| Constellation Research

UiPath: Process automation orchestration core of AI agent deployments

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

UiPath's second quarter results indicate that enterprises are starting to realize that genAI-powered agents will require orchestration and process automation at the core.

The company, known for its robot process automation roots and automation platform, stabilized in the second quarter following a volatile first quarter that included the departure of CEO Rob Enslin.

Although UiPath's second quarter was better-than-expected, the big question about the company remains. Where does UiPath fit in the AI agent, generative AI and automation mix. An analyst asked UiPath CEO Daniel Dines where the company fits in the AI landscape. Here's what Dines said:

"We really think of an agentic process automation as an evolution of robotic process automation, I actually we started to socialize the agentic process automation term at the beginning of the summer. And we introduced the concept of robots and agents working together. And to me, an AI agent is basically a robot, if you want, that has some more new skills. And I think there will be multiple type of agents.

For instance, there will be agents that are capable of extracting information from long and complex documents. And users, human users will be capable of interacting with these agents asking questions. And in turn, they can ask the agents to perform actions for them. There will be agents that can make more intelligent decisions based on data, and they can route a process in a more dynamic way. Robotic means that the series, the steps in the process are stitched together in a fixed way. And agentic workflow might have dynamic routine as part of the process.

Our strength is in combining robotic automation with agentic automation as part of our process orchestration platform. The differentiator in customers deploying agents will be in how well they are integrated within the business platform and how well we can orchestrate between robots, agents and humans."

That excerpt is a mouthful, but may indicate how AI and automation discussions are maturing. Ashim Gupta, CFO and COO, noted that customers are "seeing the linkages between AI and automation" and the company is seeing clarity on enterprises and how they're focused on returns on investment in an uncertain economy.

Dines said UiPath's AutoPilot will be generally available soon with communications mining and process orchestration. He added that the company may feature "quite a different model that should tie our pricing more to the value that we deliver." Dines added that's it's too early to comment, but value driven by the UiPath platform.

In addition, UiPath has an internal initiative called "Unify build type" that will create a platform that has an integrated experience across roles. UiPath customers are increasingly adopting its full automation platform that includes document understanding and processing as well as RPA. Dines said:

"An enterprise will have maybe 100s and 1,000s of agents over time. It's equally important to orchestrate these agents, manage them, offer them in a secure and governed environment. We spent many years to build a scalable orchestration platform. We are just taking the best of LLM work, embedding it into our platform and delivering it to our customers.

Our platform emulates human users. That's the core tenet of what we are building. It's a natural extension from RPA to broader automation to an AI-powered automation platform."

Q3 outlook, Q2 numbers

UiPath's third quarter outlook was in line with expectations and the fiscal year view was better than expected. UiPath forecasted third quarter revenue of $345 million and $350 million compared to estimates of $347.5 million. For fiscal 2025, UiPath said revenue will be between $1.42 billion and $1.425 billion compared to estimates of $1.41 billion.

In the second quarter, UiPath reported non-GAAP earnings of 4 cents a share, a penny better than estimates, on revenue of $316 million, up 10% from a year ago. Wall Street was expecting revenue of $303.74 million.

UiPath's net loss for the second quarter was $85.1 million, or 15 cents a share.

By the numbers:

UiPath ARR in the second quarter was $1.55 billion, up 19% from a year ago.
UiPath had 2,163 customers with more than $100,000 in ARR.
There were 293 customers with ARR of more than $1 million.

Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity AI GenerativeAI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Analytics Automation Disruptive Technology Chief Information Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

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Salesforce's acquisition of Own highlights small ball approach to M&A

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Salesforce's purchase of Own Company for $1.9 billion highlights how the company has to play small ball with mergers and acquisitions given the scrutiny it gets with big deals. But keep in mind that small acquisitions such as Airkit.ai, which powered Salesforce’s Agentforce strategy, can have bigger impact.

