Latest news with #Jira
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Morgan Stanley Says These 2 Stocks Are Top Picks for 2025
Recent U.S. economic data suggests that inflation is gradually easing toward the Federal Reserve's 2% target, with the headline CPI at 2.3% and core inflation at 2.8%. Meanwhile, the labor market remains resilient, adding 177,000 jobs in April and holding the unemployment rate steady at 4.2%. Easily unpack a company's performance with TipRanks' new KPI Data for smart investment decisions Receive undervalued, market resilient stocks right to your inbox with TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter However, despite these positive indicators, the Fed remains cautious. Officials have noted that while recent trends are promising, risks still linger — particularly the possibility that inflation could stall above target or that labor market conditions could weaken in the months ahead, especially under the weight of potential trade disruptions. As such, recession concerns haven't been fully laid to rest. Morgan Stanley's Global Strategy team, however, has taken a deep look into the current state of the world's economy, and they have come down on the side of the bulls. In their view, the global economy remains sound, at least for the near-term. 'Despite unprecedented policy uncertainty, the global economy is still in expansion mode, albeit with slowing growth. Off-ramps for de-escalation of trade tensions exist and we expect that tariffs will not end at the extreme levels in the aftermath of Liberation Day. Substantial monetary easing is ahead along with the benefits of deregulation… TINA – 'there is no alternative' – remains a theme for now. USD assets are – if not simply the best, nor better than all the rest – THE market which will attract bulk of flows,' the strategists wrote. The stock analysts at Morgan Stanley are running with this, and pointing out the 'Top Pick' stocks for the rest of 2025. According to the TipRanks data, both are also rated as Buys by the analyst consensus. Let's dig in and see what sets these picks apart in today's ever-shifting market landscape. Atlassian Corporation (TEAM) The first Morgan Stanley pick we'll look at is Atlassian, the international software company that has developed a set of collaboration tools designed for the online office. Atlassian's software packages enable smooth and efficient market, project, and product management, purpose-built to enhance collaboration and creativity in the workplace. The company was founded in 2002, and today boasts more than 300,000 customers. Atlassian's first product was Jira, its flagship project management tool. The company expanded based on Jira's success, and launched the collaboration platform Confluence in 2004. Today, Atlassian's product line-up includes 19 software programs, focusing on everything from office teamwork and collaboration to coding and online security. The company's software products are designed as cloud-native, and Atlassian arranges cloud hosting through AWS. TEAM shares took a hit early this month, when Atlassian released its fiscal 3Q25 results (March quarter). The company beat the forecast for both revenue and earnings – but its 4Q revenue guidance fell just short of the consensus estimate. Atlassian published top-line guidance for its fourth quarter in the range between $1.35 billion and $1.36 billion; the midpoint of $1.355 billion came below the analysts' expectation of $1.36 billion. The quarterly results themselves were considered sound. The 3Q top-line of $1.36 billion was up 14% year-over-year and $10 million better than the estimates; the bottom-line, a non-GAAP EPS of 97 cents was up 8 cents from 3Q24 and beat the forecast by 4 cents. Atlassian's free cash flow in Q3 was also strong, and grew 15% year-over-year to reach $638 million. For Morgan Stanley's Keith Weiss, an analyst ranked in the top 2% of Street stock experts, Atlassian continues to present a bullish case, despite niggling investor concerns. 'While the F3Q print left many investors questioning Atlassian's ability to execute against its +20% revenue CAGR target, we view the underlying trends as stable/healthy and agree with management's confidence in the durability of 20%+ growth. We view the results as indicative of this management team's commitment to long-term durability of growth, which at times comes the expense of near-term growth maximization. Given the rapid pace of innovation expanding the portfolio, strong value proposition enabling multiple growth levers, and the potential for further margin expansion, Atlassian screens as one of the Best Athletes in software, a positioning not well reflected in current valuation,' the 5-star analyst opined. 