Copyright © 2023 IDG Communications, Inc.

Copyright © 2023 IDG Communications, Inc.

The digital collaboration boom of the past few years has made it easier than ever to communicate with others remotely. On the face of it, this is a huge win for efforts to reduce carbon emissions: traveling for business is perhaps less necessary than ever. 

However, the energy spent powering up teleconferences is adding up. This takes a toll on the environment that can be hard to measure, so Cisco is introducing a new tool that aims to address that concern. The new Carbon Emissions Insights feature, found in the Webex Control Hub, will tell IT administrators how much energy their Webex devices are consuming and their carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions. 

Carbon Emissions Insights, coming this summer, will be enabled by default in the Control Hub and available for free to all customers. The data can also be exported through an API for integration into customer sustainability reporting tools. 

"Imagine you're a large enterprise with thousands of these devices," Javed Khan, Cisco's SVP and GM of collaboration, said to ZDNET. "Especially in today's world, where usage is continually changing as people think about coming back into the office -- it's going to provide you a view of that."

Also: Business travel, energy consumption in the spotlight as sustainability jumps up the agenda

Increasingly, businesses have to answer to government regulators, shareholders, and other stakeholders who want to know more about their carbon emissions. This past year, according to Gartner, was the first year surveyed CEOs called environmental sustainability a top 10 strategic business priority.

"Sustainability in general is a big Topic these days," said Khan. "When you talk to CEOs, they want their suppliers and partners also to be doing more about it."

Tracking the energy consumption of their Cisco devices can help an organization more accurately measure their scope 2 emissions, which are associated with the purchase of electricity, steam, heat, or cooling.

"We already had a lot of this data -- this is not something you can build overnight," Khan said with respect to the Carbon Emissions Insights feature, calling it unique in the collaboration hardware market. 

Also: 6 best ways to make your gadget use greener (and save money, too)

Cisco thinks the new feature could have a real impact on emissions tracking, given how many customers use its collaboration hardware -- the company has shipped more than 100 million Cisco collaboration devices. 

In addition to tracking emissions, the Carbon Emissions Insights feature can help customers make decisions to optimize their energy consumption and their usage of Cisco collaboration devices. For instance, it can point IT admins to Webex's Office Hours and allow them to reduce their energy usage. 

Also: Tech and sustainability: How companies are getting started

Meanwhile, Cisco has other sustainability tracking and recommendation tools in the works, Khan said. For instance, the tech giant has plans to provide customers with guidance around metrics such as room temperature -- a Cisco device could track a room's temperature and recommend when the blinds should be pulled down to optimize air-conditioning usage. 

Cisco also plans to help customers track the emissions they're producing when they use other Cisco products, including networking equipment or software platforms.

The world’s leading telecommunications companies are often branded as monopolies that lack innovation. Telcos have been great at operational efficiency, connectivity and living off of transmission costs.

But in a world beyond telephone poles and basic wireless services, how will telcos modernize, become more agile and monetize new opportunities brought about by 5G, private wireless and a spate of new innovations in infrastructure, cloud, data, artificial intelligence and apps? It has become table stakes for carriers to evolve their hardened, proprietary infrastructure stacks to more open, flexible, cloudlike models. But doing so brings risks that telcos must carefully balance as they strive to deliver consistent quality of service while at the same time moving faster and avoiding disruption.

In this Breaking Analysis and ahead of MWC 2023, we explore the evolution of the telco business and how the industry is in many ways, mimicking a transformation that took place decades ago in enterprise information technology. We’ll model some of the traditional enterprise vendors using Enterprise Technology Research data and investigate how they’re faring in the telecom vertical. And we’ll pose some of the key issues facing the industry this decade.

MWC 2023: not pre-COVID attendance but impressive

First, let’s take a look at what the GSMA has in store for MWC 2023.

