Free RSS Feeds from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)

Leveraging DSPM and Artificial Intelligence to Solve Data Security Challenges

PUBLISHED: Mon, 08 Jun 2026 22:33:15 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

Artificial intelligence has not simply added new risks to the enterprise data security landscape; it has restructured it. Join EMA Vice President of Research Christopher Steffen as he explores how enterprises are adapting their data security posture management (DSPM) strategies in the age of AI. Attendees will gain practical guidance for assessing, strengthening, and future-proofing their DSPM strategies in 2026 and beyond, as well as learn:

How AI has displaced exfiltration prevention as the top DSPM purchase driver
Why data sovereignty remains a critical blind spot in DSPM procurement
How organizations are approaching automated remediation without sacrificing operational trust

From Outcomes to Authority: Defining the Enterprise Control Plane

PUBLISHED: Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:54:01 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

Join Dan Twing, President and COO of Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), for an exclusive webinar exploring findings from EMA's groundbreaking new research, From Outcomes to Authority: Defining the Enterprise Control Plane. As organizations accelerate adoption of AI, observability, cloud-native architectures, and domain-specific automation platforms, enterprise operations are becoming increasingly intelligent—but also increasingly complex. AI is expanding from an advisory role into operational decision-making, while business outcomes depend on coordination across a growing number of specialized systems. These trends are reshaping how organizations think about automation, governance, and control. Dan will present key findings from EMA's latest research and introduce the concept of the Enterprise Control Plane—a new architectural model emerging to coordinate, govern, and assure outcomes across increasingly federated enterprise environments. Key topics include:

The Persistent Coordination Problem: Why every technology wave creates new coordination requirements and why orchestration remains critical to enterprise operations.
AI and the Shift from Actions to Outcomes: How AI is expanding operational authority and changing the relationship between automation, decisions, and business results.
Coordination at the Boundaries: Why the greatest business value is increasingly realized across systems, teams, and technology domains.
The Rise of Outcome Assurance: How leading organizations are validating outcomes, improving trust, and reducing risk in increasingly autonomous environments.
The Need for an Enterprise Control Plane: Understanding the emerging coordination, governance, and assurance layer required to manage AI-enabled enterprise operations.

This webinar is designed for IT executives, operations leaders, enterprise architects, automation professionals, observability teams, and technology strategists seeking to understand the next evolution of enterprise automation, orchestration, and AI-enabled operations. Don't miss this opportunity to gain practical insights into one of the most significant shifts occurring in enterprise technology today.

The CISO Has Left the Building — and Came Back in a Business Suit

PUBLISHED: Mon, 08 Jun 2026 14:39:07 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

The role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Once focused primarily on technical security operations, today’s CISOs are increasingly expected to serve as enterprise risk leaders, legal stakeholders, and strategic advisors to executive leadership and boards of directors. In this blog, EMA Vice President of Research Christopher Steffen examines the forces driving this shift, including increased regulatory scrutiny, evolving reporting structures, and the growing importance of governance, risk, and compliance expertise. Learn why the future of cybersecurity leadership depends as much on business acumen and risk management as it does on technical security expertise.

The future of AI may be closer than you think, and it might be running directly on your desktop.

In this episode of the Cybersecurity Awesomeness podcast, EMA's Chris Steffen and Ken Buckler discuss one of the most intriguing announcements from Microsoft Build 2026: the shift toward AI-native Windows systems powered by ARM-based NVIDIA architecture.

Key topics include:

Why local AI could be the next major technology evolution
Security-by-design approaches for AI-enabled operating systems
The privacy and cost benefits of moving AI processing from the cloud to the endpoint
How distributed AI computing could reshape infrastructure and sustainability

If you're interested in the future of AI, cybersecurity, endpoint computing, and enterprise technology, this is a conversation worth hearing.

IBM Positions Concert for the Era of Governed Agentic Operations

PUBLISHED: Wed, 03 Jun 2026 20:21:10 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

At Think 2026, IBM launched IBM Concert platform in public preview — an agentic operations platform that consolidates observability, optimization, resilience, security, and execution coordination across hybrid environments into a single unified architecture. The announcement signals IBM’s strategic repositioning of Concert beyond traditional AIOps, as a runtime operational intelligence layer embedded within its broader enterprise AI & automation ecosystem.

