Markets

Our seasoned analysts couple their industry-leading B2B research with in-depth buyer intent data for unparalleled insights about critical technology markets.

Overview

Business Applications

Cybersecurity

Data Management, Analytics & AI

Infrastructure, Cloud & DevOps

Services

Clients trust us across their GTMs—from strategy and product development to competitive insights and content creation—because we deliver high-quality, actionable support.

Overview

Insights

Browse our extensive library of research reports, research-based content, and blogs for actionable data and expert analysis of the latest B2B technology trends, market dynamics, and business opportunities.

Insights
Contact Us

Insight

  • The SaaS Data Protection Disconnect

    ·

    Christophe Bertrand

    The broad adoption of cloud services as a source of and repository for business-critical data is placing the onus on data owners to deliver on data protection SLAs for data and applications that are hosted in the cloud. Concurrently, on-premises backup and disaster recovery workloads are leveraging cloud destinations, resulting in hybrid data protection topologies with varying service levels, end-user tradeoffs, and opportunities. How are IT organizations utilizing cloud services as part of their data protection strategy today?

    In order to get more insight into these trends, ESG surveyed 370 IT professionals at organizations in North America (US and Canada) responsible for data protection technology decisions for their organization, specifically around those data protection and production technologies that may leverage cloud services as part of the solution.

    (more…)

  • Toward a Common UI/UX for the SOC (Security Operations Center)

    ·

    Jon Oltsik

    GettyImages-949581000It’s 2020, yet many organizations still depend upon a myriad of disparate point tools for security operations, leading to many challenges. According to ESG research:

    • 35% of cybersecurity professionals say that the biggest challenges associated with managing an assortment of point tools is that it makes security operations complex and time consuming.
    • (more…)

  • Enterprise-class Cybersecurity Vendor Sentiment

    ·

    Jon Oltsik

    ESG conducted a comprehensive online survey of IT professionals at private- and public-sector organizations in North America (US and Canada) between December 9, 2019 and December 17, 2019. To qualify for this survey, respondents were required to be IT/information security professionals responsible for or familiar with their organization’s cybersecurity environment and strategy.

    The data in this master survey results set covers:

    • The cybersecurity technology landscape.
    • Perceptions of and requirements for enterprise-class cybersecurity vendors.
    • Enterprise-class cybersecurity platforms.
    • Security sentiment for cloud service providers.

    (more…)

  • The State of Network Security: A Market Poised for Transition

    ·

    John Grady

    In order to assess the network security landscape over the last 12-24 months, as well as what the priorities over the next 12-24 months are expected to be, ESG surveyed 265 IT security professionals representing enterprise-class (i.e., 1,000 employees or more) organizations in North America (United States and Canada). All respondents were personally responsible for evaluating, purchasing, and managing network security technology products and services.

    Survey participants represented a wide range of industries including manufacturing, financial, healthcare, and communications and media, among others.

    (more…)

  • Archiving On-premises Economics

    ·

    Christophe Bertrand

    GettyImages-95769788ESG recently completed a very interesting Economic Validation report for a very interesting solution from iTernity. I normally don’t blog about all the reports we do but this one got my attention.   

    Our recent research on IT challenges and spending intentions for 2020 highlights that data growth, costs, skills shortages and operational efficiency are top challenges. Organizations need  solutions that allow them to retain data for compliance (sometimes for years). It’s a perfect storm: more data growth every year, the need to retain it for extended periods of time, and tighter budgets (I never hear of an unlimited IT budget!). Here’s the thing, while cloud is a great destination, archives that don’t necessarily have to reside in a public cloud can be cost-effective and operationally efficient.  

    (more…)

  • Network Security Trends

    ·

    John Grady

    This Master Survey Results presentation focuses on the current state of network security, including current strategies and challenges, and how these are guiding the current and (expected) future usage of foundational network security technologies.

    Topics covered include:

    • Modern network security challenges.
    • The confusion around “zero trust.”
    • Top considerations for SDP and microsegmentation initiatives. 
    • The state of the DDoS prevention market.
    • Third-party deception tool adoption drivers.

    (more…)

  • RSA 2020: A Review

    ·

    Jon Oltsik

    GettyImages-1083720272RSA 2020 had an uninvited guest, Covid-19. Fist bumps replaced handshakes while hand sanitizing stations seemed ubiquitously stationed throughout the Moscone Center. Attendance seemed to be down due to factors like the virus panic and the withdrawal of major players like AT&T, IBM, and Verizon. 

