Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 with role-specific insights and actions that integrate with existing contact center, CRM, and productivity apps. Enhancements in lead qualification now empower sellers to accurately assign opportunities to the appropriate seller, access an AI-generated lead qualification summary, and generate multiple opportunities from a single lead. These features are set to debut in public preview in mid-May 2024.
Copilot for Service, previously in preview status, is scheduled to transition to general availability later this month. This entails functionalities such as leveraging Copilot within Outlook and Teams to draft and summarize emails, accessing case summaries, managing CRM records, and other capabilities.

Datacenter:

Networking– (Will Townsend)

Compute/Storage/Cloud (Matt Kimball)

(Si): Intel VisiON was the venue for the launch of Gaudi 3, Intel’s new AI accelerator. Shipping in the 2H of 2024, this accelerator is aimed squarely at enterprise, where the early numbers show that the company is demonstrating a significant performance-per-watt advantage over the NVIDIA H100 and H200 GPUs. Further, while pricing was not disclosed, Gaudi will have a considerable price-performance advantage. What I like about Gaudi is its ability to excel at training and inference. By excel, I mean performing each task fast and efficiently. And I like this targeting of enterprise. With all of the focus on cloud-based training with silicon that only hyperscalers can afford (and get), Gaudi will fill a real need.
(Si): It must be AI season as Marvell held an AI summit, inviting analysts and the press to view their latest innovations. In this, the company disclosed several newsworthy items, including 2 XPUs targeting AI compute and AI networking. While the company boldly forecasted an AI market that would reach $2t, it also predicted it would double its market share from 10% to 20%. Marvell is one of maybe two companies that can address the entirety of the AI infrastructure equation – from connectivity to storage to compute. Because of this, it can deliver fully integrated AI infrastructure stacks in a way and at a scale that only hyperscalers require. A market rich with opportunity.
(INFRA)Who missed out on the Broadcom launch of WatchTower a few weeks back? Anybody who has been in IT for a while understands the unique value of the mainframe (which has led to its longevity). They also know the unique challenges in applying the most modern monitoring and management technologies to this market. Broadcom brings this to the equation with WatchTower – an observability platform that delivers AIOps to the mainframe marketplace. Further, it enables IT organizations to integrate the management of these mission-critical servers into their management framework of choice. After 30 years in IT, maybe we are finally getting closer to the nirvana, a single pane of glass for control.
(AI): Familiar with the Linux Foundation’s UXL? It’s a consortium aimed at breaking the CUDA stronghold across supercomputing, focusing on AI. Like so many other datacenter technology mainstays, CUDA has given NVIDIA a virtual lock on GPU programming for high-performance computing and, to a lesser extent, AI. It is good to see the market responding. And while we’ve seen the AI Alliance emerge as one consortium, I’m incredibly excited about a project/consortium coming out of the Linux Foundation. This is a community filled with open-source folks who have broken many proprietary locks in the corporate data center. I am sure we’ll see great work come out of this.
(Cloud Si) Last but certainly not least – Google finally jumped into the Arm game by announcing its Axion CPU. Built on Arm V2, this high-performance part is designed to support the full range of workloads running in the cloud – from scalar to vector. The company already runs many internal workloads, including the highly distributed Spanner database and Google Earth. I expect the first version of Axion to be somewhat “vanilla” as the company deploys and understands what workloads customers are deploying on it and the like. I also expect we’ll quickly see this part evolve and become what we’ve witnessed with Graviton from AWS, where it is quickly displacing x86 in both scale-out and scale-up workloads.

Data Security (Robert Kramer)

ESG (Melody Brue)

Enterprise Data (Robert Kramer)