Mean Time To Insight – Episode 24: Network Observability Tool Sprawl

PUBLISHED: Sun, 31 May 2026 21:10:34 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

How many network monitoring tools does the average enterprise use? According to new EMA research, most organizations rely on 4–10 tools to monitor and troubleshoot their networks, and larger enterprises often use even more.

In this episode of the the Mean Time to Insight podcast, EMA's Shamus McGillicuddy explores why tool sprawl persists, why the real challenge is often lack of integration, and how emerging AI capabilities and MCP-enabled workflows could help organizations connect siloed tools and improve operational outcomes.

IP Fabric announced expanded integration capabilities between its network digital twin platform and NetBox, the widely deployed network source of truth tool.

ServiceNow Anchors Autonomous AI to a Governed, Real-Time Data Foundation

PUBLISHED: Wed, 27 May 2026 17:22:40 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

At Knowledge 2026, ServiceNow announced a coordinated set of data capabilities aimed at making autonomous AI operationally viable inside enterprise workflows. Context Engine maintains a continuously updated graph of people, roles, assets, services, policies, and operational history, and feeds that context into every AI decision on the platform. Autonomous Data Analytics, built on the Pyramid Analytics acquisition, and deepening existing capabilities in Platform Analytics, lets any user or agent query the enterprise data estate in natural language, with always-on AI analysts that surface insights and trigger remediation. Autonomous Data Governance (available in the second-half of 2026) will add data quality, observability, enrichment, harmonization, and policy management on top of the Data Catalog. ServiceNow Data Catalog, built on the acquisition of data.world, adds automated discovery, lineage, and a federated business glossary, and elevates curated data products as governed, reusable units for agents and workflows. RaptorDB Pro adds Live Connect, Live Perform, and Live Archive, plus native graph and time-series support. The Workflow Data Network expands across data quality, observability, MDM, security, and data integration partners through Partner Passport (IBM and Boomi at launch). The new MCP Registry brings a private enterprise Model Context Protocol registry to address agent governance. Deloitte, Siemens, McKinsey, Lenovo, Adobe, and Amadeus are named as early adopters.

IBM Redefines Digital Sovereignty for AI-Ready Environments

PUBLISHED: Tue, 26 May 2026 16:13:34 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

IBM has announced the general availability of Sovereign Core, positioning it as a foundational platform for building and operating AI-ready sovereign environments with continuous compliance verification and provable control. While many sovereignty initiatives remain focused on data residency and infrastructure isolation, IBM is explicitly extending the conversation toward operational governance, runtime compliance enforcement, traceability, and provable control. This reflects a broader market shift in which sovereignty increasingly depends not only on where data resides, but on how workflows execute, how AI systems behave, and whether outcomes comply with policy and regulatory constraints across distributed environments.

Eino, a provider of AI-driven network design and digital twin tools for mission-critical wireless environments, introduced a network observability solution that is tightly integrated with the rest of its platform.

At Knowledge 2026, ServiceNow significantly broadened the scope of its AI Control Tower strategy, reinforcing its AI Control Tower platform as an enterprise governance and orchestration layer for heterogeneous AI systems. The announcement introduced expanded capabilities for discovering, observing, governing, securing, and measuring AI systems operating across enterprise environments—spanning classic ML, generative, and agentic systems across any technology stack. Action Fabric, MCP interoperability, and governed autonomous work position ServiceNow as a broader governance and coordination platform for enterprise AI execution. This development reflects a broader industry shift in which orchestration, observability, governance, and agentic AI execution are increasingly converging into centralized operational control architectures. AI Control Tower also debuts a redesigned user experience, with an Otto-powered conversational interface arriving in Q3 2026 that surfaces insights across AI agents, models, and MCP servers.

