Moor Insights & Strategy Two-Week Update Ending May 21, 2021

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I hope you all had a great couple of weeks!  

Over the last two weeks, the MIS team attended several events:

Inside Quantum Technology Conference, Panel Member Quantum Policy – China (Paul), Vivecon (Anshel), Qualcomm 5G Summit (Anshel and Will), 8×8 Industry Analyst Conference (Patrick), Zendesk Industry Analyst Summit (Patrick), Techfluence Event (Mark), Google I.O. (Anshel and Mark), FENG (Financial Executives Networking Group): The Evolution Of The Multi-Billion Dollar Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) Industry (Melody -speaker), RSA Conference (Will), Nokia Roundtable (Will), Cloudera Spring Spotlight (Patrick and Matt), Fast Company Innovation Festival 360: Transforming the Next Era of Agriculture Through Innovation (Melody), IBM Think (Matt, Patrick, Paul, and Steve), and Finovate Spring (Melody).   

This week, I will be attending Microsoft BUILD, and Google Data Cloud Summit (with Matt). Steve will be attending Spark + A.I. Summit.  Will will be attending Private Networks Forum.

Our MI&S team published 42 deliverables: 

The press quoted us with 25 citations. Journalists wanted to hear about AMD, Apple, BMW, Cisco, Dell, 5G, IBM, NVIDIA, RAN, VMware.

Quick Insights:

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

  • IBM announced Auto SQL for Cloud Pak for Data at Think2021. Auto SQL uses A.I. to automate the access, integration, and management of data for A.I. regardless of where it is stored or how it is stored. 
  • IBM also announced a new interactive A.I. solution called Watson orchestrate. Workers can interact with Watson Orchestrate via any common collaboration tools. Orchestrate uses an A.I. engine that combines prepackaged skills based on organizational knowledge and the worker’s prior interactions. It automates processes by gathering various forms of data from numerous sources then processing and summarizing them into a form beneficial to the worker, such as graphs and charts, saving many hours. For example, Orchestrate can reclaim as much as 60% of an agent’s time for customer service.

 AR/VR (Anshel Sag)

  • Pico launched the Neo 3 and Neo 3 Eye headsets for the Chinese consumer market and the U.S. enterprise markets with Qualcomm’s XR2 chipset.
  • HTC launched the HTC Vive Pro 2 P.C. V.R. headset and Focus 3 for enterprise, with 5K displays and 90 Hz for the Focus and 120 Hz for the Vive Pro 2.

 Carrier/Wireless (Will Townsend)

  • Qualcomm held its annual 5G Summit last week. My biggest takeaway is that the company is aggressively driving 5G deployment by offering a broad price range of device modems while also expanding the availability of small cell platforms with its 5G RAN efforts. Qualcomm is also addressing the propagation challenges tied to mmWave to improve operator economics. It is impressive that one company is making such an impact on the 5G ecosystem, and I expect continued momentum and financial upside.  
  • The 5G for 12 GHz Coalition lobbied the FCC to allocate 12 GHz spectrum for terrestrial 5G deployment. 12 GHz is reserved for low earth orbit satellites (LEO), and from my perspective, Starlink, OneWeb, and other Internet service providers should be allowed unfettered access. Satellite service will serve as a critical element in bridging the digital divide on a global basis. Thus any dilution of spectrum access could negatively impact plans to build out these networks.  