The CRM giant said it will acquire Own Company, which provides data protection and management software, for $1.9 billion. Salesforce already owned 10% of Own Company. Memo to any future entrepreneur: Don't name your company Own if you want to be acquired because the headline gets wonky.

Own Company will plug into Salesforce's platform as part of the data protection and loss prevention offering. What is most notable is that Salesforce had to say that the $1.9 billion purchase "will not impact Salesforce's capital return program."

Yes folks, we're a long way from the heady days where Salesforce would blow $27.7 billion on Slack. Consider the following acquisitions since activist investors targeted Salesforce:

2022:

Troops.ai provided applications that enhanced revenue ops collaboration and visibility.
Phennecs for privacy and compliance.

2023:

Airkit.ai, which specialized in AI-powered customer service experiences.
Spiff, a company that has a commission management platform.

2024:

PredictSpring, an existing Salesforce ecosystem partner.
Tenyx, a developer of AI-powered voice agents.
Own Company.

Now aside from Salesforce's reported interest in Informatica in 2024, the company is showing some serious M&A restraint.

Small ball works and Airkit.ai proves it

As someone who happens to like writing about large deals that may (or may not) work out, I miss the old big spending Salesforce. However, small ball works out well.

In fact, small mergers can transform a company without much risk. Airkit.ai is an example and Constellation Research analyst Liz Miller saw the impact early. Miller wrote last year:

"The Airkit.ai use case goes far beyond a familiar customer service or contact center storylines as Salesforce dives into industry-specific bots that are proactive and contextual to a customer or employee's journey...

With Data Cloud in place and the addition of the Einstein Platform and Einstein Studio on top of the Salesforce Platform, the company is now ready to supercharge their customer’s capacity to not just deliver results through AI-powered bots, but have the actual data and AI infrastructure in place to ensure that sales and service teams can safely, quickly and easily deploy digital cross-channel assistants."

Yep, Liz called it.

Salesforce has pivoted the entire company on AI agents and Agentforce. On Salesforce’s second quarter earnings call, Benioff said “Agentforce” 26 times. Dreamforce will be the coming out party for Agentforce, genAI-powered agents that will leverage the entire Salesforce platform.

Benioff said:

"This is really the future, a new future that we can really envision, and with this Agentforce platform, we're making it easy to build these powerful autonomous agents for sales, for service, for marketing, for commerce, automating the entire workflow on their own, embedding agents in the flow of work and getting our customers to the agent future first. And this is our primary goal of our company right now. This is my singular focus."

Simply put, Agentforce is Airkit.ai scaled across the Salesforce platform.

Salesforce in recent years has laid the groundwork with Data Cloud and other parts. Salesforce created a core for all of its clouds, put Data Cloud in the center and then created the AI model pathways for enterprises. Agentforce (Airkit.ai) is the front-end.

In the end, the Airkit.ai purchase may be as critical to Salesforce as MuleSoft, the chassis that connects everything. Should Agentforce reinvent Salesforce, Airkit.ai may be its best acquisition of the bunch. Small ball may lack the excitement, but strategically has better returns.

Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Future of Work Tech Optimization Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity salesforce AI GenerativeAI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Analytics Automation Disruptive Technology Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

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Broadcom reports strong Q3, but Q4 revenue outlook light

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Broadcom reported better-than-expected third quarter results as revenue growth was driven by Ethernet networking and custom accelerators for AI data centers. The fourth quarter outlook, however, was a bit light.

The company reported a third-quarter net loss of $1.87 billion, or 40 cents a share, on revenue of $13.07 billion, up 47%. Non-GAAP earnings in the third quarter were $1.24 a share.

Wall Street as expecting Broadcom to report earnings of $1.21 a share on revenue of $12.96 billion.

The generative AI buildout, overcapacity and what history tells us

CEO Hock Tan said the quarter reflected “continued strength in our AI semiconductor solutions and VMware.” Revenue from AI will be $12 billion for the fiscal year due to networking and custom AI accelerators. “The integration of VMware is driving adjusted EBITDA margin to 64% of revenue as we exit fiscal year 2024,” said Tan.