At Red Hat Summit 2026, Red Hat announced a broad set of AI, automation, and infrastructure updates that collectively position the company beyond container and Linux platform modernization into a more strategic role as an operational governance and execution layer for enterprise AI. The announcements span enhancements to Ansible Automation Platform, sovereign AI capabilities, AI gateways, model-as-a-service functionality, AI observability, agentic workflow tracing, and secure AI execution controls. Central to the strategy is Red Hat’s effort to position automation as the trusted operational layer that bridges AI reasoning and enterprise execution. The announcements directly address enterprise concerns around AI cost control, sovereignty, governance, auditability, and observability in hybrid environments.

SolarWinds Brings SW1 Agentic AI Teammate to Observability Platform

PUBLISHED: Tue, 26 May 2026 16:04:05 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

IT observability vendor SolarWinds unveiled SW1, an agentic AI “teammate” that helps IT operations personnel prioritize tasks and solve problems faster. The initial release is prompt-driven, but the company’s roadmap for SW1 indicates that it will become a primary means of interacting with SolarWinds platforms for all aspects of IT operations.

Ataccama Embeds Data Quality Signals Inside ServiceNow Data Catalog

PUBLISHED: Tue, 26 May 2026 16:01:38 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Ataccama and ServiceNow have announced an integration that places Ataccama’s quality assessments (scores, underlying findings, and observability telemetry) alongside each asset cataloged in ServiceNow. ServiceNow users and AI agents picking up an asset now encounter Ataccama’s signals on the asset itself. This provides a quality-tier badge driven by the Data Trust Index, the findings behind the score, and observability indicators such as schema changes and volume anomalies that flag when an asset may need revalidation. ServiceNow positions the announcement as foundational to its AI control tower strategy, where both agents and users need verifiable trust signals before data powers a workflow or decision. Ataccama positions it as evidence that data trust signals belong on the asset itself, as a discrete trust component in the modern AI stack, not as a set of adjacent tools.

Starburst has launched AIDA (AI Data Assistant), a natural-language analytics interface that connects AI reasoning to governed enterprise data across distributed systems. AIDA applies a ReAct (reason-act-observe) framework that replaces single-shot query generation with multi-step analytical reasoning, iterating across live data samples and schema metadata to construct validated answers. The product supports role-tailored outputs (technical detail for data engineers, executive-oriented summaries for business users), configurable LLM selection across Anthropic, OpenAI, and AWS Bedrock, and white-label branding for internal deployment. AIDA is available today within Starburst Enterprise Platform (SEP), though Starburst has not detailed which capabilities are GA versus preview.

If you are responsible for enterprise automation, you already understand that AI alone does not solve operational complexity. Most organizations already rely on workload automation and orchestration to coordinate ITOps scheduling, DevOps pipelines, DataOps/MLOps workflows, and increasingly distributed cloud services across mainframe, distributed, and hybrid environments. The challenge is determining how AI-driven decision-making can be safely embedded into these operational processes without introducing risk, inconsistency, or loss of control. Advances in agentic AI, orchestration, and automation intelligence are changing what is possible. By embedding AI directly into governed workflows and extending orchestration across APIs, external services, and emerging AI agents, organizations can move beyond isolated AI experimentation toward coordinated, auditable, and policy-driven execution at enterprise scale. Based on research from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), insights from Broadcom’s Automic V26 release, and real-world enterprise operational challenges, this webinar will examine how organizations are advancing toward more intelligent automation operations—not by replacing existing systems, but by extending orchestration, governance, and execution intelligence across increasingly complex environments. Attend this webinar featuring Dan Twing, President and COO at EMA, and Kaj Wierda, Automic Product Manager at Broadcom Inc., for insights on:

Why operational trust—not AI capability—is becoming the defining challenge for enterprise AI adoption
How governed orchestration enables AI-driven decision-making within mission-critical workflows
Where agentic AI, APIs, and orchestration are converging into more unified execution models
Why workload automation is evolving from scheduling into a broader enterprise control layer
How organizations can balance automation intelligence with governance, auditability, and human oversight at scale

Free Research: Enterprise AI is in production. The validation architecture underneath it is not. 30% of IT leaders report AI processes that complete successfully but produce wrong outcomes at least frequently. 92% have absorbed at least one negative consequence in the past six months. Those numbers describe an architecture problem, and they reframe trust as a near-term operational priority rather than a future-state design goal.