GSMA, the host of what used to be called Mobile World Congress, has set the theme for this year’s event as velocity. It has rebranded MWC to reflect the fact that mobile technology is only one part of the story. MWC has become one of the world’s premier tech events highlighting innovations not only in telco, mobile and 5G but the colliding forces of cloud, infrastructure, apps, private network, smart industries, machine intelligence and AI, and more. MWC comprises an enormous ecosystem of service providers, technology companies, and firms from all industries, including sports and entertainment.

As well, the GSMA, along with its venue partner at the Fira Barcelona, have placed a major emphasis on sustainability and public/private partnerships. Virtually every industry will be represented at the event because every industry is affected by the trends and opportunities in the communications space.

GSMA has said it expects 80,000 attendees at this year’s event – not back to 2019 levels but trending in that direction. Attendance by participants from China has historically been very high at the show and obviously the continued travel issues from that region are affecting the overall attendance. But still very strong. Despite these concerns, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., the giant Chinese technology company, has the largest presence of any exhibitor at the show.

And finally, GSMA estimates that more than 300 million Euro in economic benefit will result from the event, which takes place at the end of February and early March in Barcelona.

The evolution of the stack: Building the telco cloud

The team from SiliconANGLE theCUBE will be back at MWC this year with a major presence thanks to our anchor sponsor, Dell Technologies Inc., and other supporters of our content program, including EnterpriseWeb LLC, Arrcus Inc., VMware Inc., Snowflake Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Amazon Web Services Inc. and others.

At the heart of our ongoing research and reporting is the importance of leading carriers evolving their technology stacks. It’s a Topic that’s often talked about and one that we observed took place in the 1990s when the vertically integrated IBM Corp. mainframe monopoly gave way to a disintegrated and horizontal industry structure.

In many ways the same thing is happening today in telecommunications, shown on the lefthand side of the above diagram. Historically, telcos have relied on a hardened, integrated and incredibly reliable and secure set of hardware and software services that have been fully vetted, tested, certified and confidently deployed for decades.

And at the top of that stack on the left are the crown jewels, the operational support systems or OSS and the business support systems or BSS. The OSS deals with network management, network operations, service delivery, quality of service, fulfillment assurance and the like. The BSS systems look after the customer-facing elements of the stack such as revenue, order management, product offerings, billing and customer service.

Historically telcos have been strong at operational efficiency and making money off transport and connectivity. But they’ve lacked the innovation in services. They own the pipes and that works well. But others – such as over-the-top or OTT content companies (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu…) or private network providers and increasingly cloud providers – have been able to bypass the telcos to drive innovation and secure customer relationships (and data) directly.

As with enterprise IT, we’re seeing multiple models emerge including an embrace of the public cloud, but more often hybrid models that might selectively tap certain public cloud services but maintaining control of core systems in house.

The horizontal stack is emerging

In the early part of last decade, network function virtualization or NFV was touted by a number of vendors to solve the problem of inflexible telco infrastructure. NFV failed. It turned out to be complicated and too expensive and it got blindsided by the cloud operating model. Carriers were left with the choice of moving their stacks into the public cloud or doing their own time-consuming integration and testing to achieve a more flexible operating model.

The rightmost part of the diagram above conceptualizes where we think the industry is headed. It addresses the trend toward disaggregating key pieces of the stack. And though the similarities to the 1990s in enterprise IT are greater than the differences, there are things that are new. For example, the granularity of hardware infrastructure may not be as high where competition occurred at every layer of the value chain with very little infrastructure integration. That of course changed in the 2010s with converged infrastructure and hyperconverged and software-defined… so that’s different today.

As well, the advent of cloud, containers, microservices and AI… none of these was a major factor in the disintegration of legacy IT. And that probably means that todays disruptors can move even faster than did Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., Cisco and Seagate Technology in the 1990s.

In addition, though many of the products and services will come from traditional enterprise IT names such as Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Cisco, Red Hat, VMware, AWS, Microsoft and Google LLC, the names will also include different suppliers and come from traditional network equipment providers such as Ericsson AB, Huawei and Nokia Corp.. And the partner ecosystem will be more diverse as well with other names such as Wind River Systems Inc., Rakuten Inc. and Dish Network Corp.