Datacenter: 

  • Storage- (Steve McDowell) 
    • Investors can’t seem to stop themselves from giving money to Wasabi, the long-time cloud object storage provider.   Think of Wasabi as a faster, cheaper, and highly-performant version of Amazon S3.  Back in April, three months after raising $27.5M, Wasabi closed a $122M c-round.  This week, the company brought in an additional $25 from “strategic investors,” including its supplier Western Digital.  Wasabi is clearly on a role. It publicly stated that it has over 23,000 customers, up nearly 47% from a year ago, plus maintains over 5,000 channel partners.  The money will be used to expand Wasabi’s footprint worldwide. 
    • Nebulon, an emergent player in the intelligent storage adapter space, has its first public customer. Its “smartCore” storage processing unit (SPU), sporting an 8-core Arm CPU coupled with encryption and compression engines, aims to insert some intelligence into the storage infrastructure.  Nebulon has deployed a number of the devices at SYSDBA, a South African MSP.  The parts are deployed inside of HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 servers. We believe that intelligent adapters are about to make a huge impact in data center storage. The benefit’s simply too great to ignore.  This capability comes in various flavors, ranging from NVIDIA’s Bluefield 3 DPUs to Fungible’s DPU and even Xilinx’s FPGA-based accelerated NIC.   Keep watching this space.
    • Dell wrapped up Dell Technologies World with an unexpected storage announcement when it introduced PowerScale F900.  The new all-NVMe F900 sits at the top of its PowerScale line, juicing both the capacity and performance of Dell’s unstructured data storage offerings. It’s targeted at A.I. and advanced analytics and supports NVIDIA’s GPUDirect. A.I. is all about unstructured data, and Dell is just the latest to endorse NVIDIA’s GPUDirect storage interconnect, which moves data directly from storage into a GPU’s memory.  
    • Pure Storage is throwing its annual party, Pure Accelerate, where the company continues its refrain that storage should be intelligent and simple.  Playing directly to that theme are enhancements to Pure’s Pure1 intelligent storage management portal. It’s taking on increased levels of workload awareness. It’s also bundling in procurement and other business process enhancements that will give storage administrators a single-pane-of-glass to manage both a fleet of Pure Storage offerings and manage its business with Pure.  
    • Pure Accelerate also saw the first results of Pure’s integration of its Portworx product, acquired just this past August, with Pure’s storage offerings.  This provides a ‘better together’ story for Portworx and Pure in a cloud-native environment.  The integrations are good, but more telling is the speed with which they were delivered.  This team is executing, which will make all the difference in the cloud-native market. It’s becoming more competitive every day.           
  • Networking- (Will Townsend) 
    • Cisco reported its fiscal Q3 earnings last week. Order growth was 10% YoY, with the public sector and service providers making significant contributions. I believe that there is an upside for Cisco in its service provider, security, and enterprise business units. In particular, the company’s focus on 5G and routed optical networking are high growth areas, and WiFi6 is experiencing growing adoption.  
    • Cisco announced its intent to acquire Sedona Systems. Sedona’s NetFusion platform provides visibility to the dependencies between network layers as well as analytical support. I believe that NetFusion, in combination with Cisco’s Crosswork automation platform, will bolster the capabilities of the company’s previously announced routed optical networking solution.     
  • Server- (Matt Kimball) 
    • N/A   

FinTech (Melody Brue)

  • AnthemIQ last week closed $10 Million in Series A financing to expand its technology for commercial real estate transactions. The $10 million Series A financing was led by Staubach Capital, alongside investments from industry professionals and investors. According to AnthemIQ’s co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Kenny Tomlin, this funding will accelerate the Austin-based company’s rapid growth and product expansion.
  • Personal finance app Public is launching a new feature to detail key information about Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs). Retail investors poured into the SPAC boom, backing blank-check companies established by high-profile teams or after news of a potential merger is released. 
  • Public’s SPAC page on its site and app will highlight information relevant to the deal, including the sector being targeted in the merger, capital raised, and pertinent deal points around when the SPAC will bring the company to market. Critical information provided includes the final phase of de-SPAC when shareholders approve a SPAC acquisition via proxy voting – information otherwise only provided to investors or found in SEC filings. 
  • Framework Ventures raised a $100 million fund from institutional backers to invest primarily in blockchain-based fintech startups, demonstrating institutional interest in backing decentralized finance startups, a fast-growing sector of the crypto world. Framework joins Accolade Partners and Hall Capital Partners LLC that have recently set up blockchain-focused funds.