This episode of the Cybersecurity Awesomeness podcast explores a significant milestone in cyber threats: Google’s discovery of what appears to be the first documented zero-day exploit developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence. EMA analysts Chris Steffen and Ken Buckler discuss how threat actors are using AI to accelerate exploit creation, what clues revealed the exploit was AI-generated, and why this development confirms long-standing expectations about AI’s role in offensive security. They also share practical advice for defenders, emphasizing that cybersecurity fundamentals, such as patching, user awareness, and strong security hygiene, remain the best defense against both traditional and AI-assisted attacks.

Data Trust Convergence 2, The Rise of Context

PUBLISHED: Thu, 14 May 2026 22:01:29 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

AI agents are reshaping the enterprise data landscape, accelerating the convergence of data trust and giving rise to a new architectural layer: context. In this blog, EMA's Herb Blecher explores how observability, governance, lineage, and semantics are evolving into foundational infrastructure that enables AI agents to reason and act safely. Learn how leading vendors such as ServiceNow, Salesforce, Google, Snowflake, and Atlan are positioning around the emerging context layer and what it means for enterprise AI strategy.

The role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is currently undergoing a significant transformation unseen since the creation of the position. This evolution, accelerating rapidly between 2023 and 2026, is not merely a change in technical scope, but a fundamental reimagining of the office itself. Driven by a convergence of aggressive regulatory enforcement, a heightened realization of cybersecurity as a material business risk, and a shift in the leadership pipelines producing modern security executives, the CISO has been forced to undergo a radical professional metamorphosis.

Published biennially since 2008, the “Network Management Megatrends” report is the definitive benchmark of enterprise network operations practices. It explores tools, processes, drivers, and challenges to monitoring, troubleshooting, and optimizing enterprise networks. The 2026 edition of this report is based on a survey of 352 IT professionals.

This episode of the Cybersecurity Awesomeness podcast examines the growing tension between online privacy, cybersecurity, and emerging legislation. EMA analysts Chris Steffen and Ken Buckler discuss new laws in Utah and California that could require age verification and limit the use of VPNs, raising important questions about technical feasibility, privacy, and regulatory impact. The conversation offers practical insights for IT and security professionals concerned about how policy decisions may affect VPNs, operating systems, and user privacy.

Network Engineers: Today’s Endangered Species

PUBLISHED: Wed, 06 May 2026 20:02:58 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

Network engineering talent is becoming increasingly scarce, and the problem is accelerating. Drawing on new data from Enterprise Management Associates’ (EMA) Network Management Megatrends 2026 report, this blog explores how rising retirements, shifting career interests, and critical skills gaps in areas like network security, AI networking, and automation are straining IT teams.

While many organizations are turning to AI-driven management tools, automation, and internal upskilling to close the gap, these solutions come with trade-offs. In particular, the decline of entry-level NOC roles—traditionally the training ground for future engineers—raises concerns about the long-term health of the talent pipeline.

This blog examines the root causes of the shortage, the strategies organizations are using to adapt, and why over-reliance on AI could ultimately deepen the crisis if not carefully managed.

OpenObserve has introduced an autonomous AI SRE agent as part of its AI-native observability platform—positioned as “Observability 3.0”—bringing automated analysis and response capabilities directly into the observability layer. The platform combines anomaly detection, LLM observability, and automated incident analysis into a single unified telemetry system, continuously analyzing logs, metrics, traces, and AI-specific telemetry to identify root causes and recommend or execute corrective actions.

Google introduced Cloud Network Insights (CNI), a network observability solution enabled by the AppNeta by Broadcom platform. Cloud Network Insights provides end-to-end network path visibility beyond Google’s own cloud infrastructure across multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, and agentic environments. This solution empowers operations teams to manage network and application performance across complex networks.

