Latest news with #enterprise
Globe and Mail
14 hours ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Expanding Clientele Aids Snowflake's Prospects: What's the Path Ahead?
Snowflake SNOW is strengthening its position in enterprise data infrastructure, as demand accelerates for AI-led analytics, collaboration and scalable compute. The company's usage-based model enables flexible expansion across workloads, while long-term performance will likely depend on sustained customer commitments and multi-year contract momentum. Snowflake ended the first quarter with 11,578 total customers, including 606 generating over $1 million in trailing 12-month product revenue. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for customers is pegged at 634 for the second quarter, up 24% year on year, underscoring continued traction across large enterprise accounts. Remaining performance obligations (RPO) rose 34% year over year to $6.7 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. RPO reflects the value of signed contracts not yet billed and is a key indicator of future revenue visibility and sustained demand. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter RPO is pegged at $6.84 billion, up 31% from the figure reported year ago. A growing product suite and strategic integrations are expected to drive RPOs for Snowflake. The company is extending its AI-native capabilities through Cortex AISQL, SnowConvert AI, Openflow and new Agentic products in the Marketplace. The Crunchy Data acquisition strengthens its Postgres offering, and the Acxiom partnership is expected to scale AI-driven marketing use cases. Snowflake is gaining traction across large enterprise accounts like Siemens, AstraZeneca and Samsung Ads. These moves are expected to help deepen platform adoption over time. With rising RPO, expanding platform utility and strong enterprise engagement, Snowflake appears well-positioned to deliver consistent growth through fiscal 2026. SNOW Faces Stiff Competition Snowflake's AI-native platform is facing growing competition from Microsoft MSFT and ServiceNow NOW, both expanding their presence in enterprise-grade AI workflows. Microsoft is scaling Azure Synapse and Fabric to unify analytics, storage and foundation model access. With native integration of OpenAI and a broad cloud stack, Microsoft is emerging as a strong rival to Snowflake in data-driven AI deployments. ServiceNow is gaining momentum with Now Assist, embedding generative AI directly into IT, HR and customer service workflows. Now Assist delivers grounded copilots and low-code automation that mirror Cortex's enterprise use cases. As ServiceNow and Microsoft expand AI capabilities, Snowflake's ability to stand out may depend on faster product cycles and deeper in-platform integration. SNOW's Share Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates Snowflake shares have appreciated 36.9% year to date, outperforming the broader Zacks Computer & Technology sector's return of 9.5% and the Zacks Internet Software industry's increase of 15.9%. SNOW's YTD Price Performance Snowflake stock is trading at a premium, with a forward 12-month Price/Sales of 14.43X compared with the industry's 5.79X. SNOW has a Value score of F. SNOW's Valuation The Zacks Consensus Estimate for SNOW's fiscal 2026 earnings is pegged at $1.06 per share, unchanged over the past 30 days. The figure indicates a 27.71% increase year over year. Snowflake currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Zacks' Research Chief Names "Stock Most Likely to Double" Our team of experts has just released the 5 stocks with the greatest probability of gaining +100% or more in the coming months. Of those 5, Director of Research Sheraz Mian highlights the one stock set to climb highest. This top pick is a little-known satellite-based communications firm. Space is projected to become a trillion dollar industry, and this company's customer base is growing fast. Analysts have forecasted a major revenue breakout in 2025. Of course, all our elite picks aren't winners but this one could far surpass earlier Zacks' Stocks Set to Double like Hims & Hers Health, which shot up +209%. Free: See Our Top Stock And 4 Runners Up Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report ServiceNow, Inc. (NOW): Free Stock Analysis Report Snowflake Inc. (SNOW): Free Stock Analysis Report
Globe and Mail
14 hours ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Fortinet Expands via Cross-Selling: A Path to More Profitability?