Home Automation/ Smart Home (Mark Vena) 

  • As one of the world’s leading digital voice assistants, Amazon’s Alexa has revolutionized the way people access information — from fun and games, music, and entertainment to the more important stuff like communicating with family and friends. But while Alexa can improve the life of anyone who uses an Amazon Echo smart speaker, it plays a special role in the lives of those with disabilities — and those who care for them. What’s more, the very same quality-of-life improvements that benefit people experiencing issues with communication, motor skills, or other physical or cognitive disabilities can also help those without such issues. In other words, the accessibility features built into Alexa can help meet everyone’s needs, regardless of their health. That’s something that often goes unnoticed, and it deserves special attention.
  • Google Maps will get several new features in the coming months to help you better plan trips during the pandemic and avoid heavily trafficked roads and areas. Regardless of whether you’re driving, walking, or taking another form of transportation, executives said during the Google I/O developers conference keynote. For drivers, new routing updates will use machine learning and navigation information to help you avoid hard-braking moments along your ride by placing you on smoother routes. Meanwhile, walkers will find more detailed street maps showing road widths to scale, along with sidewalks, crosswalks, urban trails, and pedestrian islands to give you a better understanding of an area and whether or not it’s wheelchair- or stroller-accessible. These more detailed street maps will launch on Android and iOS in 50 more cities by the end of 2021. 
  • One other announcement followed another at Google I/O, including a major redesign to Android 12, Google’s operating system for nearly 72% of the world’s phone users, according to Statista. For example, notifications are getting a new look, there are several new privacy features — including a dashboard –and it will be better integrated with Google’s Chrome O.S. platform. As part of the bundle, Google gives Android users more control of devices within its own Android T.V. ecosystem. More specifically, Android will soon feature a built-in T.V. remote app that makes it possible to control T.V.s using only your phone. With over 80 million Android TV OS devices, it makes sense that Google would want to improve the overall experience with such a valuable feature.
  • This is a bit of good news In the ongoing gaming console “availability” wars: the same dilemma faces everyone looking for an Xbox Series X or Series S right now. It is a challenge to find a pattern for when these consoles will be available from the different retailers, and there’s always a race against the bots to complete a purchase if you do happen to find one. Retailers have been struggling to locate the best solution for getting a console in the hands of actual humans instead of resellers using software to make a quick buy. Target is the latest to roll out an internal policy change for selling consoles, moving from slower big-batch restocks to making the console available anytime there’s one up for sale in your area.
  • Dolby Vision gaming is arriving on the Xbox Series X and S for testers who are a part of the Xbox Insider’s “alpha ring” group. This HDR format offers an upgraded set of features like support for dynamic metadata. Microsoft says the feature means “brighter highlights, sharper contrast, and more vibrant colors” in games when you’re playing on a Dolby Vision-compatible TV, offering “better clarity in both light and dark scenes.” The consoles currently support HDR via the less advanced HDR10 standard.
  • Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios is teaming up with Tencent’s TiMi Studios, developer of the wildly successful mobile Call of Duty: Mobile and Honor of Kings. According to a Google Translated version of the announcement from TiMi, the two companies have formed a “strategic partnership” to create “game content.” Still, it’s unclear precisely what that might mean or when we might play anything resulting from the cooperation.
  • Some initial thoughts about the Epic/Apple court battle: the Epic v. Apple trial will deliver a verdict on whether Apple is suppressing competition. But if you were watching Wednesday’s testimony, you could easily end up more confused about what its App Store allows. Apple says iOS users benefit from a locked-down, curated platform. It rejects “stores within stores” like the Epic Games Store, which could allegedly expose users to harmful and unvetted software. It’s also, however, fighting Epic Games’ claims that there’s no meaningful competition on its platform. So this morning, an Apple attorney grilled one of Epic’s witnesses about a slew of iOS-hosted gaming apps. The move might have helped rebut Epic’s complaints, but it also highlighted just how arbitrary Apple’s policies can seem.  Regardless of the trial’s verdict– and even if Apple wins–the company needs to mitigate the arbitrary aspect of their Apple Store policies, challenging at that might be.
  • There’s been some buzz recently about how Apple is having problems getting rid of its HomePods, with the now-discontinued Siri speakers still being on sale two months after Apple announced their discontinuation. And yet, the speakers are still $300, which is only slightly lower than their launch price of $350. Apple: it’s time to put them on sale. Apple may be trying to avoid a” fire sale” perception to de-risk any damage to the HomePod brand in anticipation of future (lower price) HomePod models.