This Star Wars Day, what can a galaxy far, far away teach us about cybersecurity? In this blog, Chris Steffen revisits some of the most iconic moments from Star Wars to uncover real-world security lessons, from unsecured access points to insider threats and supply chain vulnerabilities. The takeaway? Even the most powerful organizations can fall to basic security oversights. Don’t let your organization repeat the Empire’s mistakes.

Cybersecurity Awesomeness Podcast – Episode 155: Star Wars Day

PUBLISHED: Fri, 01 May 2026 15:36:39 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

What can Star Wars teach us about cybersecurity? More than you might think. In this episode of the Cybersecurity Awesomeness podcast, EMA’s Christopher Steffen and Ken Buckler break down some of the most iconic failures in the galaxy, from wide-open network access to weak data integrity, insider threats, and classic social engineering tactics. It’s a fun, timely conversation for Star Wars Day, but the lessons are very real for today’s security teams.

Mean Time To Insight – Episode 23: NetOps Labor Shortage

PUBLISHED: Fri, 01 May 2026 15:01:25 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

Are we heading toward a network engineering talent crisis? New data from EMA suggests the answer may be yes. In the latest episode of the Meantime to Insight podcast, EMA’s Shamus McGillicuddy highlights a sharp shift: the percentage of organizations struggling to hire network engineers has double, from 26% in 2022 to 52% in 2026. That’s not just a hiring challenge. It’s a pipeline problem. AI is often positioned as the fix, but the reality is more nuanced. It can accelerate productivity and reduce toil, but it can also shrink training grounds and weaken long-term skill development if misapplied. Listen to the full episode to explore what’s driving the talent gap, and what to do about it.

Dynatrace has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Bindplane, an open-standards-based telemetry pipeline provider focused on collecting, optimizing, governing, and routing logs, metrics, traces, and events at scale. Bindplane brings an established enterprise footprint, with adoption across a broad set of organizations and demonstrated operation in large-scale environments. This maturity contributed to Dynatrace’s decision to position the technology as enterprise-ready from the outset. Dynatrace positions the combination as a way to give customers more upstream control over telemetry quality, cost, and compliance before data reaches analytics systems. Dynatrace also states that the acquisition will accelerate its log management and analytics roadmap by expanding ingest capacity, widening supported data sources, and preserving the ability to route telemetry to any destination. Bindplane will remain available as a standalone offering, and Dynatrace expects the transaction to close later this month, subject to customary conditions.

ControlUp has launched Tap-to-App, a healthcare-focused capability available exclusively on IGEL OS that measures the real clinician login experience in badge-based workflows. Rather than reporting only backend authentication timing, Tap-to-App captures when a virtual desktop session and the target application become usable from the clinician’s perspective. ControlUp correlates endpoint data with virtual desktop and application layers to expose the visibility gap that often separates IT’s reported login times from point-of-care reality.

Cohesity and ServiceNow announced a strategic partnership focused on agent resilience for enterprises. The companies joined forces to help organizations build, operate, and safeguard autonomous AI agents and the data those agents touch with enterprise-grade reliability. ServiceNow provides the platform layer to build, register, and orchestrate agents with governance, visibility, and security. Cohesity protects and restores agent-accessed data upon disruption to a verified baseline through immutable, point-in-time recovery. Together, they position resilience as a core requirement for production agentic AI if or when data corruption, misconfigurations, or malicious prompt injections drive unexpected agent behavior. The companies expect integrated capabilities between ServiceNow AI Agent Control Tower and the Cohesity Data Cloud later in 2026.

Broadcom Positions Automic as an AI Control Plane with V26

PUBLISHED: Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:55:53 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Broadcom’s upcoming release of Automic Automation V26 represents a structural shift in workload automation, positioning the platform as a foundational execution layer for enterprise AI rather than a traditional job scheduler. The release introduces agentic AI capabilities embedded directly into orchestrated workflows, supported by governance, auditability, and policy enforcement mechanisms designed to address enterprise trust requirements. Key innovations include AI job types, Model Context Protocol (MCP) orchestration, natural language workflow generation, and expanded developer and operational tooling.

