Today: Lost in last months' discussions of open data formats was Hudi, but its tech will enable true format compatibility, Stack Overflow's annual developer survey, and the latest moves in enterprise tech.
Now that open data formats are here to stay, unifying them to remove incompatibilities will be a challenge. Delta Lake and Iceberg get all the attention, but tech developed by the creators of Hudi could make it happen.
Today: why security software customers should hold their vendors to a higher standard, the Wiz kids turn down Google, and the latest funding rounds in enterprise tech.
Now that open data formats are here to stay, unifying them to remove incompatibilities will be a challenge. Delta Lake and Iceberg get all the attention, but tech developed by the creators of Hudi could make it happen.
The shared-responsibility model is groaning under the weight of the modern security environment. Snowflake's ongoing nightmare should be a wake-up call for any infrastructure or SaaS provider that they need to do more to protect their customers, because the old model is no longer working.
Tech and media leaders are increasingly worried that the push to use generative AI to automate analytical business tasks could produce a generation of workers that never develop the foundation to do the job well at a senior level.
Figma's collaboration tools are a hit with designers thanks to its decision to take a page from the gaming software playbook and rebuild its databases for "infinite scale."
Like many companies that have grown through acquisitions over the years, Rajesh Naidu's job involves integrating those acquisitions onto a common tech stack, which requires taking a hard look at the SaaS applications used by those companies.
A convoluted series of mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures had left Cushman & Wakefield with "hundreds" of separate enterprise-resource planning applications. It wanted a flexible but standardized base to get everyone on the same page.
For many years financial services companies Principal Financial Group started its transition to the cloud just before the pandemic made the need for modern digital services an existential crisis, and has only accelerated that process since Kathy Kay came on board.
Kubernetes has become the second-most widely used open-source project in the world, behind only Linux itself, thanks to a dedicated community that celebrated its 10th birthday last week.
The AI boom is pushing the limits of clean-energy sources, forcing utilities to push back on new data-center construction plans and keep their coal-fired plants running. A relatively small but fast-growing number of people believe the solution is nuclear power.
Microsoft is bent on installing Copilots into all of its services across Azure, Microsoft 365, and GitHub, which continues to enjoy the most visible success of Microsoft's AI kick.
Chip companies have invested billions in Israeli manufacturing and design facilities over the past decade, and they've continued that push over the last six months. A unique talent base and a rich history of tech innovation drew them in, but the region's instability looms over that decision.
In an interview at the Data Cloud Summit, Ramaswamy described how enterprise customers are working with generative AI, outlined growth opportunities for Snowflake's future, and lamented the "insular" culture at Google that denied it the opportunity to lead the generative AI transition.
Certainly, the generative AI craze has been good for C3 AI, but according to chairman and CEO Tom Siebel, it also has the potential to go to a really dark place.
Google announced plans this week to bring its Gemini foundation model into its database strategy, giving administrators new tools to maximize uptime and generate SQL code.
"The more significant decision is, 'what is your strategy for centralizing the data?' Because these data platforms do not do that; they are the place that it gets centralized to, but they do not centralize anything."
There are lots of companies interested in generative AI apps with money but limited skills. They'll need helpful platform tools to get up and running, and competition in this category could set the tone for the enterprise AI era.
It's getting hard to understand why any company should consider using open-source software released under a traditional license by a venture-backed startup.
The premise behind the Agile Manifesto is that developers, the users they serve, and business stakeholders all benefit by working together. But too often, organizations are faking true change by plastering a new label on older software development practices.
Enterprise tech vendors promised customers that they will indemnify them from legal claims made against the output produced by generative AI tools. However, none of those companies want to talk about how it will actually work.
Global teams across an enterprise are likely to speak different languages, of course, but also might be using different keyboard layouts with different characters. Those differences can lead to confusion about password requirements that could hinder collaboration and even compromise security.
"When you have way too many companies chasing way too few opportunities, you go through a cycle like this and only the best will survive." McKay thinks Snyk has found a path forward.
Improving cybersecurity is one of the most important challenges companies face on a day-to-day basis, according to enterprise technology vendors, who preach that mantra right up until they see a massive trend like generative AI come along and can't help but blurt out "squirrel!"
As Snowflake and Databricks gear up for back-to-back user conferences in early June, their customers are increasingly betting on open storage formats that give them new flexibility.
"The more significant decision is, 'what is your strategy for centralizing the data?' Because these data platforms do not do that; they are the place that it gets centralized to, but they do not centralize anything."
Rowan Trollope started work as the new CEO of Redis earlier this year in February, arguably a low point for enterprise tech growth. Redis hasn't been immune to those trends, but it has also enjoyed the spoils of the generative AI hype cycle.
The speed, flexibility, and efficiency provided by newer data tools have become much more important than simply dumping "Big Data" into a storage facility and running relatively simple analytical queries.