IIoT and IoT (Bill Curtis)

  • Qualcomm announced the 315 5G IoT modem-RF system. This product is Qualcomm’s first purpose-built, IIoT optimized 5G modem. It’s a complete comms solution from modem to antenna. IIoT features include gigabit performance, low power, and pin compatibility with current LTE modules. Legacy modules can upgrade to 5G with no changes to existing hardware, so we expect rapid adoption beginning the second half of this year.
  • IoT standards organizations have been unusually active of late. Here’s a summary. (1) Zigbee Alliance rebranded itself as CSA – the connectivity standards alliance. CSA includes Zigbee, Matter (Project CHIP), Green Power, Smart Energy, dotdot (the I.P. encapsulation of Zigbee), jupiterMesh, and rf4ce. There is now no doubt that Zigbee is becoming network-independent and IP-based.  (2) Matter is the new name for Project CHIP – connected home over I.P. Sponsoring companies, including Amazon, Google, Comcast, Huawei, NXP, Silicon Labs, S.T. Micro, T.I., and SmartThings, remain 100% committed. (3) For commercial building automation, the DALI Alliance (digital illumination interface alliance) announced gateway specs to bridge DALI to Zigbee or Bluetooth mesh. Thread support is already available, and a “DALI+ with Thread” certification program is in the works. Bottom line – IoT devices are rapidly evolving towards I.P. protocols over a small set of domain-agnostic networks – Wi-Fi, Thread, and Bluetooth.
  • Panasonic is accelerating its reorganization to a “holding company” that manages a strategic business portfolio. As part of this transition, Panasonic recently acquired Blue Yonder, an A.I./ML-driven supply chain platform. Blue Yonder will become part of Panasonic Connect Company when the new organization takes shape in April 2022. This acquisition combines Panasonic’s IoT and edge technologies with Blue Yonder’s SaaS supply chain services. It’s another example of IoT industry consolidation simplifying deployment via pre-integrated solution componentry.
  • As we learn more about the Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident, the dangers of a fully connected “Internet” of Things become more apparent. Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture here. Maybe it’s time to quit using the term IoT altogether because it implies connecting all sorts of devices directly (or indirectly) to the open Internet. All security bets are off if malware residing in the cloud or on enterprise servers has a routable path to IoT devices. Even if malware on business systems does not explicitly target IoT devices, enterprises must react as if an attack is possible and shut things down. Hence, the long gas lines. The rush to monetize the operational benefits of IoT has overshadowed the risks of universal connectivity. It’s time to re-think IoT architecture so that industrial systems are effectively isolated from I.T. infrastructure (and the Internet), operate independently to maintain mission-critical functionality, and communicate using structured messages over monitored channels.