Going into the results, analysts were mostly interested in Broadcom as an AI play. However, AI infrastructure players such as Nvidia and chipmakers like AMD have tailed off of late. VMware integration was also a hot topic as Tan addressed VMware customers directly. “You're telling us you want our products to work better and be more user friendly. You want them to work together. You're asking us--me particularly--to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work. That's exactly what we've done,” said Tan.

VMware is facing the heat from customers and competitors such as Nutanix. Rajiv Ramaswami, CEO of Nutanix, said: "The VMware acquisition continues to be positive for Broadcom shareholders, but at what expense to VMware customers? Higher prices, support changes, lack of innovation - it all adds up to a genuinely frustrating experience for customers, and in the end, effectively cutting VMware –a one-time enterprise leader–out at the knees."

By unit, Broadcom semiconductor revenue was $7.27 billion, up 56% from a year ago. Infrastructure software revenue was $5.8 billion, up 200% from a year ago due to the VMware purchase. In the third quarter, software revenue was 44% of the total pie, up from 22% a year ago.

As for the outlook, Broadcom projected fourth-quarter revenue of $14 billion with adjusted EBITDA of about 64%. Wall Street was expecting revenue of $14.13 billion in the fourth quarter.

Here's what Tan said on Broadcom's earnings conference call:

"We booked more than 15 million CPU costs of VCF (VMware Cloud Foundation), representing over 80% of the total VMware products we booked during the quarter. And this translates into an annualized booking value, or ABV as I had described before, of $2.5 billion during Q3, up 32% from the preceding quarter. Meanwhile, we continue to drive down costs in VMware. We brought VMware spending down to $1.3 million in Q3 from $1.6 million in Q2."
"Our hyperscale customers continue to scale up and scale out their AI clusters. Custom AI accelerators grew 3.5 times year-on-year."
"We do not focus very much on enterprise AI market as you know well. Our products in AI are largely, very much largely focused, especially on the AI accelerator or XPU side, but even -- also just as much on networking side, on hyperscalers, on cloud, those three large platform and some digital natives, what you call, big guys. We don’t deal very much on AI with enterprise."
"The VMware business continues to book very well, as we convert our customers very much in two ways, one, from perpetual to a subscription license, but also those subscription license for the full stack of VCF. And that has been very successful."

Data to Decisions Tech Optimization vmware Chief Information Officer

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Scotts Miracle-Gro and UserTesting: 9 customer experience takeaways

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Scotts Miracle-Gro is focused on a three-year strategy aimed at driving 3% annual growth by expanding its retail presence and growing its direct-to-consumer (DTC) channels.

Constellation Research analyst Liz Miller recently caught up with Scotts Miracle-Gro leaders Hailey Schraer, lead user experience researcher at Scotts Miracle-Gro, and Jess Bailey, senior manager of digital experience at Scotts Miracle-Gro, to talk customer experience (CX). I followed up with a look at how those Scotts Miracle-Gro efforts align to the broader corporate strategy laid out by CEO Jim Hagedorn.

Scotts Miracle-Gro: How CX and UserTesting Drive Omnichannel Revenue

Here's a look at the takeaways:

CX is critical: CX plays a vital role in driving omnichannel revenue and continuous testing is the path to success. Scotts Miracle-Gro emphasizes building consumer confidence through education and content, which leads to increased purchase likelihood and repeat visits.
Real-time feedback's role: Scotts Miracle-Gro uses UserTesting to capture customer feedback in real-time. UserTesting enables continuous optimization of user experience (UX) by identifying pain points and improving interfaces based on consumer reactions.
Data drives decision-making: The integration of feedback loops, A/B testing, and analytics allows Scotts Miracle-Gro to make data-driven decisions, optimizing content, and improving conversion rates. UX and CX teams work collaborate to enhance the consumer's path to purchase.
Efficiency and ROI through CX: Leveraging UserTesting has resulted in measurable benefits, including a 33% increase in webpage views, 60% faster project completion, and a 477% projected ROI due to CX improvements.
Conversion through education: Scotts Miracle-Gro focuses on educating consumers about lawn and garden care across its digital platforms. The approach builds consumer confidence, enhances engagement and drives conversions directly to Scotts Miracle-Gro or retail partners.
Omnichannel connective tissue: By combining efforts across sales, marketing, and supply chain, Scotts Miracle-Gro ensures consistency in CX and aligns with business goals. Retail partnerships are enhanced through joint marketing efforts, which drive traffic both in-store and online.
Aligning CX metrics: Key metrics such as engagement, brand perception, and overall brand health are tracked across channels. These metrics guide the broader business objectives, ensuring that CX initiatives directly impact sales and revenue growth.
Agility: Scotts Miracle-Gro can turn around user studies in less than 24 hours, enabling a responsive and agile approach to customer feedback. Insights from UserTesting are shared across teams so they can influence strategic decisions at the executive level.
Managing seasonality and promotions: The company’s sales strategies are highly influenced by planting seasons, with spring being their most critical period. Promotional activities and CX during key retail times are crucial for driving sales and negotiating retailer partnerships.

Data to Decisions Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Tech Optimization Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI AI Analytics Automation business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Chief Marketing Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

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C3 AI Q1 solid, outlook slightly light

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

C3 AI's revenue growth in its first quarter checked in at 21% as the company continued to land enterprise use cases. C3 AI's outlook for the second quarter was light.

The company reported a first quarter net loss of 50 cents a share on revenue of $87.2 million, up 21% from a year ago. Non-GAAP loss for the quarter was 5 cents a share. Subscription revenue was 84% of total revenue.

Wall Street was expecting C3 AI to report a fiscal first quarter loss of 13 cents a share on revenue of $86.94.

As for the outlook, C3 AI projected second-quarter revenue of $88.6 million to $93.6 million with a non-GAAP loss from operations of $26.7 million to $34.7 million. Wall Street was expecting second quarter revenue of $91.3 million. For the fiscal year, C3 AI projected revenue between $370 million to $395 million with the midpoint slightly below estimates of $383.9 million.

Speaking on the earnings call, CEO Tom Siebel said:

"C3 AI's customer base continues to expand, both within and across industries, while maintaining exceptional levels of customer satisfaction by by our continued focus on delivering measurable, significant enterprise value. Our bookings continue to be increasingly diverse. Our generative AI business is surprisingly diverse, with many candidly unanticipated use cases across the board in a wide range of industries."

By the numbers:

C3 AI closed 71 agreements in the first quarter including 52 pilots.
The company closed 25 agreements with municipal, county and state agents.
C3 AI’s federal business was 30% of bookings in the first quarter.
Electrobras, US Marine Corps. And Nucor were among the named customer additions.
Partners represented 72% of total agreements in the first quarter and Google Cloud and C3 closed 40 deals.
C3 AI closed 17 C3 AI Generative AI pilots in the quarter.

Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Tech Optimization Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity AI GenerativeAI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Analytics Automation Disruptive Technology Chief Information Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

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HPE posts Q3 revenue growth on AI systems

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Hewlett Packard Enterprise said its third quarter was driven by AI systems as revenue was up 10% from a year ago.

The company reported third quarter net income of 38 cents a share on revenue of $7.7 billion, up 10% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings in the quarter were 50 cents a share.

Wall Street was expecting HPE to report third quarter earnings of 47 cents a share on revenue of $7.66 billion.

CEO Antonio Neri said the third quarter was strong with growth due to AI system sales. HPE noted that it was well positioned to gain market share in AI infrastructure.

In a blog post, Neri noted:

"Our AI leadership is built on decades of large-scale infrastructure expertise including technologies like direct liquid cooling that are powering our largest AI systems for model builders, service providers, and supercomputing users. Interest in our HPE AI solutions, particularly from enterprise and sovereign customers, continues to grow. AI systems orders climbed $1.6 billion in the quarter to a cumulative $6.2 billion since Q1 2023 – an increase of approximately $3.5 billion over the last year."