DATA MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS – Key Considerations
The anchor or ground zero for most operations are enterprise applications such as ERP and SCM.
- Accurate and reliable data is the cornerstone of data management.
- Change management is essential for any transformation.
- Process controls
- Integrating GAI into data management strategies allows organizations to improve processes.
- Consideration to add a Chief Data Officer (CDO) to oversee data governance, data quality, and overall data management strategies. I see this as an upcoming theme.
Read more: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/robert-kramer-58239b22_data-management-insights-part-i-data-management-activity-7186172004054573057-H_C3?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Commvault, a leader in data protection and cyber resilience capabilities, has expanded its platform with the recent acquisition of Appranix. Appranix brings patented technology to recover any cloud resource and rebuild cloud application environments. Appranix adds an essential element to the Commvault platform: risk, readiness, recovery, resilience, and now rebuild. Look for my upcoming article on Commvault’s acquisition.
Appian World – this week from Washington DC Highlights
Appian is a Business process automation and low-code platform that allows organizations to automate workflows, tasks, and processes, i.e., increased efficiency and improved team collaboration.
Products around gov’t (fed, state, local) procurement, public sector case management, onboarding, financial underwriting, insurance claims
- Appian’s focus is for AI to make data more useful
- New product offering Focus is its Data Fabric product – unifies data across all your systems
- I’ll have more details on this, but I do not think the product is being maximized
- I have an upcoming article and advisory to dive deeper into my recommendation
Oracle invests $8B in Japan for Cloud and AI
Oracle looks to expand its OCI presence across Japan to serve customers and partners better and enhance data access. The move to Oracle’s distributed cloud offers several advantages, including local customer support, migrating mission-critical workloads by the Japanese government and businesses to OCI in the region, improved control and flexibility for regional customers, local delivery of AI, and the OCI suite of over 100 cloud services. OCI distributed cloud supports dedicated, hybrid, public, and multi-cloud environments.
https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/oracle-to-invest-more-than-eight-billion-in-cloud-computing-and-ai-in-japan-2024-04-17/
As the Software AG’s annual IUG event in Dublin concludes, I previously raised about the future following the sale of its prime asset, SuperiPaaS (WebMethods + StreamSets), to IBM, which is set to close 2Q2024.
- Following conversations with various executives, it’s clear that Software AG faces challenges but plans to capitalize on the success of its Aris solution. Aris is recognized for enabling advanced business process analysis & automation, data process mining, plus risk and compliance management. The company is also known for Adabas, its high-performance, enterprise-grade database system recognized for reliability and handling large-scale transactions, and the Alfabet platform, which supports strategic enterprise initiatives.
- Software AG should position itself within this sector’s supply chain as data management strategies become necessary. I will provide a more in-depth analysis of Software AG and its data management roles soon, as more to follow.
Cohesity partners with Intel. Intel is bringing its confidential computing capabilities to the Cohesity Data Cloud to provide additional support for Cohesity customers. The goal is to reduce the risk of potential bad actors accessing data critical for highly regulated industries like financial institutions, healthcare, and government.
Google Cloud’s BigQuery brings Power at Google Cloud Next 2024.
- Let’s summarize some of BigQuery’s advancements:
  - A unified AI-ready data platform
  - Gemini helps AI-driven tools for better data handling and analytics
  - Gemini can now process and analyze both images and videos
  - Data Canvas reimagines data analytics – works with BigQuery managed storage, BigLake, Google Cloud Storage objects, and BigQuery Omni tables
  - An AI-assisted feature has been introduced to clean and prepare data more effectively
  - Comprehensive metadata management and automatic tracking of data changes with improved data capacity
  - Improved performance with Gemini 1.5 Pro to understand longer text sequences, enabling more complex AI applications for businesses
- Gemini advances for Data and AI
  - Data Canvas with Gemini allows for managing data pipelines with features like natural language commands and visualizations.
  - Gemini improves the migration of data from legacy systems to convert databases such as AlloyDB or other modern cloud databases.
  - Vector indexing with Gemini gives users new query capabilities, such as indexing directly in BigQuery and AlloyDB for accurate responses.
  - Google Cloud brings new capabilities for Looker, allowing your data to integrate with workflows, chat capabilities, and Google Workspace.
  - Gemini also gives threat intelligence more features with details about threat actor behaviors, analyzing more data and providing advanced information for the code’s true intent.
  - Security operations utilize Gemini to detect and summarize event data, recommend actions to take, and navigate users through the platform via conversational chat.
- More will be discussed in my upcoming Google Cloud Data Analyst Insights article.
- Informatica expands its partnership with Google Cloud with its new Master Data Management (MDM) Extension for Google Cloud BigQuery. This innovation is poised to accelerate the time required for integrations of customer master data to be used in analytics and AI applications.
- Broadcom recently launched its new observability platform, the WatchTower Platform, for mainframe operations. Mainframe computers host mission-critical workloads and are constant in global organizations’ data centers. WatchTower uses observability and AIOps to give organizations a comprehensive overview of their mainframes’ performance.
  - My colleagues, Matthew Kimball and Will Townsend from Moor Insights & Strategy, provide their perspectives on the mainframe industry and how WatchTower integrates into Broadcom’s overall strategy.
  - https://moorinsightsstrategy.com/research-notes/broadcom-delivers-watchtower-observability-for-mainframes/
- Salesforce collaborates with IQVIA, integrating its Orchestrated Customer Engagement (OCE) platform with Salesforce’s Life Sciences Cloud. LeadingMile also introduced TARA for Salesforce, a no-code testing tool that supports both on-premise and cloud (SaaS) setups, offering pre-configured components for advanced testing.
  - TARA can adapt to the system with customizations, which should help improve connectivity issues within Salesforce. Both propose to create a more end-to-end Life Science platform, which is expected to be released in 2025.