Personal Computing/ Collaboration (Anshel Sag) 

  • The GSA reports that 468 commercial devices are available with 5G, up 28.6% on the year
  • Apple’s 5G modem is getting rumored again, and the expectation is that it will be available in 2 years, which aligns with my 4-5 year timeframe from the 2019 acquisition of Intel’s modem division
  • The FCC is asking the industry for comments on whether or not the chip shortage may affect the rollout of 5G as well as other wireless technologies, including Wi-Fi

Quantum Computing (Paul Smith-Goodson)

  • Researchers from several Chinese research institutions have collaborated to develop a programmable quantum computer with 62 superconducting qubits. The qubits are in an 8 x 8 qubit array, so apparently, two of the qubits didn’t work. The team demonstrated Quantum Walks demonstrated on the device. Quantum walks are a powerful tool for quantum simulations, quantum search algorithms, and universal quantum computing. The researchers incorporated an interferometer, and the quantum walker traveled in two paths before interfering and exiting. Interference fringes were present with single and double walkers. Although the U.S. previously held the lead over China for quantum computing, it appears that China may be overtaking us.
  • IBM also announced Qikit Runtime at Think 2021. Earlier this year, IBM added context to its 2020 hardware roadmap by overlaying an expanded timeline of improvements, future applications, new Qiskit software, and developer capabilities. Qiskit Runtime was a software application projected to be released this year. IBM expected it to provide a 100X speedup for certain applications. True to its word, IBM released Qiskit Runtime and other algorithmic improvements with a 120X speedup. Qiskit Runtime will make it much easier to run quantum algorithms such as VQE. Simulation is essential to research, and I believe we will see many more simulation research papers in the future, which will significantly expand our knowledge.

Security (Will Townsend)

  • RSA Conference ended last week, and it featured hundreds of sessions on a range of cybersecurity topics. I found the SolarWinds fireside chat with CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna compelling. He is an incredibly pragmatic leader, and his commitment to extending support to affected customers with no-cost upgrades and integrations was a smart move.                     

Columns Published (Forbes, UPLOAD VR, and others)        

  1. Synaptics May Be A Premium IoT Company, But It’s Still Cranking Out Solid Fingerprint Readers For Notebooks And Chromebooks, by Patrick Moorhead
  2. Honeywell And SAP Team Up To Digitally Transform Building Management, by Patrick Moorhead
  3. NVIDIA Doubles Down On Improving Supply For Gamers By Introducing Three ‘Light Hash Rate’ Cards, by Patrick Moorhead
  4. Oracle Updates Advertising And Customer Experience Applications, by Patrick Moorhead
  5. IBM Think 2021- All In On Hybrid Cloud And A.I., by Patrick Moorhead
  6. Lattice Semiconductor Increases Guidance, Introduces New Products And Goes After New Markets At Its Analyst Day, by Patrick Moorhead
  7. How AQUA For Amazon Redshift Performs Its Queries Up To 10X Faster Than Before, by Patrick Moorhead
  8. Big Blue Goes Tiny With World’s First 2nm Chip Tech, by Patrick Moorhead
  9. The ‘New’ Connectivity Standards Alliance: Does It ‘Matter’? by Mark Vena
  10. Pure Storage Evolves The Digital Experience For Data, by Steve McDowell
  11. An Interview With CEO Cornelia Geppert Of Jo-Mei Games And Her Experience That Led To Sea Of Solitude, by Zane Pickett
  12. Dell Jumps Head First Into Consumption-Based Computing With APEX, by Matt Kimball
  13. APEX Take Dell Beyond Just Storage-As-A-Service, by Steve McDowell
  14. Last Week’s Big Technology Reveal: PsiQuantum’s Previously Secret Q1 Photonic Quantum Computer With GlobalFoundries, by Paul Smith-Goodson
  15. Dell Technologies World 2021 Delivers On Security And Networking, by Will Townsend

Blogs Published (MI&S)                                                              

