Despite choppiness and uncertainty in many sectors of the economy, it’s reassuring to see technology firms driving markets and attracting investment dollars. For all of us in the industry, this represents genuinely good news, on multiple levels.
“Zoom Video Communications reports its latest quarterly results on Monday evening, followed by CrowdStrike Holdings and PVH on Tuesday. Chewy, Brown-Forman, and Campbell Soup report on Wednesday, then Broadcom and Hewlett Packard Enterprise go on Thursday,” writes Nicholas Jasinski of Barron’s. “The economic data highlight of the week will be Friday’s release of August employment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists on average are forecasting a gain of about 780,000 nonfarm payrolls, after an increase of 943,000 in July. The U.S. unemployment rate is seen ticking down 0.2 percentage points, to 5.2%The tight labor market is causing headaches for many of us in the tech sector, ratcheting up the competition for top talent. When I ask tech executives what keeps them up at night, they always mention cyber security threats and the war for talent.
On the cyber front, Cloudflare says it managed to halt a serious DDoS attack on one of its customers in the financial services industry last month. “The attack was 17.2 million requests-per-second, three times larger than any previous one they recorded,” writes Jonathan Greig in ZDNet. “Cloudflare’s Omer Yoachimik explained in a blog post that the company serves over 25 million HTTP requests per second on average in 2021 Q2, illustrating the enormity of the attack. He added that the attack was launched by a botnet that was targeting a financial industry customer of Cloudflare. It managed to hit the Cloudflare edge with over 330 million attack requests within seconds, he said.”
According to Greig’s article, the attack involved “more than 20,000 bots in 125 countries around the world.” There are strange times we’re living in, and attacks such as these are likely to become more common.
On more upbeat note, in Friday’s Market Update I noted that tech companies firms such as Salesforce, Zoom, ServiceNow, Snowflake and Palo Alto Networks are having a great run, due largely to unique combinations of strong executive leadership, superior execution and increasing demand worldwide. Exceptional performances by firms such as these demonstrate the continuing economic strength of our industry.
Mark Your Calendars: Our Next HMG Innovation Accelerator is September 29
Keeping track of new technology is an essential part of your role as a technology executive. Our truly unique HMG Innovation Accelerator is a highly interactive discussion that provides a remarkable opportunity for technology executives to meet with the founders and CEOs of innovative technology companies and learn about the business and operational challenges they solve for their customers and how they are differentiated in the market.
Our next Innovation Accelerator event is taking place on September 29. To learn more about the Innovation Accelerator, including opportunities to participate, please contact HMG Strategy’s Chief Engagement Officer Rob Kovalesky at robk@hmgstrategy.com.