ERP/SCM (Robert Kramer)

SAP continues to RISE with add-on solutions, allowing customers to continue to get value from their cloud ERP investments. These new capabilities promote processes, collaboration, efficiency, and sustainability.
Add-ons are for financial management
-Digital banking, treasury, risk management, financial three lines of defense, billing, and revenue innovation management. Add-ons for the supply chain
-Advanced product life cycle management, advanced supply chain planning, advanced logistics, advanced manufacturing, advanced asset and service management,
Read more on how this affects your finance and supply chain.
https://news.sap.com/2024/04/rise-with-sap-finance-and-supply-chain-add-on-packages/
SAP and other ERP applications are seeing an uptick in cyber-attacks targeting their vulnerabilities. Since 2021, there has been a 400% increase in ransomware incidents compromising data in SAP systems.
Some of this can be prompted by migrations of SAP applications to the cloud, and cyber-attacks target misconfigurations and missing security patches in both cloud and on-premises deployments. “The facts are clear: unprotected cloud, hybrid, and on-premise SAP applications are being attacked by malicious threat actors for data theft, financial fraud, and – increasingly – ransomware,” Onapsis said.
https://onapsis.com/press-releases/new-report-reveals-evidence-of-increased-cybercriminal-interest-in-erp-applications/
Ecosystem expansions are also happening within the ERP industry
SAP, Lenovo, IBM, AWS, Adobe, Accenture, and others have partnered with NVIDIA.
Few examples:
- SAP and NVIDIA also partner to accelerate AI across SAP’s cloud solutions and applications portfolio.
- Lenovo announced its new hybrid AI solutions built in collaboration with NVIDIA for GAI applications in various industries, from enterprise to cloud.
- IBM Storage for data and AI with NVIDIA DGX BasePOD organizations can quickly transform data-intensive workloads with fewer risks.
- AWS partners with the new NVIDIA Blackwell GPU platform to deliver advanced infrastructure, software, and services, giving users improved GenAI capabilities.
- Adobe partners with NVIDIA for data and AI to help create a more personalized content experience for its users. –Accenture and NVIDIA provide graphic capabilities with Defender and other offerings for a better client experience.
  https://erp.today/tech-companies-team-up-with-nvidia-for-ai-innovation/

Financial Tech (Melody Brue)

Klarna, the Swedish fintech company, is launching its credit card in the United States to provide consumers with payment flexibility. This move follows consumer demand for a card that allows payments in installments, which is Klarna’s signature approach. Klarna previously introduced a credit card in the EU. In this venture into the U.S. market, the company is partnering with WebBank. The Klarna credit card competes with offerings from Apple, Robinhood, and BNPL player Affirm. The card offers features such as up to 10% cash back on selected merchants, integration with Klarna’s AI assistant for deals, and compatibility with Google and Apple Pay. There is a waitlist for the card, which will roll out in the coming months. With this move, Klarna looks to provide payment options outside of revolving credit, citing concerns about rising credit card debt in the U.S. The company says it aims to offer healthier and more sustainable alternatives. With its expansion into the U.S., Klarna continues to grow its largest revenue market alongside Germany.
Chase Bank has launched Chase Media Solutions, a new digital media business. Chase’s deep understanding of consumers’ spending allows brands and marketers to connect with the bank’s 80 million customers. Chase tailors offers based on customers’ purchasing history and promotes them through Chase’s proprietary channels. After activation and then shopping either in-store or online, customers receive cashback rewards. Brands can leverage these offers to boost customer acquisition and drive additional sales.