  1. Flex’s Strategy To Hit Its Clean Power Goals, by Patrick Moorhead
  2. IBM Cloud Leader Howard Boville Is Writing Cloud Computing Chapter Two: Enterprises Should Take Note, by Patrick Moorhead
  3. Qualcomm’s Appointment To 3GPP RAN Plenary Demonstrates Ability To Work With Competitors, by Patrick Moorhead
  4. How A Consumption-Based IBM Z Could Be A Mainstay Of Your Hybrid Cloud, by Patrick Moorhead
  5. Samsung Launches New Galaxy Book Pro P.C.s At Galaxy Unpacked 2021, by Patrick Moorhead
  6. Marvell Debuts New Multi-Gig Ethernet PHY For Next Generation Cars And Trucks, by Patrick Moorhead
  7. Tanium Selects Oracle Cloud As A Partner For Its As-A-Service Offering, by Patrick Moorhead
  8. Poly P15 Personal Video Bar Review- Enterprise Plus Consumer Equals Awesome, by Patrick Moorhead
  9. HP Launches New Cloud Printing System Called ‘HP+’, by Patrick Moorhead
  10. Self-Driving Truck Company Plus Demonstrates Commitment To Sustainability With Eco-Friendly Collaborators, by Patrick Moorhead
  11. Flex Joins Science-Based Target Coalition, Sets Goals To Help The Environment, by Patrick Moorhead
  12. Cloudera’s Data Platform Private And Public Cloud Both GA And It’s Time To Migrate, by Patrick Moorhead
  13. Schneider Electric’s Obsessive Focus On Sustainability Is A Good Thing, by Mark Vena
  14. Hands On With Campfire’s New Holographic Computing Enterprise Headset And Platform, by Anshel Sag
  15. Is Amazon Building The Next Generation Bank? By Melody Brue
  16. Jonathan Davidson And Cisco’s Vision Of The Internet For The Future, by Will Townsend
  17. Arm Continues Its Enterprise Push With Neoverse Next Gen, by Matt Kimball
  18. IBM Goes Container-Native With Spectrum Fusion, by Steve McDowell
  19. You Don’t Have To Be A Rocket (Or Quantum) Scientist To Design A Quantum Computer Chip Using IBM’s New Tool Called Qiskit Metal, by Paul Smith-Goodson

Research Paper:

Podcasts:

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

  • Episode 51 – May 7, 2021
    • Telefonica and Microsoft announce a 5G edge tie-up – are they late to the cloud party?
    • GSA 5G Report: 468 Commercial Devices, up 7.5% over last month and 28.6% on the year
    • U.S. Coalition calls for FCC 12 GHz spectrum sharing with LEO providers – is it a smart move?
    • Apple 5G Modem Report – not much to see here, yet
    • Startup Airwaive wants to help with small cell deployment – can it help speed 5G deployments?
    • FCC is asking for comments from the industry on the impacts of chip shortage

DataCentric Podcast by Moor Insights & Strategy, with Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell

  • Digital Transformation in today’s Cloud-Native Data-First World
    • Investment in Digital Transformation projects continues to accelerate. The move to cloud-native and data-first architectures brings new challenges and considerations for I.T. practitioners undertaking digital transformation projects.
    • Rajan Sethuraman, the CEO of LatentView Analytics, talks about what I.T. organizations can do to help smooth the path to a successful digital transformation project.

SmartTechCheck Podcast by Moor Insights & Strategy, with Mark Vena

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

  • Zooming into the Next Roaring 20’s
    • Zoom Analyst Event
    • Honeywell SAP
    • Cisco Earnings
    • NVIDIA LHR Cards
    • Splunk Acquires Trustar
    • Six Five Summit 2021
  • So Much Tech to Think About
    • IBM Think 2021
    • Lattice Semi Investor Day
    • Apple Takes Modem Building in House?
    • Plus Announces SPAC Deal with Hennessy
    • Cisco Acquires Socio to Improve Webex Events
    • Plantronics Earnings

Moor Insights & Strategy Podcast

  •  FinTech Crazy – FinTech Friday – Episode 1
    • Who is Mel and Why FinTech?
    • Latest in Trading Apps and Recent Hearings
    • OCC, SEC Shake-ups, Diversity in A.I., Open Banking
    • SPAC and SEC Regulation Changes: Good or Bad?
    • SPAC Market
    • FinTech Valuations: Trend or Fad?