Fortinet FTNT is using its vast customer base to fuel growth, with cross-selling emerging as a key driver of profitability. By offering a broad range of complementary security solutions, Fortinet encourages existing customers to adopt additional products and services beyond their initial purchase, such as expanding from a FortiGate firewall to SD-WAN and then to a single-vendor SASE solution. This strategy not only increases overall revenues but also boosts recurring revenues through subscription-based services, which typically have higher profit margins. The company's first-quarter 2025 results highlighted how this strategy — centered on selling Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Security Operations (SecOps) solutions to existing SD-WAN and firewall customers — is delivering strong results. In the quarter, 91% of SASE billings and 97% of SecOps billings came from existing clients. Unified SASE annual recurring revenues (ARR) climbed 26% year over year, while SecOps ARR surged 30%, bringing combined ARR to $1.6 billion. Notably, its large enterprise customers contributed 48% of SASE and 40% of SecOps revenues, far outpacing mid- and small-sized customers, which highlights Fortinet's ability to deepen penetration within its most lucrative customer segment. These gains are translating into stronger profitability, with non-GAAP operating margin reaching a record 34.2% and adjusted free cash flow climbing to $839 million, nearly 54% of total revenues. Together, these results reflect how Fortinet's cross-selling model enhances operating efficiency and margin leverage. With RPO up 12% year over year to $6.49 billion, the company anticipates double-digit SASE and SecOps growth in 2025, sustaining profitability through cross-selling. Fortinet's Competitors in the Cybersecurity Market Palo Alto Networks PANW is accelerating growth through strategic alliances with VMware and Aruba Networks under its NextWave program, and key acquisitions such as LightCyber, Morta Security and Cyvera. PANW's innovative next-generation security platforms classify traffic by application, user and content, providing deep visibility and reducing reliance on multiple security tools. By reducing the total cost of ownership and increasing enterprise security, PANW solidifies its competitive edge in today's mission-critical cybersecurity landscape. CrowdStrike Holdings CRWD is strengthening its competitive edge with its Falcon platform, now featuring 29 AI-driven modules for cloud-native endpoint protection and XDR across on-prem, cloud and IoT environments. CRWD's real-time threat intelligence, rapid incident response and enhanced Falcon XDR capabilities position it as a top choice for enterprises and federal agencies. With rising demand for cybersecurity, CRWD's product innovation, acquisitions and partnerships continue driving growth and rivalry with Fortinet. FTNT's Share Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates FTNT shares have gained 13.4% in the year-to-date period, underperforming the Zacks Security industry's growth of 20.1%. However, FTNT has outperformed the Zacks Computer and Technology sector's return of 9.5%. FTNT's YTD Price Performance Image Source: Zacks Investment Research From a valuation standpoint, Fortinet currently trades at a premium with a Price/Book ratio of 41.7X, higher than the industry's 24.34X. FTNT has a Value Score of F. FTNT's Valuation Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The consensus mark for 2025 earnings is pegged at $2.48 per share, which remains unchanged over the past 30 days and has been revised upward by a cent over the past 60 days. The estimate indicates 4.64% year-over-year growth. Fortinet currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Zacks' Research Chief Names "Stock Most Likely to Double" Our team of experts has just released the 5 stocks with the greatest probability of gaining +100% or more in the coming months. Of those 5, Director of Research Sheraz Mian highlights the one stock set to climb highest. This top pick is a little-known satellite-based communications firm. Space is projected to become a trillion dollar industry, and this company's customer base is growing fast. Analysts have forecasted a major revenue breakout in 2025. Of course, all our elite picks aren't winners but this one could far surpass earlier Zacks' Stocks Set to Double like Hims & Hers Health, which shot up +209%. Free: See Our Top Stock And 4 Runners Up Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Fortinet, Inc. (FTNT): Free Stock Analysis Report Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (PANW): Free Stock Analysis Report CrowdStrike (CRWD): Free Stock Analysis Report
Associated Press
15 hours ago
- Business
- Associated Press
FinOpsly Launches Costix, The First Estimator Built for Multi-Cloud, AI, and Data Cost Planning