Server revenue in the quarter was $4.3 billion, up 35% from a year ago. Intelligent edge revenue was $1.1 billion, down 23% from a year ago. That business is mostly Aruba.

Hybrid cloud revenue was $1.3 billion, down 7% from a year ago.

As for the outlook, HPE projected fourth-quarter revenue between $8.1 billion and $8.4 billion with non-GAAP earnings of 52 cents a share to 57 cents a share. The non-GAAP figure excludes an after-tax net gain due to H3C income of $2.1 billion due to a partial sale and various adjustments. For fiscal 2024, HPE projected revenue growth of 1% to 3% with non-GAAP earnings of $1.92 a share to $1.87 a share.

Speaking on the earnings call, Neri said:

"We saw sequential and year over year orders growth, but with some geographic variation, demand was strong in North America, Asia Pacific, Japan and India, as Europe and the Middle East lacked. We are aggressively going after the opportunities presented by better market conditions, and are well positioned in a competitive and dynamic environment.

We have accelerated innovation across all pillars of our strategy, networking, hybrid cloud and AI delivered through a unified cloud, native and AI driven experience as a part of our HP Greenlake Cloud Platform. Today, almost 37,000 unique customers use our HP Greenlake cloud to manage their hybrid IT estate."

Neri also addressed AI use cases:

"We continue to pursue profitable deals within our target server margin range, underscoring stability in our operating profit profile. In AI our momentum is very clear. Customer demand for HPE AI systems rolls sequentially, with opportunities increasing in both enterprise and sovereign AI clouds.

Customers are exploring new ways to use AI, adding to our already robust pipeline and creating even more runway for our broad AI offerings. Enterprise interest in generative AI is high, and while adoption is still in the initial stages, it is accelerated. Customers tell us that they see the possibilities in building the business cases."

Data to Decisions Tech Optimization HPE Chief Information Officer

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Quantum Brilliance, Oak Ridge National Laboratory aims to meld quantum computing, HPC

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Quantum Brilliance and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) said they will collaborate on a platform that couples quantum computing with high-performance computing (HPC).

Under the partnership, Quantum Brilliance's on-premise quantum computing cluster will integrated into ORNL's HPC systems. Specifically, Quantum Brilliance's room-temperature diamond quantum accelerators and ORNL's infrastructure will be combined to solve problems traditional computing can't.

Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:

"The foreseeable performance of quantum systems is not sufficient to solve many of the real-world quantum problems. One solution is the combination of quantum with HPC, where part of the process is offloaded to tried and tested HPC architectures and platforms. The partnership between Quantum Brilliance and Oak Ridge Laboratory brings on some formidable players in the field – so we will see what comes out of this partnership – hopefully soon."

More quantum computing:

Melding quantum computing and HPC has become a common theme in the industry. Quantum Brilliance and ORNL said they will focus on hybrid and parallel quantum computing. The goal is to leverage CPUs, GPUs and quantum processors to solve problems.

In a statement, the companies said the collaboration plans to "co-develop new computational methods that exploit parallel and hybrid computing and new software tools that will enable users to implement those methods and develop their own."

Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Quantum Computing Chief Information Officer

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Anthropic launches Claude Enterprise with 500K context window, GitHub integration, enterprise security

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Anthropic launched Claude Enterprise, which offers an expanded 500K context window, more usage capacity and GitHub integration as well as single sign-on, role-based permissions and admin tooling.

With the move, Anthropic is building out a suite of enterprise plans powered by its Claude large language model (LLM). Anthropic is also available on the hyperscale cloud providers such as AWS used by enterprises.

Here's a look at Anthropic's steady cadence of enterprise tools:

With that backdrop, Anthropic's Claude Enterprise is aimed at companies that want to use their proprietary data with Claude for competitive advantage with enterprise-grade security. Claude Enterprise's default is that it doesn't train models on user data. Anthropic is also leveraging Claude Enterprise to popularize its collaboration features for multiple use cases.