'At 28x CY26 FCF (1.1x growth-adj), current valuation presents attractive entry point for LT investors. Reiterate as Top Pick,' the analyst summed up. To this end, Weiss's Overweight (i.e., Buy) rating on TEAM comes with a $320 price target that implies a one-year upside potential of 50%. (To watch Weiss's track record, click here) Overall, TEAM gets a Strong Buy consensus rating from the Street, based on 21 recent analyst reviews that include 16 Buy recommendations and 5 Holds. The shares are priced at $213.03 and their $267.70 average target price points toward a gain of 25.5% in the next 12 months. (See TEAM stock forecast) Seagate Technology (STX) The next stock we'll look at is a technology company that provides memory hardware: Seagate Technology, which has been around since the late '70s and today is a leader in the hard disk market. The company provides both internal and external hard drive technology, and is well-known as a provider of solid-state disks (SSDs). Seagate's product lines include personal storage; cloud, edge, and data center memory; network attached storage; high-end gaming hard drives and SSDs; and hard drives for video and analytics. All computing sectors require memory, making Seagate's specialty an essential product. The company's products have found applications everywhere, from data migration to AI/ML training to analytics to high performance computing, in areas including public and private clouds, multicloud environments, and edge computing. Seagate's leading product, its Mozaic 3+ technology platform, powers the company's Exos hard drive family, which offers as much as 36TB of capacity. Seagate's success can be measured in dollar terms — the company boasts a market cap of nearly $25 billion, and in its fiscal year 2024, which ended on June 27, 2024, the company generated $6.55 billion in revenues. In the company's last quarterly release, which covered fiscal 3Q25 (ended on March 28), Seagate reported a top line of $2.16 billion. This represented an impressive 30% year-over-year gain, and beat the forecast by $30 million. At the bottom line, Seagate reported a non-GAAP EPS of $1.90, 16 cents per share ahead of the estimates. During the quarter, Seagate realized $216 million in free cash flow and returned $152 million to shareholders through its regular dividend payment. The next dividend, of 72 cents per common share, is scheduled for payment on July 8; the company's dividend annualizes to $2.88 per share and gives a forward yield of 2.55%. Erik Woodring, in his coverage of Seagate for Morgan Stanley, notes that the company is beating expectations on revenue growth and that today's tech environment, with its emphasis on demand for high-capacity computing and storage, is likely to remain supportive for the company. 'Mgmt's long-term financial model surpassed our expectations, guiding to stronger revenue growth, higher operating margins, and earlier share buybacks than we had anticipated… The inflection in compute will drive exponential growth in storage demand, and we see STX as a still underappreciated play on this theme at just 7.5x our peak EPS. Tech leadership, premium margins, robust FCF generation, and strong cap returns support EPS upside and multiple re-rating from here… STX is the Top Pick in our coverage,' Woodring noted. Being a 'Top Pick,' Seagate gets an Overweight (i.e., Buy) rating from Woodring, whose $140 price target on the stock implies it will gain 19% on the one-year horizon. (To watch Woodring's track record, click here) Seagate's Moderate Buy consensus rating is derived from 15 analyst reviews that split 10 to 5 in favor of Buy over Hold. The stock is selling for $117.34 and has an average price target of $121.79, suggesting a modest 4% upside in the next 12 months. (See STX stock forecast) To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks' Best Stocks to Buy, a tool that unites all of TipRanks' equity insights. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment. Disclaimer & DisclosureReport an Issue Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Techday NZ
5 days ago
- Business
- Techday NZ
Stacklet unveils AI-led cloud tools to speed up cost savings
Stacklet has introduced new AI-driven features to its cloud usage optimisation and governance platform, prioritising faster transitions from cost insight to savings. The key enhancement is the rollout of Jun0, an AI assistant designed to facilitate agentic experiences for FinOps and engineering teams. The company states that these advances help teams reduce their Mean Time to Savings (MTTS) by enabling preventative policies and streamlined remedial actions. The new features are anchored by the launch of the Cloud Action Center, which provides resource owners with tools to act promptly on savings opportunities. The platform integrates with widely used collaboration tools such as Slack and Jira, aiming to reduce resource wastage and increase accountability. Data from the FinOps Foundation's State of FinOps report was cited by Stacklet to underline growing industry concerns over cloud wastage, with waste reduction remaining the top priority for FinOps teams for the last two years. The 2025 edition of the report identifies scalable policy and governance as the next primary concern, emphasising the challenge of achieving enduring savings across complex engineering environments. Stacklet describes its approach as shifting away from reactive, reporting-focused tools towards a model that prioritises actionable outcomes through developer-friendly remediation and preventative policy enforcement. The enhancements to the platform are intended to increase developer engagement, accelerate MTTS, and deliver continuous optimisation at scale via policy-driven workflows. Lindbergh Matillano, Director Cloud Optimization at Avalara, stated, "Stacklet has helped us save millions of dollars by driving action across multiple engineering teams and reducing our Mean Time to Savings. Its developer-friendly approach to FinOps governance as code has already made it a hit with our engineering teams. The new agentic experience in Jun0 builds on that foundation—making