HCM (Melody Brue)

Workday has grown rapidly and established itself as a trusted global vendor. It is now adapting its strategy to become more flexible while emphasizing its platform capabilities.
- Workday has taken on the complexity of the HCM market, with diverse needs across different industries and sub-markets. With numerous vendors offering specialized HR solutions and the increasing impact of AI, Workday has faced challenges in staying competitive. The company has shifted towards a more open approach, including welcoming partnerships with ISVs, resellers, and other industry solutions. Workday has also refined its AI strategy. Workday provides AI solutions tailored to individual enterprises, leveraging micro-LLMs trained on each company’s data. This approach ensures that AI features are relevant for each client company without sharing data across organizations.
Paycor has introduced two new services – Pay Benchmarking and Labor Forecasting – to assist HR and business leaders in making informed compensation and workforce planning decisions. By utilizing industry standards and market data, leaders can optimize their compensation strategies and staffing schedules, leading to greater efficiency and improved customer service. Paycor has partnered with Visier to provide updated salary data for approximately 10 million US jobs, ensuring fair pay practices and competitive offer rates. This new solution allows businesses to create optimal staffing schedules based on key demand indicators. This is important for leaders to manage staffing levels efficiently and maintain optimal customer service.

IIoT and IoT (Bill Curtis)

The LoRa Alliance revealed a new LoRaWAN development roadmap highlighting plans for improving scalability, satellite connectivity, device management, application interfaces, over-the-air firmware updates, and cryptography through 2027. Heavy on history and light on details, the roadmap signals a shift in focus from deployment simplification to application scalability. I’m happy to see application server and gateway interface standardization get long-awaited and well-deserved attention, alongside much-needed security upgrades, including crypto and OTA updates. It’s high time for the alliance to accelerate top-down, application-centric development.
Blues offers a simple, modular approach to IoT connectivity. The company’s Notecard modules cover cellular, Wi-Fi, LoRa, and satellite (Skylo) with plug-and-play cards that work immediately upon installation. The APIs are the same across all networks, so applications work the same for all modules. The price also includes connectivity services. The Blues approach is excellent for small production volumes, but cost is a consideration for Blues or any external module as applications scale up, particularly for cellular and satellite. Last week, Blues addressed this situation with the Notecard XP, a cost-reduced version of the cellular Notecard. The card sells for $19 (5,000 units, North America), which is competitive with chip-down alternatives. Blues reduces connectivity complexity to a simple API for low data rate applications so developers can focus on writing value-added applications.
Qualcomm just snapped up Foundries.io, a startup that generates Yocto-customized Linux distros for IoT products and maintains them via OTA updates. This platform-as-a-service offloads a tremendous amount of system development from the embedded product development process, enabling developers to focus on writing application code rather than Linux customization and long-term OS maintenance. This is a savvy acquisition with industry-wide appeal, and I encourage Qualcomm to keep Foundries.io open to all processor hardware.
- Qualcomm also announced the QCC730, a disruptively low-power Wi-Fi system for IoT connectivity. The company claims it uses “up to 88% lower power than previous generations.” It could bring high bandwidth connectivity to battery-power products previously constrained to low-rate networks like Z-Wave, Zigbee, or Thread. We’ll see how it works in practical applications.
- The new Qualcomm RB3 Gen2 robotics and automation platform features the QCS6490 processor, which increases AI processing by 10X over the previous generation. On-device AI targets enterprise and industrial vision applications such as defect detection, worker safety, warehouse management, drones, robots, and intelligent displays. The company offers a complete software stack for the device, including LTS (long-term support) Linux and support for all the platform’s cores, subsystems, and components. Qualcomm Linux is currently in private preview.
NXP announced the MCX W series of scalable wireless microcontroller (MCU) SoCs, adding advanced connectivity to the well-known MCX portfolio and the FRDM development platform. The new chips have a dedicated core to offload the radio subsystem, freeing the main MCU for running application code. The W series is the industry’s first MCU to support Bluetooth Channel Sounding, enabling accurate distance measurement for security, asset tracking, and indoor location finding. The radio subsystem runs the entire Thread or Zigbee stack alongside the Bluetooth LE stack.
Synaptics beefed up the SL-Series of “AI-native” IoT processors with The Astra Machina Foundation series development kit, greatly simplifying application development with a common IO board that accepts any of the three SL-Series processors and provides wireless connectivity using the company’s new Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combo chips. The platform supports Matter for consumer applications.