On the security front, Claude Enterprise has single sign-on and domain capture, role-based access with fine-grained permissions, audit logs and system for cross-domain identity management, which will be available in the weeks ahead.

Early customers of Claude Enterprise include GitLab, BCG and North Highlander.

Other key points:

The 500k context window equates to hundreds of sales transcripts, dozens of 100 page documents and 200,000 lines of code to give Claude company-specific knowledge.
GitHub integration is designed for engineering teams looking to sync code repositories with Claude.
Projects and Artifacts are designed team-based use cases for marketing and product and engineering.
Target use cases for Claude Enterprise include marketing, engineering, sales, product management, human resources and legal.

Anthropic's Claude Enterprise competes with ChatGPT Enterprise, which launched a year ago.

Constellation Research's take

Constellation Research analyst Andy Thurai said:

"As the LLM wars heat up, and the delta of data used to train these models starts to narrow, a lot of LLM providers are trying to offer differentiation in other ways. LLM offerings can add larger context windows, prompt caching, platform capabilities, bias removal of input date, ethical training of models, green/carbon neutral trained models, enterprise capabilities, and massive price reductions in their API-based pricing.

Anthropic is no exception. Some of the additions released this week are in those categories. The context window of 500K while not the largest (that honor currently goes to Gemini 1.5 Pro with a 2 million context window size) is among the largest. The additional features of GitHub integration, admin controls, enterprise identity settings, single sign-on and other perks matter.

This launch should allow enterprise users to consider using these models to unleash their enterprise data where data privacy and security are major concerns.

Essentially, Anthropic Enterprise is aimed to compete squarely against ChatGPT enterprise launched a year ago."

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Zscaler CEO upbeat on fiscal 2025, but outlook falls short

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Zscaler had a strong fourth quarter, but its outlook for fiscal 2025 fell well short of estimates.

The company, known for its Zero Trust Exchange platform, is among the cybersecurity leaders and in the middle of the platformization debate that has been dented by the CrowdStrike outage.

Zscaler reported a fourth quarter net loss of $14.9 million, or 10 cents a share, on revenue of $592.9 million. Non-GAAP earnings in the quarter were 88 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting Zscaler to report non-GAAP earnings of 69 cents a share on revenue of $567.61 million.

For fiscal 2024, Zscaler reported a net loss of $57.7 million, or 39 cents a share, on revenue of $2.17 billion, up 34% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings for the year were $3.19 a share.

CEO Jay Chaudhry said customer adoption was "stronger than ever" and that fiscal 2025 would feature a "strong go-to-market machine and a high pace of innovation."

Yet the outlook for the fiscal year fell short of expectations. Zscaler projected first quarter revenue of $604 million to $606 million with non-GAAP earnings of 62 cents a share to 63 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting first quarter earnings of 72 cents a share.

For fiscal 2025, Zscaler said it would post non-GAAP earnings of $2.81 a share to $2.87 a share on revenue of $2.6 billion to $2.62 billion. Wall Street was looking for fiscal 2025 non-GAAP earnings of $3.36 a share on revenue of $2.63 billion.

Zscaler CFO Remo Canessa said the first half of fiscal 2025 will see billings growth of about 13% and accelerate to 23% in the second. Canessa said sales productivity will improve over the year and the pipeline supports second-half acceleration.

Canessa added that Zscaler will continue to invest for long-term growth at the expense of profits to some degree.