it even easier to surface and act on optimisation opportunities, reduce time to action to one-sixth of what it was, and deliver measurable results through features like Cloud Action Center and Campaigns." The update introduces several elements: an AI agent for FinOps and engineering that enables users to dry-run policies, query cost data, and take actions using natural language; the Cloud Action Center with integration options; usage optimisation campaigns that coordinate savings efforts; and an MTTS Tracker to analyse and improve the process from cost insight to verified saving. Travis Stanfield, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Stacklet, commented, "We built Stacklet to go beyond visibility—to help teams take action and lower their Mean Time to Savings. With these new capabilities, including agentic AI, users—whether in FinOps or engineering—can drive policy and cost changes, accelerate outcomes, and scale governance like never before." Stacklet has indicated that the platform's latest features will offer preview access to selected users. The new tools are framed as solutions to persistent challenges in cloud waste reduction and policy enforcement, aiming to foster a more actionable and accountable operational environment for engineering and FinOps practitioners. Follow us on: Share on:
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Cloud Architect Nalinipriya UppariReceives 2025 Global Recognition Award for Excellence in Digital Banking Transformation
The award is aimed at honoring her role in financial technology transformation. NEW YORK, NY / / May 29, 2025 / Nalinipriya Uppari was honored with a 2025 Global Recognition Award for her outstanding leadership in driving digital transformation within the banking sector. Her expertise in cloud migration, operational efficiency, and cross-industry collaboration has redefined technology adoption and elevated customer experience across financial services. Nalinipriya Uppari, an enterprise cloud architect and product strategist with more than a decade of experience in financial technology transformation, has been awarded the 2025 Global Recognition Award. The award acknowledges Uppari's pivotal role at leading institutions,including Citigroup and Bank of America, where she led multi-year modernization programs focused on security, compliance automation, and digital scalability. Her work has resulted in measurable financial and operational impact, including more than $1 million in monthly cost savings and substantial improvements in IT performance and regulatory preparedness. Reflecting on the award, Uppari said, "I'm very grateful for the recognition. Financial institutions are undergoing important changes as they adapt to ethical AI, resilient cloud architecture, and more inclusive innovation models. I'm committed to helping shape that evolution." One of her notable achievements involved overseeing a large-scale cloud migration where more than 80% of mission-critical applications were transitioned to platforms such as Google Cloud and AWS in under six months. The process was completed without downtime-a crucial requirement in financial services. This initiative led to a 40% drop in application latency, a 25% improvement in service availability, and a 30% reduction in cloud spending through better resource allocation. In addition to infrastructure, Uppari has led the design of real-time, AI-supported risk platforms. These tools offer senior leadership insights into compliance, fraud, and liquidity metrics, using predictive algorithms to flag issues before they develop. Her introduction of behavioral biometrics and anomaly detection has helped reduce internal fraud incidents by 60%. These platforms have strengthened institutional oversight at a time when regulatory accuracy and response times are under increasing scrutiny. "Technology investments should always tie back to business outcomes," she noted. "That's why I emphasize financial modeling alongside solution design." Uppari's work also includes implementing cost efficiency strategies. Through approaches such as autoscaling, reserved instances, and workload rightsizing, she has helped organizations save over $12 million annually and cut IT overhead by 35%. She has played a key role in improving team operations through product management as well. As Jira Product Manager, she oversaw integration and optimization across more than 50,000 users. Her efforts included tailoring workflows to departmental needs, which resulted in reduced lead times, improved cross-functional collaboration, and streamlined project tracking. Structured permission systems, standardized templates, and performance improvements contributed to long-term usability. "Whether it's code or communication, clarity drives velocity. Clarity was key when I helped address common challenges in agile implementation-such as managing stakeholder expectations and alignment between teams. I helped introduce intake processes and traceability systems that linked product development stages to project goals. These improvements helped manage dependencies and improved sprint planning through collaborative tools and workshops," she said. "Scaling agile isn't about moving faster-it's about working with purpose and shared understanding." The award also pays homage to a significant aspect of Uppari's leadership that involves mentoring professionals in cloud engineering and product development. She