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 22, 2025-- FinOpsly, the AI-native control system for enterprise cloud, AI, and data costs, today announced the launch of Costix, an AI-powered estimation tool that turns cloud, data and AI initiatives into ready-to-build solution plans with clear cost estimates before anything gets deployed. Costix helps enterprise product, engineering, and pre-sales teams align early by generating a solution blueprint, detailed workload specifications, and a bill of materials with estimated costs to support accurate planning and stronger business cases from the start. A 2021 Flexera report found that over 30 percent of cloud spend is wasted due to poor planning and limited cost visibility. Despite this loss, most enterprises still rely on spreadsheets and assumptions to estimate costs for new features. These methods often require detailed workload inputs that aren't available early on. Native cloud calculators, though commonly used, are rigid and require granular configurations. They also lack support for multi-environment planning, making it hard to compare options, align teams, or prevent overruns before deployment. Moving cost planning upstream in the product lifecycle Costix helps teams move from rough planning and assumptions to concrete, architecture-aligned estimates before a single resource is provisioned. More accurate solution design Costix enables product teams to describe what they're building and receive a solution blueprint aligned to internal architecture standards. Costix also provides agentic AI assistance, giving users real-time guidance on things like configuration trade-offs as they scope projects. Validated specs, faster planning Costix comes pre-loaded with workload configurations and assumptions—covering compute, storage, and network—so engineers and architects can simply review and validate them across development, testing, and production environments. These inputs reflect actual architecture patterns and live cloud SKU data, enabling faster, more accurate planning while maintaining alignment with performance and compliance goals. A tailored bill of materials for internal alignment Costix produces a detailed, contract-aware bill of materials that includes pricing, tagging, and business mappings tailored to the user's organization. Product owners can use these estimates to justify investments, align with procurement and finance, and accelerate internal approvals. 'Cost control is no longer just a cloud problem. It is a systems problem across cloud, data, and AI,' said Kiran Jain, CEO and Co-Founder of FinOpsly. 'We built Costix to give teams a fast, reliable way to plan infrastructure costs upfront, using data they can trust - all in less than five minutes. Every estimate should lead to a decision. Every dollar spent should be traceable, defensible, and actionable. With Costix, we are making that standard possible.' A growing need for pre-deployment cost visibility As companies build AI applications, migrate data platforms, and scale cloud workloads, planning becomes harder and more critical. Costix helps teams align earlier, reducing risk and improving collaboration between product, sales, engineering, and finance. 'What sets Costix apart is its ability to turn business inputs into compliant solution designs — not just cost projections — giving teams a launch-ready blueprint from day one,' said Mueen Delvi, CTO and Co-Founder of FinOpsly. To learn more about Costix or request access, visit About FinOpsly FinOpsly is the AI-native control system for enterprise cloud, AI, and data costs. Its platform enables finance, engineering, and data teams to forecast, optimize, and govern infrastructure spend across AWS, Azure, Snowflake, and Databricks. From pre-deployment estimation to real-time enforcement, FinOpsly helps organizations reduce waste and improve cost accountability. For more information, visit View source version on CONTACT: Press Contact Gabriela Contreras Marketing Consultant [email protected] 415-797-8154 KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA CALIFORNIA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DATA MANAGEMENT SOURCE: FinOpsly Copyright Business Wire 2025. PUB: 07/22/2025 12:30 PM/DISC: 07/22/2025 12:31 PM
Forbes
19 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
How Agentic AI Is Ending The DIY Drudgery In Enterprise
Gautam Mehra - CEO & Cofounder - powered by ProfitWheel. As a cofounder and CTO of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, you may assume that I'd be the least likely to argue that traditional SaaS is dying. It's exactly because I'm an insider that I pen this. I think our industry is at a critical inflection point where, to survive and thrive, we must evolve further than we already have. And that evolution is the shift from "Do It Yourself" to "Done For You." This isn't just a feeling; the numbers are staggering. I've seen some large enterprises juggling over 400 SaaS applications—a reality we, as SaaS builders, have contributed to, often with the best intentions. But the result is a productivity paradox. We've created an elaborate digital theater, forcing our users to spend more time managing tools than leveraging them. The "Do It Yourself" model, where we expect professionals to become experts on dozens of platforms, is showing its age. Frankly, it's exhausting. What if the paradigm shifted? What if, instead of serving the software, we finally started to get served by it? That's not some utopian dream; it's real. Let me make one clear statement: SaaS solutions that expect users to conform are doomed to a very short future. Enter Agentic AI, unlike any of the chatbots from yesteryear. An agentic AI system actually is designed to understand a user's intent, formulate a multistep plan and carry out actions on its own across different applications. As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has significantly proclaimed that the app is being replaced by the agent, and business logic is now moving into agents. The foundational data may still