Enormous opportunities exist in data too. Telecom companies and their competitors must go beyond telemetry data into more advanced analytics and data monetization. There will also be an entirely new set of apps based on the workloads and use cases ranging from hospitals and sports arenas to race tracks, shipping ports and more. You name it, virtually every vertical will participate in this transformation as the industry evolves its focus toward innovation, agility and open ecosystems.

Tug-of-war: speed versus quality

Remember also that this is not a binary state. There will be greenfield companies disrupting the apple cart, but incumbent telcos will  continue to ensure newer systems work with legacy infrastructure and, as we know, that’s not an overnight task. Which makes this all so interesting because of the friction between the need for speed juxtaposed with quality.

As such, telco equipment buyers will benefit from those providers that can help simplify integration with engineered systems, pre-packaged layers of the stack and lab certifications that go beyond reference models and actually guarantee the efficacy of SKUs that include ecosystem components.

How enterprise players fare in telecom sectors

As stated, several traditional enterprise companies are or will be playing in this space. ETR doesn’t have a ton of data on specific telecom equipment and software providers, but it does have some interesting data that we cut for this Breaking Analysis.

Above we show a graphic with some of the names that we’ve followed over the years in Breaking Analysis and how they’re faring specifically within the telco sector.

The Y axis shows Net Score or spending velocity and the horizontal axis shows the presence or pervasiveness in the data set. The table insert in the upper left informs how the dots are plotted. And that red dotted line at 40% indicates a highly elevated level.  Below we comment on some of the cohorts and share with you how they’re doing in telecommunications sector relative to their position overall.

Public clouds show greater momentum in telco

Let’s start with the public cloud players. They’re prominent in every industry and an interesting group in telco. On the one hand, they can help telecommunication firms modernize and become more agile by eliminating heavy lifting, data center costs and all the cloud benefits. At the same time, public cloud players are bringing their services to the edge, building out their own global networks and are a disruptive force to traditional telcos. The following summarizes the position of hyperscalers relative to their average Net Score in the ETR data set:

• Azure’s Net Score is basically identical in telco relative to its average;
• AWS’ Net Score is higher in telco by around three percentage points;
• Google Cloud Platform is eight percentage points higher in telco with a 53% Net Score.

So all three hyperscalers have an equal or stronger presence in telco than their average.

Next let’s look at the traditional enterprise hardware and software infrastructure cohort: Dell, Cisco, HPE, Red Hat, VMware, Oracle.

• Dell’s Net Score is 10 percentage points higher in telco than its overall average.;
• Cisco’s Net Score is only slightly higher in telco;
• HPE’s Net Score is actually lower by about nine percentage points; and
• VMware’s Net Score is lower by four percentage points in telco.

Red Hat is interesting. OpenStack, as we’ve previously reported, is popular with telcos wanting to build out their own private cloud and the data shows:

• Red Hat OpenStack’s Net Score is 15 percentage points higher in telco than its overall average;
• Red Hat’s OpenShift, on the other hand, has a Net Score that’s four percentage points lower in telco than its overall average.

Oracle’s spending momentum is somewhat lower in the sector than its average despite the firm having a decent telco business. IBM and Accenture plc are both meaningfully lower in the sector than their average overall.

We’ve also highlighted two data platform players, Snowflake and Databricks Inc.:

• Snowflake’s Net Score is much lower in telco, by about 12 percentage points relative to its very high average Net Score of 62.3% overall. We believe, however, that Snowflake will be player in this space as telcos need to modernize their analytics stack and share data in a governed manner;
• Databricks’ Net Score is also much lower than its average by about 13 points.

Both companies are superglued to the cloud and so their fortunes in telco should follow a similar adoption curve, but based on what we shared above regarding public cloud, there seems to be some catching up to do for these firms. It’s likely because they both play further up the stack and that will take more time.