Chaudhry remained upbeat about Zscaler's prospects and took a few shots at CrowdStrike. Key quotes from Chaudhury include:

"When customers rely on a mission critical cyber security service, there is no room for service interruptions. From inception, Zscaler has built a cloud security platform that has been seamlessly scaling with high reliability and resilience. Operating such a service is no trivial task and it requires years of experience. Unproven vendors, including new entrants and legacy firewall companies, do not have this experience. By operating the world’s largest security cloud with superior resilience for over a decade, we have earned the trust of the largest enterprises.
"The importance of mission criticality has gone up significantly since the outage that was caused by CrowdStrike. While our customers want resilience, they also do want consolidation, but they do not want consolidation such that it makes them dependent on a single vendor."
"The increasing use of AI is creating new avenues of growth for us. For example, the rising adoption of GenAI is exposing new gaps in organizations’ security posture."
"The cyber threat environment continues to worsen as the limitations of firewall and VPN based architecture are exploited by threat actors to launch an increasing volume of sophisticated attacks. Over the last year, we saw an 18% increase in ransomware attacks blocked by the Zscaler cloud."
"In addition to landing new logo platform purchases, we are also upselling our platform. Our land-and-expand motion creates a flywheel of continuous engagement and upsells."
"Most of the CIO I talk to have been standardizing in-line access to three providers, one for EDR (endpoint detection and response), one for identity, and one for Zero Trust actions. I think that's a good combination because you end up getting a couple of extra layers, but you still have separation. So in this environment, our customers aren't really pushing back on us because we tell them don't buy everything through Zscaler. You've got an EDR provider, you've got an identity provider and we'll do the rest of Zero Trust on activity."

Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity I am Team Leader at the Nominee Organization (no vendor self nominations) Distillation Aftershots Security Zero Trust Chief Information Security Officer Chief Privacy Officer

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Intel launches Lunar Lake laptops, aims to scale AI PCs, spur upgrade cycle

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Intel joined the AI PC parade with its Intel Core Ultra 200V series, code named Lunar Lake, with a launch designed to show that x86 architecture can compete with Arm in Copilot+ PCs.

PC makers are already betting that AI PCs will create an upgrade cycle for long-in-the-tooth devices purchased in the COVID-19 pandemic.

To date, the Qualcomm vs. AMD AI PC debate revolves around battery life vs. graphics performance. Intel's Core Ultra 200V series is designed to do both with performance improvements up to 50%.

With Intel now in the AI PC race, there will be a bevy of laptops scaling. Intel said in a statement that there will be more than 95 consumer designs from more than 25 PC makers including Dell Technologies, HP, Lenovo and others. Preorders start today with systems available Sept. 24.

What remains to be seen is whether Intel's AI PC processors and accelerators can turn around the company. Intel reported a disastrous second quarter. Speaking at a recent investment conference, CEO Pat Gelsinger acknowledged the challenges.

"It's been a difficult few weeks. And with that we've been working hard to address the issues and at earnings we were determined to lay out a clear view, right, of where we were, but also some of the next steps that we needed to address for the next phase of our strategy. And obviously, the market didn't respond positively. We understand that, and we're taking seriously what the market's telling us, and hearing that clearly. But we're also staying very focused on delivering and executing on the large number of the things that we laid out."

Intel's Q2 wipeout: Guidance cut, 15% layoffs, dividend suspended

Intel Foundry had $7 billion operating loss in 2023

Intel launches Gaudi 3 accelerator with availability in Q2

Intel's AI everywhere strategy rides on AI PCs, edge, Xeon CPUs for model training, Gaudi3 in 2024

Key points about Intel Core Ultra 200V:

Intel claims its Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors have up to 50% lower package power and 120 TOPS (tera operations per second) across central processing unit (CPU), graphic processing unit (GPU) and neural processing unit (NPU).
The fourth-generation NPU is more than 4x powerful than its previous generation.
Intel said it worked with more than 100 integrated software vendors to optimize performance. Intel also noted that its Core Ultra platform is compatible with all applications.
Intel Core Ultra 200V features the company's Xe2 graphics microarchitecture .
Laptops will have up to 20 hours of battery life in productivity use cases with the ability to support more than 500 optimized AI models.

Here's a look at the SKUs available for Intel-powered Lunar Lake laptops.

Data to Decisions Future of Work Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity AI GenerativeAI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Analytics Automation Disruptive Technology Chief Information Officer Chief Experience Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

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UiPath: Process automation orchestration core of AI agent deployments