has supported the development of over 40 engineers and product managers, offering technical guidance and facilitating skill-building through training programs. "Investing in people is one of the most scalable strategies you can adopt," she reflected. "Seeing team members grow into leadership roles has been one of the most rewarding parts of my work." In addition to her corporate responsibilities, Uppari has engaged with academic and professional communities. She collaborates with the University of Florida's Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering on topics such as data center architecture, AI ethics, and digital resilience. She is also a speaker at industry events, including Global CIO Summits and Women in Tech forums, where she discusses regulatory technology and digital transformation. Nalini priya build innovation projects Called "AI Doc Copilot" is enterprise application to customers across finance, healthcare, and professional services. Organizations interested in streamlining documentation, enhancing compliance, and accelerating team output . Her work on agile-aligned roadmaps and real-time performance dashboards has helped organizations monitor objectives with greater accuracy. The use of standardized workflows and backlog optimization has supported a shift toward a culture of continuous improvement and accountability. "Nalinipriya Uppari exemplifies leadership grounded in technical discipline and operational impact. The honor acknowledges her significant contributions to the financial services sector through innovative cloud infrastructure deployments and the integration of AI-based risk intelligence platforms," said Alex Sterling, spokesperson for the Global Recognition Awards. "Her approach ensures that institutions remain secure, compliant, and responsive in a fast-changing digital environment." People interested to learn more about Nalinipriya Uppari can visit her LinkedIn profile. About the Global Recognition Awards program The Global Recognition Awards program highlights individuals and organizations making contributions through innovation, ethics, and sustainable practices. Awardees are selected by an international panel that follows a thorough review process that considers long-term value, measurable outcomes, and impact on stakeholders. Contact Info: Name: Alex SterlingEmail:info@ Global Recognition AwardsWebsite: SOURCE: Global Recognition Awards View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire
Time Business News
26-05-2025
- Business
- Time Business News
How to Transform Customer Insights into Actionable Product Improvements
There's no shortage of feedback out there. Your inbox, support tickets, reviews, social DMs, Slack channels, pick a direction and something's either broken, misunderstood, or annoyingly inconsistent. Welcome to the never-ending conversation that is customer insight. But here's the kicker: gathering feedback is easy. Acting on it? That's where most companies start doing cartwheels into the void. You don't need more surveys. You need less guesswork. What derails teams isn't the lack of customer data. It's the junk drawer they throw it all into. Different formats. No system. Lots of opinions pretending to be insights. If someone asks you, 'What's the one thing our customers want us to fix this quarter?' and you blink for too long, you've already lost. The real transformation begins when you stop treating feedback like a collection of feelings and start treating it like a map. A messy one, sure. But still a map. Let's be honest. Most feedback ends up in limbo. It's either buried under Jira tickets no one opens or sits inside a Google Form from 2021. That's not insight. That's digital hoarding. To even begin acting on feedback, you need a system. Tools like Deriskly or Arrow can help sort your chaos into clarity. They take all the unstructured stuff, comments, reviews, rants and start grouping them by topic, sentiment, urgency. Now you've got patterns instead of puzzles. And no, 'we use spreadsheets' is not a system. It's a confession. One of the biggest traps? Getting hypnotised by one vocal customer. You know the type. Caps lock, angry emojis, and somehow always 'a long-time user.' Don't fall for it. Data gets powerful when it stacks. If ten users mention confusing onboarding, that's weight. If one user writes a three-paragraph essay about a missing dark mode? That's Tuesday. The job isn't to react to noise. It's to identify repeat signals and build around them. Volume matters more than volume level. Here's the thing about feedback: you get what you ask for. If you're running surveys that sound like you borrowed them from a 2010 airline company—'How satisfied were you on a scale of 1 to 5?'