Key issues to explore at MWC 2023

Let’s close out on what we’re going to be talking about at MWC 2023 on theCUBE and some of the key issues we’ll be unpacking.

Stack disaggregation

We’ve talked about stack disaggregation today, but the key here will be the pace at which it will reach the operational efficiency and reliability of closed stacks. Telcos are engineering-heavy firms and much of their work takes place in the “basements” of their firms. They tend to move slowly and cautiously. Although they understand the importance of agility, telcos will be careful because that’s in their DNA. At the same time, if they don’t move fast enough, they will get hurt.

So that will be a Topic of conversation and we’ll be looking for proof points. The other comment we’ll add is around integration. Telcos, because of their conservatism, will benefit from better testing and those firms that can innovate on the testing front with labs and certifications for their ecosystems will be in a better position. Open sometimes means Wild West, so the more players such as Dell, HPE, Cisco, Red Hat and the like that offer integration capabilities out of the box, the faster adoption will go.

OpenRAN and the ecosystem

O-RAN, or open radio access networks, allow operators more easily to mix and match RAN subcomponents from different vendors and innovate faster. O-RAN is an emerging network architecture that enables the use of open technologies from an ecosystem. Over time, almost all RAN will likely be open, but questions remain as to when the industry will be able to deliver the operational efficiency of traditional RAN. Rakuten, for example, is a company with an emphasis on improving the operational efficiency of OpenRAN. Dish Network is also embracing O-RAN but coming at if from more of a service innovation angle. So we’ll test this assertion and investigate where the various models on the spectrum fit.

Cloud as a telco enabler and disruptor

On the one hand, cloud can help drive agility, optionality and innovation for incumbent telcos… but the flip side is it can do the same for startups trying to disrupt. And while some telcos are embracing the cloud, many are being cautious. So that’s going to be an interesting Topic of discussion.

Hyperlocal private networks

Private wireless networks, 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and local private networks are being deployed and this trend will accelerate. The importance here is that the use cases will be widely varied. The needs of a hospital will be different than those of a sports venue or a remote drilling site or a concert venue. Private networks will utilize spectrum across a range of frequencies and are beholden to a variety of local laws and licensing restrictions. New technologies and spectrum utilization choices are emerging to facilitate faster adoption. We’ll be probing for the rate this will occur.

Data, AI, ethics, privacy and compliance

As always, we’ll be looking at the data angles. It’s in theCUBE’s DNA to follow the data to understand the opportunities, risks, challenges and technologies that drive data value. Real-time AI inference at the edge and changing data flows will bring new services and monetization opportunities. With the advent of private networks, many firms will be bypassing traditional telecommunications carriers to build these out to gain proprietary access to customer relationships and data.

How will this disrupt industries and incumbents? What risks are involved in terms of ethics, privacy, governance and the like and which players will emerge as winners?

Visit theCUBE at Stand CS 60

The news organization at SiliconANGLE and theCUBE broadcast team will be on location at MWC 2023 at the end of this month with a great set. We’re in the walkway between Halls 4 and 5 right in Congress Square. We have a full schedule with a great lineup, so if you have editorial ideas, news stories, customers that want to share their stories, don’t hesitate to reach out.

See you in person or online.

• Becoming certified as a wireless professional is an effective way to land a high-paying job.
• As the wireless industry grows, it’s crucial to select the certifications that will enhance your career as a wireless professional.
• CCNA, CCNP Enterprise, CompTIA Network+, CWNA and CWSP are among the most valuable certifications, but many more are available.
• This article is for IT professionals seeking to advance their careers in the wireless networking arena.

The wireless networking space has exploded in latest years and wireless technologies have become a connectivity game-changer. The advent of fourth-generation (4G) wireless wide-area networking technologies and the emergence of LTE (Long Term Evolution) and 5G technology further underscore wireless networking’s critical role in business today. 