Modern Work (Melody Brue)

Last week, I attended the Avaya Analyst Summit. It has been several years since the company had a formal analyst event to give updates and get feedback from the analyst community. Despite not having these events, I have met with Avaya several times since Alan Masarek took over as CEO. That’s important because I have had firsthand experience with the executive team through the company’s latest restructuring. I have seen incremental progress in getting Avaya to a healthy financial and operational position. It’s also important because it is a shared belief at Moor Insights & Strategy that the leadership of most senior executives at a company will tell you most of what you need to know about a company. From my experience with Masarek and his team, I have faith in their ability to deliver on their core promises, and that previous experience, combined with what I learned at the Avaya Analyst Summit, brings me to weigh in on what the company hoped were the three takeaways from the event. These are: “Avaya is roaring back,” becoming a leader in enterprise CX, and reestablishing trust in the company. While I agree to some extent (based on the restructuring) that the company is back, it was never really gone from a customer perspective. This could be partially because most customers would require a significant “rip and replace” to leave Avaya, but even through the bankruptcy, the company maintained a large customer base. I see and understand the company’s direction and focus on enterprise CX. The team has invested heavily in understanding its core customers’ needs – modeling that to identify growth opportunities. Trust could take time as the company puts its plans into action, but it has done a great job of being transparent with financials and roadmap and has a “Say: Do” culture. I also firmly believe that this leadership team shares a genuine camaraderie. Team culture holds significant importance in the tech industry. Given the rapid pace of change and many competitors, the company must maintain alignment. Everyone on the team profoundly understands the situation and is building a future based on a very informed view of customer needs.
Adobe has launched the new Adobe Express mobile app, extending the capabilities of Adobe Firefly generative AI to millions of content creators worldwide. The app offers a suite of ideation, design, and content-sharing tools, enabling users to create social media posts, videos, logos, and more. A record number of users have used Adobe Express over the past year, and the app is gaining widespread adoption across various social platforms. Features include Text to Image, Generative Fill, Text Effects, and Text to Template, which make otherwise complex tasks more accessible to users of different skill levels. The Adobe Express mobile app features video editing, text styling, and content scheduling for complete creation, editing, and publishing ability while on the go. Adobe Express integrates with platforms like TikTok to create content across various platforms. With its expanded partner ecosystem and integrated workflows for Creative Cloud subscribers, Adobe Express continues to push new and simpler solutions for content creators worldwide. Google announced several new Workspace updates at Google Cloud Next. I will soon have a more detailed view of the latest products and enhancements announced at the conference. One standout is Google Vids, a new AI-fueled video creation tool. This tool leverages AI to help customers create a growing demand for content. I’m most excited about Tabs in Docs. Tabs keep people organized within the document they are working on so a project, workstream, or team can organize and collaborate from one central place.
Integrating Verint’s Open Platform’s unified data hub into the Webex App Hub for Webex Contact Center aims to enhance customer engagement across various touchpoints. Verint’s Open Platform revolves around a unified data hub, consolidating a brand’s behavioral data from customer interactions, customer experiences, and workforce data into a single repository. Typically, this behavioral data is scattered across various silos, making it challenging for organizations to access and utilize for deriving valuable business insights. The unified data hub enables easy access to data, so employees, supervisors, and managers should have more actionable insights to drive efficiency and informed decision-making. Organizations need secure and accurate real-time data to measure their performance against customer expectations.
Microsoft has recently extended its updated licensing for Microsoft 365, Office 365, and Teams, previously implemented in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland, to a global scale. Microsoft reports that this initiative aims to provide customers with clarity to streamline decision-making processes and negotiations. It is primarily viewed as a reaction to antitrust scrutiny. Consequently, outside the EEA and Switzerland, new commercial Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites without Teams are introduced alongside a standalone Teams offering for Enterprise customers in those regions. Existing subscribers with Teams included in plans can continue using their current subscriptions. New subscribers outside the EEA and Switzerland may need to purchase separate SKUs for Microsoft 365/Office 365 and Teams. Changes announced apply only to commercial SKUs (Enterprise, Business, and Frontline). Consumer, academic, US government, and nonprofit-specific SKUs are not currently impacted.
The AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium has been established to examine the implications of AI on technology-related employment. The consortium is led by Cisco and supported by Accenture, Eightfold, Google, IBM, Indeed, Intel, Microsoft, and SAP. The formation resulted from initiatives such as the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council Talent for Growth Task Force, with Chuck Robbins, Cisco’s Chair and CEO, contributing to the Task Force’s efforts. The consortium aims to evaluate AI’s impact on various technology jobs and identify pathways for skill development, particularly for roles susceptible to AI disruption.
Microsoft unveiled a significant upgrade to its Copilot AI assistant for Microsoft 365. The enhanced features include priority access to GPT-4 Turbo for faster and more comprehensive responses, utilizing web and work data. Additionally, chat limits are being removed, and file uploads are being increased. This move follows OpenAI’s decision to make its GPT-3.5 model freely accessible without sign-in requirements, potentially prompting Microsoft and other AI providers to upgrade their paid offerings like Copilot to maintain competitiveness and justify their value proposition.
Adobe’s Frame.io V4 update introduces enhancements that streamline collaboration throughout the content creation, offering more intricate workflows, enhanced feedback, and tighter review cycles. This version expands video support beyond post-production tasks, encompassing activities like casting, location scouting, and footage reviews while accommodating additional content types such as images, designs, and PDF files. New integrations with Photoshop and Workfront aim to enhance enterprise collaboration across the content supply chain. Teams and organizations are actively responding to the growing demand for video content. However, disjointed tools and systems often hinder the efficiency of creatives and stakeholders. As part of Adobe GenStudio, Frame.io integrates with Adobe Express and Adobe Firefly Services to help scale content production.