    While lots of people pulled back, the ESG team was in full attendance. Here are a few of our observations and thoughts on RSA 2020:

    (more…)

  • RSA Conference 2020 Wrap-up: The Human Perimeter (Includes Video)

    ·

    Doug Cahill

    With RSA Conference 2020 now in the rearview mirror, my colleague John Grady and I discuss the theme of the conference in this video blog, the human element. After acknowledging the importance of community, we explore how the emergence of software-defined perimeters (SDP) will help secure a variety of user access use cases. We also discuss how the broad adoption of cloud services is necessitating a retooling of identity and access management programs from SSO to MFA, privileged access management, and user activity analytics. We wrap-up noting how much we enjoyed seeing so much of our community at our annual Enterprise Strategy Group Breakfast at RSA Conference event.

    For additional coverage, see Jon Oltsik’s blog: RSA 2020: A Review.

  • Do you know what data you have? Titus can help

    ·

    Christophe Bertrand

    dataAchieving compliance and meeting the newest data privacy requirements is pretty much like trying to hit a moving target. In the dark. At high speed. 

    (more…)

  • Trends in Endpoint Security

    ·

    Dave Gruber

    ESG conducted a comprehensive online survey of IT and cybersecurity professionals from private- and public-sector organizations in North America (United States and Canada) between September 23, 2019 and October 2, 2019. To qualify for this survey, respondents were required to be responsible for evaluating, purchasing, and managing endpoint security technology products and services.

    This Master Survey Results presentation focuses on modern endpoint security challenges, plans, and strategies to understand the drivers of endpoint security investments and how decision makers are prioritizing and timing purchase decisions.

    (more…)

  • Stellus Sets Performance Record –  Giving File Data a Much Needed Speed Boost

    ·

    Scott Sinclair

    speedingModern IT has a need for speed. In the digital era, data fuels decision making, enhances how businesses interact with their customers, and determines operational efficiency, plus in a growing number of cases, data is the product.

    According to ESG research, 71% of IT organizations report that data storage technology is strategic to their organization’s IT and business operations. Additionally, nearly half (49%) of these organizations state that data is their business, with another 31% expecting to offer data-centric products and services within the next 24 months.

    For these digital organizations, access latencies and bandwidth limitations have a direct cost to the business.

    Traditionally for unstructured, or file, storage, there was an old saying (Yes, I said old) that only a small percentage of your data was going ever to be used at any given time, and the bulk of data was cold, something to be stored and not access, ideal for archiving. This idea was the basis behind many storage system designs.

    Today, given the importance of analytics and the massive investment in machine learning, high performance access to large volumes of unstructured data is essential to business operations. In an ESG study of storage decision makers, 37% identified big data repositories for unstructured data as part of an AI or analytics initiative as a top growth area for on-premises data storage. This old idea of storing files but not needing to access them has quickly become irrelevant.

    One storage innovator, Stellus, is helping to change things. Its Stellus Data Platform leverages an innovative Key-Value over Fabrics implementation to deliver high-performance and highly scalable storage for unstructured data.

    And just last week, Stellus announced a record-breaking performance as the Stellus Data Platform was able to achieve a combined performance of up to 80GB/s aggregate bandwidth, and to a single Linux client Stellus achieved 33.2GB/s of sustained write throughput. I expect this level of performance to quickly become the expectation for digital businesses, especially in industries such as life sciences and media & entertainment.

    If those record setting numbers aren’t enough to pique your interest, the ESG technical validation team was recently given the opportunity to take a look at the Stellus Data Platform. Needless to say, they too were impressed with what they saw. Some high-level takeaways include:

    • The “read and write performance was particularly impressive, with the Stellus Data Platform exceeding the Stellus performance claims for the model under test, delivering 41.3 GB/sec write and 45.1 GB/sec read throughput, the fastest we have ever seen for a file storage system.”
    • “The platform rebalanced data after loss of a 7.68TB drive in a 92TB data space in less than nine minutes with minimal impact to system performance.”
    • “System upgrades were fast and simple to execute, enabling ESG to double storage capacity with a couple of clicks and less than 45 minutes processing time.”
    • “The system also offers impressive density, scaling to 1.475 PB in just 17 RU.”

    The way that businesses leverage data has changed. Now, the way that storage technology is architected must change with it. Stellus is helping lead the way.

  • Will Data Lakes Drown Enterprise Data Warehouses?

    ·

    Mike Leone

    With the value of data continuing to increase, organizations are constantly looking for better and faster ways to store, access, and analyze it. While many organizations have existing technologies to help stream, collect, store, and analyze both structured and unstructured data, challenges remain that are preventing wider usage of analytics within these organizations. With a goal of consolidating infrastructure and operational silos to address a constantly growing data footprint, data lakes are increasingly becoming the technology of choice.

    (more…)