 Press Citations: 

  1. AMD, GlobalFoundries / HPCWire https://www.hpcwire.com/2021/05/13/amd-and-globalfoundries-commit-to-1-6-billion-wafer-agreement/ 
  2. Apple / Macdailynews https://macdailynews.com/2021/05/14/apples-5g-modem-expected-to-launch-in-2023-at-the-earliest/
  3. Apple, 5G / Fiercewireless https://www.fiercewireless.com/devices/apple-5g-modems-2-year-horizon-report (Anshel Sag) 
  4. BMW, Quantum / Cips https://www.cips.org/supply-management/analysis/2021/may/bmw-supply-chain-makes-a-quantum-leap/ (Paul Smith-Goodson) 
  5. Cisco, Chips / FierceTelecom https://www.fiercetelecom.com/financial/cisco-preps-price-increases-as-chip-shortage-drags
  6. Cisco, Dell, HPE / Networld World https://www.networkworld.com/article/3618020/hardware-vendors-jockey-for-enterprise-workloads-with-consumption-based-pricing.html 
  7. Cryptocurrency / Marketplace https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/cryptocurrency-miners-snap-up-so-many-computer-chips-that-mining-has-become-a-market/ (Anshel Sag) 
  8. Dell, Data Center / Datacenterknowledge https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/dell/dell-s-subscription-apex-storage-comes-equinix-data-centers (Steve McDowell) 
  9. 5G / RCRWireless https://www.rcrwireless.com/20210518/analyst-angle/celona-and-its-vision-for-the-edgeless-enterprise-analyst-angle 
  10. 5G / Discover https://www.dhl.com/discover/business/productivity/5g-and-logistics (Will Townsend) 
  11. Dell, VMWare https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2021/05/07/why-dell-is-spinning-off-its-vmware-stake.html 
  12. Dell / Siliconangle https://siliconangle.com/2021/05/11/dell-debuts-powerscale-f900-high-end-flash-storage-array/ 
  13. Dell / Techtarget https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/252500600/Dell-EMC-PowerScale-adds-all-NVMe-Nvidia-GPUDirect-options (Steve McDowell) 
  14. IBM, Chips / IOL https://www.iol.co.za/technology/gadgets/ibm-says-new-ultradense-microchip-will-quadruple-your-cellphones-battery-life-4376e378-7cb4-4e42-a35e-87dbf9db626a 
  15. IBM, Chips / Fastcompany https://www.fastcompany.com/90633872/ibm-2-nanometer-chip
  16. IBM, Chips / Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/12/ibm-new-chip/ 
  17. IBM, Chips, I.T. / Internetnews https://www.internetnews.com/infra/ibm-2nm-chip-will-remake-it-industry.html 
  18. I.T. / Australian News https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/688354/it-vendors-push-on-prem-pay-per-use-hardware/ 
  19. NVIDIA, Chips / Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/0417645c-456d-4ef6-90d9-f74f0ef1fcdf 
  20. Oculus Quest / Protocol https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/next-up/enterprise-vr-oculus-quest?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1 (Anshel Sag) 
  21. Podcast, Blog / Blog Feedspot https://blog.feedspot.com/5g_technology_podcasts/ (Will Townsend & Anshel Sag) 
  22. Pure Storage, Portworx / https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/252500746/Pure-Storage-updates-management-tool-integrates-Portworx (Steve McDowell) 
  23. RAN / SDX Central https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/is-rakuten-the-best-or-worst-example-of-open-ran/2021/05/ (Will Townsend) 
  24. VMWare/ SDXCentral https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/why-vmware-tapped-a-technologist-as-its-next-ceo/2021/05/ 
  25. VMWare / Eweek https://www.eweek.com/it-management/vmware-names-coo-raghu-raghuram-its-new-ceo/ 