The demand for professionals with wireless networking knowledge and expertise is at an all-time high. As wireless professionals map their career paths, adding respected wireless networking certifications to their resumes can show hiring managers they have the cutting-edge, in-demand career skills to take their organizations to the next level. 

We’ll highlight the best wireless networking certifications IT professionals can obtain to demonstrate their skills to current and prospective employers. 

Did you know?: Earning the best IT certifications, including wireless networking certifications, is an excellent career advancement asset that validates your skills and knowledge.

Best wireless networking certifications

According to Salary.com data, wireless engineers earn about $98,99 to $125,000 annually. However, bonuses, commissions, location, seniority and many more factors can affect earnings and boost pay much higher. The right certifications can increase your value and salary. 

Here are our picks for the top wireless networking certifications. 

1. CCNA: Cisco Certified Network Associate Certification

The Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Certification is one of many Cisco certifications. It’s considered to be one of the most reliable certifications for professionals navigating the ever-changing IT industry. The exam is comprehensive and covers the following topics: 

• Network fundamentals
• Network access
• IP connectivity
• IP services
• Security fundamentals
• Automation and programmability

Cisco doesn’t insist on stringent prerequisites for this certification. However, there are age requirements: No one younger than 13 can take the exam, and those aged 13 to 17 must have parental consent to proceed. Additionally, Cisco recommends that applicants have at least one year of experience using and implementing Cisco products and solutions, a basic knowledge of IP addressing, and an understanding of network fundamentals. 

Passing the CCNA certification exam will provide opportunities for wireless professionals in the following job roles:

• Entry-level network engineer
• Help desk technician
• Network administrator
• Network support technician

After you pass the certification test, your status is valid for three years. After three years, you must apply for recertification via one of two options: passing a qualifying exam or earning 30 continuing education credits.

CCNA fact sheet

Did you know?: The CCNA certification is also recommended when pursuing the best computer networking certifications and the best data center certifications.

2. CCNP Enterprise: Cisco Certified Network Professional Enterprise

If you’re seeking a job maintaining and troubleshooting global enterprise networks, the Cisco Certified Network Professional Enterprise (CCNP Enterprise) certification is a significant credential upgrade. The CCNP Enterprise certification will test your mastery in the following areas:

• Architecture 
• Virtualization 
• Infrastructure 
• Network assurance 
• Security 
• Automation 

The CCNP Enterprise certification is more complex than the CCNA. You’ll need to complete the following examinations.

1. Core exam: First, you’ll take a core exam and its recommended training. The 350-401 ENCOR exam will objectively assess your knowledge of enterprise network technologies, a vital step to cementing your CCNP Enterprise certification.
2. Concentration exam: After you complete the core exam and training, you’ll be prompted to take another concentration exam along with completing its recommended training. You can select a concentration exam based on your preferences.

When you pass the two required exams, your certification will be valid for three years. You’ll have expanded opportunities for the following job roles:

• Network administrator
• Systems engineer
• Network support technician
• Mid-level network engineer

CCNP Enterprise fact sheet

Tip: The CCNP Enterprise certification is among the best mobility certifications and certifications to advance your networking career.

3. CompTIA: Network+

The CompTIA Network+ is a wireless networking and cybersecurity certification that assesses a wireless professional’s technical skills in establishing, troubleshooting and maintaining networks for any business on any platform. Additionally, the Network+ certification serves as a prerequisite for other CompTIA certifications, including those listed below:

• Security+
• Cybersecurity Analyst+ (CySA+, formerly CSA+)
• Linux+
• PenTest+

The CompTIA Network+ exam examines a candidate’s IT professional capacity and skills in designing and implementing functional networks, configuring and maintaining essential network devices, and implementing network security standards and protocols. Here are some of the syllabus covered: 

When you pass this certification exam, your certification will be valid for three years. You’ll benefit from expanded opportunities in the following job roles:

• Network administrator
• Network field technician
• Junior network administrator
• IT consultant
• Network field engineer
• Computer technician
• Help desk technician

CompTIA: Network+ fact sheet

Did you know?: CompTIA Network+ certification is a prerequisite for the CompTIA Linux+ Powered by LPI certification, which is considered one of the best Linux certifications for an IT career.