Quantum Computing (Paul Smith-Goodson)

The Mthree Qiskit extension is a new Qiskit tool designed for scalable measurement error mitigation on quantum computers. M3 implements matrix-free measurement mitigation to address measurement errors, the most common ones affecting quantum accuracy. Measurement errors are described by a linear system, which M3 addresses more efficiently and accurately than many other methods. While quantum error correction is the goal, a lot of IBM research focuses on error mitigation techniques like M3 to eliminate noise effects post-computation. Mthree can help researchers by providing access to the most current techniques to provide insights and improve the effectiveness of error mitigation.

Security (Will Townsend)

Sports Technology (Melody Brue)

According to the Sports Business Journal, The NBA’s current exclusive media rights negotiation period with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to end without a new deal, allowing the league to explore agreements with potential new partners for broadcasting games. Major players, including Amazon, Apple, YouTube TV, Comcast’s NBCUniversal/Peacock, and Netflix, have shown preliminary interest in securing broadcast packages. While Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are still in discussions with the NBA, the league is seeking a robust streaming partner willing to prioritize NBA games on their platform through marketing and promotion. The league could carve out specific packages for streaming partners, creating a hybrid distribution model in the future. A hybrid NBA broadcasting model could offer benefits for everyone involved. The NBA could reach a wider audience, increase revenue, and drive more innovation in the game presentation. Streaming services could gain subscribers and valuable viewer data while establishing themselves as sports broadcasters. Viewers would benefit from expanded viewing choices, new features for fan engagement, and easier access to games across platforms.
IBM has unveiled new AI features for this year’s Masters Tournament to offer in-depth insights into the game and unravel the mysteries of Augusta National. The Hole Insights feature on Masters.com and mobile apps integrates present and past gameplay data, enabling the quantification of shot projections for any specific hole. Leveraging data from the past eight years, IBM identifies the most challenging and accessible holes in the course. These projections, derived from historical and current performance data integrated by Watsonx, provide fans with insights into the game’s dynamics, allowing them to track players’ progress and assess course navigation. Additionally, fans can now enjoy automated audio and closed caption commentary in Spanish for on-demand highlight videos of approximately 20,000 shots throughout the tournament. This narration feature, powered by generative AI and large language models built on Watsonx, enhances the viewing experience. Moreover, IBM and the Masters have introduced the app for Apple Vision Pro, offering exclusive functionalities like immersive 3D renderings of the course. Apple Vision Pro users can personalize their app experience by selecting features such as livestreams and leaderboards, tailoring the app to their preferences.
RingCentral and The San Francisco Giants have announced a multi-year partnership with the adoption of RingCentral’s flagship solutions, including RingEX™ and a RingCentral Contact Center solution. This migration to RingCentral’s cloud-based platform will bolster employee collaboration, deliver significant cost savings and efficiencies, and revolutionize the fan customer experience by offering quicker response times, enhanced call reliability, and more. Bill Schlough, the CIO of the San Francisco Giants, said the streamlined internal business operations enabled by RingCentral’s communications solutions allows the Giants to maintain their focus on providing fans with exceptional game day experiences while continuing to excel on the field. RingCentral also powers other sports team’s UC, including the Golden State Warriors.