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

  • AMD Radeon RX 6700XT
  • Cisco Webex Desk Camera
  •  Elite Folio
  • Intel Core i9-11900K, Core i5-11600K
  • Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (AMD), HoloLens 2 
  • OnePlus 9 Pro & OnePlus 9
  • Poly P15 Personal Video Bar
  • Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G

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

  • May 2021
    • Zendesk Industry Analyst Summit (Patrick Moorhead)
    • Microsoft BUILD, May 24-26 (Patrick Moorhead)
    • Spark + A.I. Summit, May 24-28 (Steve McDowell)
    • Private Networks Forum, May 25 (Will Townsend)
    • Google Data Cloud Summit, May 26 (Matt Kimball, Patrick Moorhead)
  • June 2021
    • AWS AI/ML Analyst Day, June 1 (Paul Smith-Goodson, Pat Moorhead)
    • Samsung Networks Analyst Briefing, June 2 (Will Townsend_
    • IBM Digital Developer Conference: Data & AI, June 8 (Steve McDowell)
    • NetApp Analyst Summit, June 8-9 (Steve McDowell)
    • Dell Telco Event, June 9 (Will Townsend)
    • Google A.I. Summit, June 10 (Matt Kimball)
    • Cisco Live 2021,  June 13-16, (Steve McDowell)
    • ACM System and Storage Conference (Sister),  June 14-16, (Steve McDowell)
    • The Six-Five Summit, June 14-18 (Patrick Moorhead)
    • Meraki User Event, June 16 (Will Townsend – presenting)
    • Nutanix Investor Day, June 22 (Steve McDowell)
    • HPE Discover, June 22 (Patrick Moorhead, Matt Kimball, Will Townsend)
    • Ericsson 5G Things – June 23 (presenting), (Will Townsend)
    • MWC Barcelona – June 28-July 1 (Will Townsend)
  • July 2021
    • Google Security Summit, July 14 (Matt Kimball)
    •  
  • August 2021
    • Hot Chips, Aug 22-24 (Steve McDowell)
  • September 2021
    • Storage Develop Conference, Sept 28-29 (Steve McDowell)
  • October 2021
    • VMWorld, October 5-7 (Matt Kimball, Steve McDowell)
    • NAB 2021, October 10-13, Las Vegas, in person (Steve McDowell) 
    • Nutanix .NEXT,  October 12-14 (Matt Kimball, Steve McDowell)
    • Google Next 21, October 12-14 (Matt Kimball)
    • IEEE Quantum Week Oct 18-22 (Paul Smith-Goodson)
    • NetApp Insight, October 20 (Steve McDowell)

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The Team 

Analysts, Analysts In-Residence, Contributors

  1. Patrick Moorhead, Founder, President, Principal Analyst; Broad technology coverage plus deep insights into Cloud & SaaS, Personal Computing, Semiconductors, Automotive 
  2. Bill Curtis, Analyst In-Residence, IIoT, and Deep IoT Technology 
  3. Matt Kimball, Senior Analyst, Datacenter Servers, CI, and HCI 
  4. Melody Brue, Senior Analyst, Financial Tech
  5. Steve McDowell, Senior Analyst, Datacenter Storage, and Storage Technologies 
  6. Anshel Sag, Senior Analyst; V.R., P.C. Gaming, Mobile Platforms 
  7. Paul Smith-Goodson, Senior Analyst; Machine Learning, A.I. and Quantum Computing 
  8. Will Townsend, Senior Analyst; Security, Carrier Services, Networking 
  9. Chris Wilder, Contributor, Security 
  10. Mark Vena, Senior Analyst, Smart Home, and Home Security 

Operations 

  1. Dan Pickens, Business Director 
  2. Paula Moorhead, Marketing Director, Website, and Social Media 
  3. Walker Pickens, Media Relations, and Writer 
  4. Zane Pickett, Office Manager, A.P., AR, travel, writer 
  5. Lee LeClercq Williams, Business Associate