—you're fishing with a spoon. Instead, ask things that lead to action. What nearly made them quit? What's confusing? What feels slow or clunky? What would they steal from a competitor if they could? This is where something like NPS customer feedback plays a role. But don't stop at the score. Dig into the 'why' behind a detractor's comment. That's where the good stuff hides—the stuff that actually tells you what's broken. Let's say a bunch of users say the UI feels 'clunky.' Okay, what now? You need to translate that into something buildable. Is it button placement? Loading times? Too many steps to do one simple task? Use tagging systems to break feedback down by specific areas of the product. Think: 'search function,' 'checkout flow,' 'onboarding tutorial.' This lets your team stop guessing and start fixing. You can also use AI tools to speed this up. Some platforms like GetArrow or Deriskly automatically tag issues by component, mood, and even business impact. It's like having an intern with zero sleep and perfect focus. Here's where most teams screw up: they ask, they analyse, they build something, and then they never follow up. That's how you lose people. If a customer takes time to give feedback, and you actually ship the fix—tell them. Send an email. Drop a quick message. Even better, mention them in your release notes (if appropriate). It makes people feel heard. Which is pretty much the currency of loyalty. This also encourages more feedback in the future. Because now they know you're listening. Everything is not equally broken. Just because feedback exists doesn't mean it deserves to be fixed. That's hard for some teams to accept. But your job isn't to make every customer happy but to make the product better in ways that matter. So how do you decide? Ask three things: How many users are affected? What's the impact on retention or conversion? How hard is this to fix? Use those to create a sort of 'pain vs gain' score. High pain, high gain? Move fast. Low impact, high complexity? Toss it in the backlog graveyard. Not every improvement needs a fanfare. Sometimes it's better to test changes quietly. A/B testing or rolling out tweaks to a small user group lets you validate whether your fix actually solves the problem—or just creates a new one. And if the test doesn't perform? Kill it, learn, move on. Better to fail in a controlled way than to spend months building something the market silently ignores. People lie. Not because they're evil. Just because we all think we're more rational than we are. This is why pairing qualitative feedback with actual usage data is key. Did someone say they love the new dashboard, but haven't touched it in two weeks? That's a gap. And gaps are interesting. Look at heatmaps. Session recordings. Drop-off points. They'll often show you what feedback can't. For example, maybe no one complains about your sign-up form, but 60% of people bounce halfway through it. Guess what? That's a problem hiding in silence. Product shouldn't be the only team reading customer feedback. Everyone should be in the loop support, marketing, sales, even engineering. It creates alignment and gives everyone context for what matters. Don't make it sacred. Make it shared. Set up a simple Slack channel or weekly digest where major patterns are dropped in. Keep it lightweight. Make it visible. Now your team isn't just fixing stuff. They're building for real problems. Your customers are basically telling you where the treasure is. You just have to stop ignoring the map. Getting feedback isn't a challenge. Interpreting it isn't even that hard anymore, thanks to AI. The real work is deciding what to act on and how quickly. Because in the end, product improvements don't come from brainstorming in a vacuum. They come from paying attention. And then doing something about it. If your roadmap doesn't have at least three items directly informed by customer feedback right now, it's probably a vanity project. Fix that. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
Hindustan Times
22-05-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
‘You want Google output at $8,000 per year?': Indian techie lashes out at US clients, asks them to ‘chill'
A viral Reddit post has reignited debate around outsourcing culture and work expectations in the Indian tech industry. A techie lashed out at American clients claiming that they expect Indians to deliver global-level performance in low salaries. 'To my American friends who outsource to India, please chill,' the techie wrote. The man continued, 'The average new IT grad here makes ₹7 LPA (~$8,000/year). Yet we're expected to perform at Google-level output, on that salary. Time zones, endless meetings, last-minute deadlines, we're dealing with it all too.' The techie continued that 'mutual respect and realistic expectations matter' in work. He further urged the US clients to stop constant pressure and instead build partnerships. In an edit, he added, 'The problem lies with the Indian manager.' The post prompted mixed reactions, as not everyone agreed with the Reddit user. Many suggested that the issues lie with the middle management or the outsourcing company rather than the American clients. An individual posted, 'More than Americans, what I think is Indians living in America should understand this more.' Another added, 'Always the Indians trying to prove something to the Americans. I had a change of manager from a US guy to an Indian guy, and god, I tell you that guy started to micromanage everything as the project was not running successfully. He started to micromanage by matching Jira hours to time sheet hours.' A third expressed, 'It's not them. Indian companies lie to foreign clients and sell you to them as a 5-year experienced dev, even if you are just a fresher with 6 months internship/training.' A fourth wrote, '7LPA is your salary, but what does your company bill your client? Let's say the company bills 20 LPA in your name. So the client will expect an output worth 20 LPA. I have seen junior devs being presented as senior devs to get higher billing hours. So the expectation set by our Indian companies is high.'