be in the SaaS cloud, but how that data is retrieved is about to change dramatically. Instead of clicking through endless menus, a user simply states their goal, and the agent takes care of "how." The demand for agentic AI is expected to approach almost $200 billion by 2034, appropriately capturing the desire of workers for more effective and considerate ways of workplace interactions. Gartner's forecast that agentic AI will feature in one-third of enterprise software by 2028 has nothing to do with the speculation of investors but with providing solutions to difficulties identified in digital deployment. But the DFY revolution is much more than automating tasks. Picture this scenario: You step into your office, and before you've even had your coffee, your AI agent has already surveyed the market movements overnight, evaluated their implications on your brand and drawn up three strategic responses based on your particular role. It hasn't just done some tasks for you; it has planned ahead for you. This is where agentic AI gets really interesting: It transforms digital tools from mere reactive servants into proactive strategic partners. As an individual from the Forbes Technology Council succinctly expressed, enterprise platforms will cease to be tools and become cognitive partners. The value for professionals and the organizations they support is pretty compelling. It starts with a radical efficiency, as repetitive tasks get handled seamlessly, freeing human talent to focus on the creative and strategic aspects of their roles for which they were hired. And this efficiency directly recaptures a strategic focus. No more constant context-switching and "tool-wrangling"— which suck up hundreds of hours each year—thus enabling time regained for making high-impact decisions rather than digital administration. This combination of speed and insight leads to increased agility in a dynamic business environment: Being able to have an agent rapidly implement a new strategy across multiple systems is quite the operational and competitive advantage. Starting The 'Done For You' Journey For leaders in the workplace who seek to make this kind of change without massive disruption, the advice is to start smart, not start over. The step is to converse with teams to uncover where their most painful points are—the processes that involve the most platform-hopping and repetitive work. When one has identified a high-value pain point, think in layers rather than rip-and-replace. One doesn't throw out the existing CRM or ERP; instead, pilot a project in which an AI agent works as an intelligent layer over your current systems. This approach decreases risk and quickly demonstrates value. Of course, autonomy requires trust, which in turn implies that governance has to be in place from day one. As you start to pilot your initial agents, you need to establish a clear set of rules: Who is accountable for the actions of an agent? What information is available to it? Which decisions require human approval? These are the foundations upon which a scale can be built securely. Finally, this change has also got to be cultural. Shift to a culture of outcomes instead; let your teams focus on results-dimensions such as customer response times, and become better rather than just tracking some activity inside an application. That way, everybody's incentives are aligned with the real purpose of the DFY model: achieving results, rather than just using tools. Why An SaaS CTO Would Champion A World That Seems To Diminish What We Built The off-axis assumption: The future isn't about getting rid of SaaS; it's about raising it. At my company, this isn't a theoretical idea; it's at the heart of our roadmap. We're dedicated to a future in which technology serves human potential by making our powerful systems accessible through intelligent, conversational agents. It comes down to a core question of dignity: Are people supposed to adjust according to the shortcomings of their tools, or should those tools adapt to the incredible possibilities of human beings? For over fifty years, this industry has primarily accepted the former. The "Done For You" revolution represents a shift in philosophy back toward technology that serves human goals rather than the opposite. Companies that will succeed are those with the courage to allow their people to focus on strategy, creativity and leadership while their agents manage operational complexities. Digital drudgery is over; as builders, we have to lead. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Fast Company
20 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
The rise of the CTO in the age of ‘business unusual'