4. CWNA: Certified Wireless Network Administrator

The CWNA (Certified Wireless Network Administrator) certification was developed by the Certified Wireless Network Professional (CWNP) organization. It’s a long-standing certification for IT professionals, particularly those who want to specialize in installing and maintaining wireless networks. The exam covers the following topics: 

• Radio frequency (RF) technologies
• Antenna concepts
• Wireless LAN hardware and software
• Network design, installation, and management
• Wireless standards and organizations
• 11 network architecture
• Wireless LAN security
• Troubleshooting
• Performing site surveys

The CWNA certification is considered a foundational wireless LAN certification under the CWNP program. Candidates must achieve a score of at least 70 percent to be deemed certified. 

When you pass this certification exam, your certification will be valid for three years, after which you can apply for recertification. While your credential is still valid, you’ll need to take and pass a professional-level exam — CWSP, CWDP, or CWAP — to renew your certification. You can also recertify by retaking the CWNA exam.

CWNA fact sheet

5. CWSP: Certified Wireless Security Professional

The Certified Wireless Security Professional certification is a step toward achieving a Certified Wireless Network Expert (CWNE) certification. It’s a professional-level wireless LAN and cybersecurity certification for which you must first achieve CWNA certification.

The exam covers the following topics: 

• WLAN discovery techniques
• Intrusion and attack techniques
• 11 protocol analysis
• Wireless Intrusion Prevention Systems (WIPS) implementation
• Layer 2 and 3 VPNs used over 802.11 networks
• Enterprise/SMB/SOHO/public-network security design models

To pass the CWSP exam, professionals must score at least 70 percent, and instructors must score at least 80 percent. When you pass this certification exam, your certification will be valid for three years, after which you can apply for recertification. Recertification is possible only if you hold a valid CWNA credential and pass the current CWSP exam. If you meet these requirements, the certification will be renewed for another three years.

CWSP fact sheet

Tip: Information security professionals should also consider the best infosec and cybersecurity certifications as more business owners seek to protect their companies by hiring qualified cybersecurity experts.

Other worthwhile wireless certifications

While the five featured certification exams are among the most well-regarded in the industry, other certifications can benefit IT professionals seeking to augment their skills and credentials. Here are two more to consider. 

• CWDP: The Certified Wireless Design Professional (CWDP) certification is suitable for professionals with enterprise network design skills and a clear understanding of the WLAN architecture and protocol.
• CWAP: If you’re an IT professional interested in wireless LAN troubleshooting and analysis, the Certified Wireless Analysis Professional (CWAP) certification is right up your alley. Aside from the certification, the CWAP examination will also fast-track your chances of becoming CWNE certified, which is great for IT professionals who plan on catering to a broader market or industry.

How IT professionals can enhance their careers with certifications

Achieving respected, rigorous wireless networking certifications can help IT professionals expand their credentials and land more profitable job opportunities. Additionally, they’ll demonstrate their willingness to learn to hiring managers. 

While certifications take time and money, the rewards of career growth and higher compensation more than justify the investment. 

Ed Tittel and Mary Kyle contribute to the reporting and writing in this article.

Cisco Systems shares were trading sharply higher after the networking equipment provider posted solid results for its fiscal second quarter ended Jan. 28, while sharply increasing its outlook for the full year.

Cisco (ticker: CSCO) now expects fiscal 2023 to be its best growth year in at least a decade. The strong earnings report and surprising outlook should provide a boost to investor sentiment on the outlook for enterprise technology spending.

Making predictions about enterprise technology is more challenging if you strive to lay down forecasts that are measurable. In other words, if you make a prediction, you should be able to look back a year later and say with some degree of certainty whether the prediction came true or not — with evidence to back that up.