Sports Technology (Robert Kramer)

The Masters tournament is underway, and IBM is heavily involved with data. Moor Insights & Strategy was there to explore the role of data at the legendary Augusta National Golf Tournament. IBM’s watsonX platform is a significant asset in improving sports performance. For more insights, check out how Melody Brue and I analyze the impact of IBM’s technology in sports and at the Masters golf tournament. Stay tuned for more on sports technology developments.
Sharks Sports & Entertainment (SSE) uses SAP Analytics Cloud to advance operations and enhance fan experiences for its sports teams and venues. This technology provides SSE with a single platform to access, visualize, and analyze data, improving decisions and operations such as staffing events based on attendance data and understanding customer behavior through ticket analytics.

Sustainability (Melody Brue)

Podcasts:

The G2 on 5G by Moor Insights & Strategy, with Anshel Sag and Will Townsend

The Six-Five Podcast by Moor Insights & Strategy and Futurum Research, with Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman

Moor Insights & Strategy Podcasts, with Patrick Moorhead, Melody Brue, CP Smith-Goodson, Matt Kimball, and Will Townsend.

Citations:

AI & Smartphones / Patrick Moorhead / https://www.wired.com/story/humans-forget-ai-assistants-remember-everything/
AI & Smartphones / Patrick Moorhead / https://elblog.pl/2024/04/10/cognitive-augmentation-leveraging-ai-to-enhance-memory/
Apple / iPhone / Anshel Sag / https://www.technewsworld.com/story/pundit-predicts-apple-ai-will-be-bound-to-iphone-analysts-react-179132.html
Apple / Next-Gen Chips / Patrick Moorhead / https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/04/11/moor-insights-patrick-moorhead-talks-report-apple-is-preparing-next-gen-chips.html
Chips & Semiconductor products / Patrick Moorhead / https://finance.yahoo.com/video/chip-sector-correction-cautious-blow-155822522.html
Dell / AI Laptops / Patrick Moorhead / https://www.manilastandard.net/tech/314437487/dell-technologies-helps-organizations-create-modern-workplace-with-new-ai-experiences.html
Gigamon / AIOps / Will Townsend / https://blog.gigamon.com/2024/04/15/why-now-is-the-time-for-aiops-with-deep-observability/
Google / Gemini / Patrick Moorhead / https://www.shrubstack.com/p/the-quiet-bull-market-in-tin
Google / AI Chip / Patrick Moorhead / https://finance.yahoo.com/video/google-lot-prove-chip-announcement-203027394.html
Intel / Gaudi 3 / Patrick Moorhead / https://www.fastcompany.com/91090361/next-ai-arms-race-generative-video
Intel & Google / AI Chip / Patrick Moorhead / https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/04/09/nvidias-drop-today-likely-profit-taking-says-moor-insights-ceo-patrick-moorhead.html
Michael Dell SXSW Chat / Patrick Moorhead / https://mediastreet.ie/michael-dell-shares-his-first-lesson-of-the-dell-direct-model-when-he-was-16/
SK Hynix & Samsung / HBM / Anshel Sag / https://www.edn.com/a-sneak-peek-at-the-hbm-cold-war-between-samsung-and-sk-hynix/
TSMC / AI Chip / Patrick Moorhead / https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20240405229/chip-sector-avoids-a-major-crisis-from-taiwan-quake-but-one-lesson-should-be-learned
ZK Research / Enterprise Connect / Melody Brue /https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKxdIQw2qZw

New Gear or Software We are Using and Testing that is Public Knowledge

Dell 40″ Curved Ultrawide 5K Thunderbolt Monitor
HP Z6 Threadripper Workstation

Events MI&S Plans on Attending In-Person or Virtually (New)