Years ago, I spent a lot of time making the case for why IT mattered in large enterprises. It's fair to say the landscape has changed—dramatically. Where I once had to argue for IT's strategic importance, I now find myself doing the opposite—pushing back on the exuberant view that technology alone can fix everything from poorly designed processes to unclear roles and responsibilities. After decades of serving as essential—but often background—enablers of enterprise strategy, technologists and our alphabet soup of leadership titles (CIOs, CDTOs, CDOs, CTOs) are now at the center of business transformation. In more than 30 years in this industry, I've never witnessed IT play such a central role in shaping business dynamics. With the tailwind of generative AI and automated code completion, technology teams are now leading what can only be described as 'business as unusual'—creating previously unimaginable products, services, business models, customer and partner relationships, and employee experiences. Today, tech strategy is business strategy. The Great Unbundling Begins The traditional way we think about enterprise software is being upended. Suddenly, it's both cool and affordable to build genuinely useful things. For decades, CIOs were forced to manage constant trade-offs: lower total cost of ownership versus future-proofing, slick user interfaces versus seamless integration, best-of-breed solutions versus end-to-end platforms, on-premises versus cloud. The market subsequently converged to the point where most companies now run virtually identical application stacks. And yet, despite spending tens of millions on carefully crafted user interfaces, most employees still dislike using the enterprise software we provide. They use it because they must, not because they want to. At their core, most enterprise software platforms aren't so different from the Excel spreadsheets my brother uses to run his small business—they just come with multimillion-dollar interfaces layered on top. Whether it's HR systems, data platforms, or CRMs, the underlying logic often mirrors the same basic workflows and decision trees. What sets them apart isn't complexity—it's scale, integration capability, and the stakes involved. To put it more bluntly, all of us are spending enormous sums on the equivalent of a car that boasts luxury exterior finishes but moves you along with the horsepower of a Yugo GV. Regardless of how nice the outside looks, the engine is what actually delivers impact and value. The AI-Powered Reconstruction The emergence of agentic AI is fundamentally disrupting how we evaluate enterprise software as an industry. With novel AI frameworks like Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent-to-Agent (ATA) protocols, we're starting to see a future where user interfaces can be disaggregated from the underlying data itself. If AI-based tool calling delivers on its promise, there's no reason someone shouldn't be able to change an address, retrieve a paystub, modify a customer order, reset a password, or increase a purchase order—all from the same pane of glass or GenAI prompt bar. The ability to design this unified interface finally enables meaningful IT differentiation among companies. Until now, enterprise customers had no choice but to purchase software for virtually everything because developing and maintaining applications with exceptional UI, robust databases, and enterprise-grade security was prohibitively costly. With AI, the economics have shifted dramatically—the cost of building something uniquely tailored to our business is plummeting as software learns to write, maintain, and improve itself. In my field, every pharmaceutical company has historically relied on the same suite of enterprise applications, making differentiation nearly impossible. This raises a fundamental question, especially at this moment of accelerating AI innovation: Should we continue purchasing the costly applications everyone else uses, or should we start building solutions that give us an edge? AI First By adopting an AI-first approach, my company has developed an enterprise software catalog that outperforms—and costs less than—anything available for purchase, solving the age-old challenge of data discovery across our corporate systems. Throughout our organization, even in processes far removed from laboratory work, we're starting to see how bespoke tools without traditional user interfaces can execute tasks in seconds that previously required 30+ minutes across multiple systems, accelerating how we discover and develop lifesaving medicines. I'm not suggesting companies should build custom ERP systems or replace every piece of software. Rather, AI and agentic frameworks give us the freedom to assess where real value is being created—which is typically closer to the end user. We can now selectively build applications that directly improve our competitive advantage while continuing to rely on proven solutions for core operational functions. The Tech Is Changing, and So Is the Talent With this newfound ability to build transformative solutions, the domain of configuring software, while still crucial, remains a necessary but insufficient skill set. The way we think about talent is fundamentally changing. By becoming more comfortable building technology—not just buying or configuring it—my organization has doubled in size while significantly reducing its cost to the company. We're still hungry for more people with the right skills. Fortunately, we're seeing the next generation of undergraduate and graduate programs blend AI, computer and life sciences, and computational drug discovery and development. The twin torrent of advances in AI and biomedicine is creating rewarding career paths for emerging tech talent—offering purpose, future-shaping potential, and the opportunity to make a uniquely human impact. It's a uniquely exciting time to be a technologist in life sciences. In five years, the work we do to benefit patients—the applications and software we create to speed the discovery and delivery of new medicines—will be almost unrecognizable. While change at this pace brings inevitable turbulence, it also expands the role of tech leaders from enablers to architects of enterprise strategy.