In this Breaking Analysis, we aim to do just that with predictions about the macro information technology spending environment, cost optimization, security – lots to talk about there – generative AI, cloud and supercloud, blockchain adoption, data platforms (including commentary on Databricks Inc., Snowflake Inc. and other key players), automation and events, and we even have some bonus predictions.

To make all this happen, we welcome back for the third year in a row, Erik Bradley, our colleague from Enterprise Technology Research. As well, you can check out how we did with our 2022 predictions.

Each year, tech vendor PR pros reach out to us to help influence our predictions. It starts as early as October. This year we received thousands of predictions from hundreds of experts in the industry. The chart above shows the breakdown of categories we received. As expected there was a heavy focus on cybersecurity. Cost optimization, cloud, DevOps and software were also popular topics. Digital transformation and software as a service got less attention. Erik Bradley points out that cybersecurity companies have a lot of cash, which may be why PR firms are working harder for them, and that security has been a top spending priority for multiple years. He is surprised that SaaS is only 5% and noted that a decade ago, that category would have received all the attention.

Below is a quick look at the predictions we’ll explore in detail.

OK, let’s get into the details of each of the predictions.

We’re calling for enterprise tech spending to increase between 4% and 5%. ETR surveys currently land at 4.6%. This year we’ve seen a consistently downward trend for spending expectations by chief information officers and IT buyers, as shown below.

The Fed remains in control and the market’s expectation is that it will ease up on tightening in an attempt for a soft landing. But there are many unknowns. A quarter-point may not be enough to cool inflation, and just as the Fed was late tightening, if it eases too quickly, the rubber banding effect will continue to confound forecasters.

We also note that the largest companies are the most conservative in cutting spend, while smaller firms are spending faster and growing at a much higher rate. As well, firms in Europe, the Middle East and Africa expect to outpace the U.S. and Asia-Pacific. Erik notes that the larger companies are being more cautious and that energy and utilities are spending more than anyone.

Below are some additional details from the ETR drill-down survey.

Saving money has been a major theme as we enter 2023. As shown below, the primary method that organizations plan to use for cost optimization is consolidating redundant vendors (36%), followed by cloud cost optimization (19%) and “other” at 15%. “Other” included hiring freezes, layoffs, delaying hardware purchases and ramping up off shore resources.

There was no evidence in the data that firms were looking at cloud repatriation as a favored technique to save money.

Alexander Feiglstorfer from Storyblok sent in a prediction that “All-in-one becomes extinct.” We only partially agree with that prediction. We feel all-in-one solutions will remain the norm for larger companies, while smaller companies will favor best-of-breed solutions.

We’re also seeing consolidation happening in functionality. Erik Bradley points to security as an area where that is clearly happening. As such, he points out that niche solutions will be less popular, while platforms will be more appealing in a spending climate where companies want to reduce the number of vendors they’re managing.

Although the first part of this prediction is probably safe, we’re specifically calling out five companies that will be buyers and one company, OneTrust LLC, that will sell in 2023.

Erik explains the chart above. It’s based on ETR’s survey of emerging technology companies in the cybersecurity industry. ETR looked at the overlap between Palo Alto Networks Inc. accounts and various security vendors shown above, and have found that OneTrust and BeyondTrust Corp. have a high overlap in their overall net sentiment. We predict that Palo Alto Networks will make acquisitions in the near future, specifically in the authentication and identity space, as they need to move toward a zero-trust path. We also predict that other companies such as Cisco Systems Inc., CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., and Zscaler Inc. will also make acquisitions in this market in 2023.

In our view, the market conditions, with private company valuations down 10% to 40%, and funding drying up, make acquisitions more attractive for these companies, and there will be a lot of movement leading up to the RSA Conference in April. We would also expect mergers and acquisitions action for cybersecurity firms with a specialty in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Chief information security officers tell us that zero trust, which was considered a major buzzword prior to the pandemic, has now become a priority focus for their organizations. A year from now, we’ll survey CISOs to quantify zero-trust adoption as evidence of whether this prediction came true.