April 2024
- Appian World, Wash DC, April 15-17 (Robert Kramer)
- Datacenter World, DC, Apr 15-18 (Matt Kimball)
- Avaya Analyst Conference, LaJolla, April 16-18 (Melody Brue)
- Extreme Networks Connect, Fort Worth, April 22-25 (Will Townsend – virtual)
- Oracle Analyst Database Summit, San Francisco, April 24 (Robert Kramer, Matt Kimball)
- Oracle Applications and Industries Analyst Summit, Redwood Shores, CA April 24-25 (Melody Brue)
May 2024
- MediaTek Analyst Day, Scottsdale, May 1-3 (Anshel Sag)
- RSA Conference, San Francisco, May 6-9 (Will Townsend)
- Red Hat Ansible Fest, Denver, May 7-9, (Matt Kimball)
- International Super Computing, Hamburg, May 12-16 (Matt Kimball)
- Blue Yonder, Dallas, May 13-15 (Robert Kramer)
- HF Convention, Dayton, May 17 – May 19 (Paul Smith-Goodson)
- Microsoft Build 2024, May 18-20 (Anshel Sag, Matt Kimball)
- Informatica World, Las Vegas, May 20-23 (Robert Kramer)
- IBM Think, Boston, May 20-23 (Patrick Moorhead, Paul Smith-Goodson, Robert Kramer)
- Dell Tech World, Las Vegas, May 20-23 (Anshel Sag, Patrick Moorhead, Matt Kimball, Will Townsend)
- Zoom Perspectives, NYC, May 20 -23 (Melody Brue)
- Microsoft Build, May 21-23 (Melody Brue – virtual)
- Nutanix .NEXT, May 21-24, Barcelona (Matt Kimball)
- Canva, Los Angeles, May 23 (Melody Brue)
- Computex 2024, May 31-June 5 (Anshel Sag)
June 2024
- Cisco Live US, Las Vegas, June 2-6 (Will Townsend)
- SAP Sapphire, Orlando, June 2–4 (Melody Brue, Robert Kramer)
- Snowflake, San Francisco, June 3-5 (Robert Kramer)
- Zoho Analyst Day & Zoholoics, Austin, June 4-6 (Melody Brue, Robert Kramer)
- Broadcom Mainframe Analyst Summit, June 5-6, Boston (Matt Kimball)
- Zscaler Zenith Live, Las Vegas, June 11-13 (Will Townsend)
- Databricks, San Fran, June 10-13 (Robert Kramer)
- HPE Discover, June 17-20, Las Vegas (Matt Kimball)
- Augmented World Expo, Long Beach, June 18 – 20 (Anshel Sag)
- Pure Storage Accelerate, June 18-21, Las Vegas (Matt Kimball)
September 2024
- Intel Innovation, Sep 23-26 (Matt Kimball)
- Infor Annual Summit, Las Vegas, Sept 30-Oct 2 (Robert Kramer)
October 2024
- LogicMonitor, Austin, Oct 2-4 (Robert Kramer)
- Zoomtopia, San Jose, October 8-9 (Melody Brue)
- Lenovo Global Analyst Summit & Tech World, 14-17 Oct, Bellevue, WA (Matt Kimball, Paul Smith-Goodson)
- IBM Analyst Summit, NYC, Oct 16-18 (Robert Kramer)
- WebexOne, Miami, October 21-24, (Melody Brue)
- SAP SuccessConnect, October 28-30 (Melody Brue – virtual)
November 2024
- Dell Tech Analyst Summit, early November, Austin, TX (Matt Kimball)
- IBM, NYC, Nov 6 – 8 (Paul Smith-Goodson)
December 2024

The Team

Analysts

Patrick Moorhead, Founder, CEO, Chief Analyst; Broad technology coverage plus deep insights into Cloud, Enterprise SaaS & Semiconductors.
Melody Brue, Principal Analyst, Modern Work, HR Tech, Marketing Tech/CRM, Sustainability
Bill Curtis, Analyst In-Residence, IIoT, and Deep IoT Technology
Matt Kimball, Principal Analyst, Datacenter Compute & Storage, AI Semiconductors
Robert Kramer, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Data Technologies, ERP/SCM
Anshel Sag, Principal Analyst; Personal Computing
Paul Smith-Goodson, Principal Analyst; Machine AI Frameworks, Models, Tools and Quantum Computing
Will Townsend, Principal Analyst; Security, Carrier Services, Networking

Patrick Moorhead

+ posts

Patrick founded the firm based on his real-world world technology experiences with the understanding of what he wasn’t getting from analysts and consultants. Ten years later, Patrick is ranked #1 among technology industry analysts in terms of “power” (ARInsights) in “press citations” (Apollo Research). Moorhead is a contributor at Forbes and frequently appears on CNBC. He is a broad-based analyst covering a wide variety of topics including the cloud, enterprise SaaS, collaboration, client computing, and semiconductors. He has 30 years of experience including 15 years of executive experience at high tech companies (NCR, AT&T, Compaq, now HP, and AMD) leading strategy, product management, product marketing, and corporate marketing, including three industry board appointments.