Dell Technologies has expanded its “AI Factory with NVIDIA” to deliver an integrated platform for deploying, managing, and scaling enterprise AI workloads, including emerging agentic AI use cases. The Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA brings together accelerated infrastructure, AI runtimes, orchestration frameworks, and governance capabilities into a unified operational environment. Rather than positioning AI as a collection of isolated tools or experiments, Dell enables enterprises to operationalize AI at scale through deep integration with NVIDIA technologies, supporting lifecycle management, workload coordination, and policy enforcement. This announcement reflects a broader shift in the market from model development to AI execution and operations. For enterprise IT organizations, the significance lies not in the hardware foundation, but in the emergence of a cohesive platform for orchestrating and governing AI-driven systems within production environments.

BMC and Digitate have expanded their joint solution to deliver a closed-loop automation model that integrates observability, AI-driven decisioning, and automated execution into a unified operational framework. Building on their prior observability-driven remediation integration, this announcement introduces a more tightly coupled model in which ignio’s intelligence capabilities participate directly in operational decision flows that trigger and manage automated actions. The combined solution signals a shift from intelligence-assisted orchestration toward agentic, closed-loop operations, where detection, analysis, and response occur within a continuous system. This evolution reflects broader market demand for faster, more autonomous operations and introduces new considerations around governance, transparency, and control. For enterprise IT organizations, the announcement underscores both the opportunity and the complexity of embedding AI-driven execution into production environments.

The transition to quantum computing presents a fundamental threat to the cryptographic foundations of modern identity security. Keeper Security addresses this by integrating the NIST-approved Kyber key encapsulation mechanism into its platform. By implementing quantum-resistant encryption within client/server communications, Keeper provides a proactive defense against the “harvest now, decrypt later” threat. This ensures that the secrets, API keys, and privileged credentials essential to enterprise operations remain secure today and resilient against the quantum-powered decryption capabilities of tomorrow.

Equinix announced preview availability of Equinix Fabric Intelligence™, an AI-native operational layer that simplifies how enterprises build, secure, and manage networks for AI workloads.

Cisco announced its intent to acquire Galileo Technologies, a vendor specializing in observability and evaluation for agentic AI systems. The deal expands Cisco’s Splunk Observability portfolio and its AI Agent Monitoring capabilities.

With Auvik Aurora, Auvik Infuses Agentic AI into its IT Management Suite

PUBLISHED: Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:22:27 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Auvik, a leading provider of SaaS-based IT management solutions, introduced a vision for autonomous agentic IT operations with Aurora. Auvik Aurora is a suite of AI tools and agents that automate operations across the company’s products.

Databricks Enters Security Market with Lakewatch, an Open Agentic SIEM

PUBLISHED: Thu, 30 Apr 2026 18:13:21 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Databricks has launched Lakewatch, an open agentic SIEM built on lakehouse architecture that consolidates security, IT, and business telemetry into a single governed environment for AI-driven threat detection and response. Lakewatch decouples storage from compute, enabling organizations to ingest and retain the full breadth of their security telemetry at significantly lower TCO than legacy SIEMs. The platform embeds AI agents for automated triage, detection-as-code workflows, and natural-language threat hunting via Genie. Databricks simultaneously announced a deepened partnership with Anthropic, the acquisitions of Antimatter and SiftD.ai, and a new Open Security Lakehouse Ecosystem with partners including Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler, Wiz, Okta, Cribl, and others. Lakewatch is available in Private Preview.

Enterprise Management Associates’ (EMA) Network Management Megatrends research has been benchmarking enterprise network operations strategies for 18 years. It is the definitive examination of how IT organizations manage their networks while adapting to major industry disruptions such as cloud transformation and AI. This year’s Megatrends report, based on a survey of 352 IT professionals, revealed only 31% of enterprises are completely successful with their network operations strategy. Network teams are struggling to prevent network outages, overwhelmed by alert noise, and struggling with tool sprawl. Watch this on-demand webinar featuring EMA Vice President of Research Shamus McGillicuddy to get insights into the 2026 Network Management Megatrends research:

The ways that network operations teams are trying to improve their network observability toolsets
Emerging approaches to automating more of day-to-day operations
The current state of managing hybrid, multi-cloud networks
How IT organizations are retooling network observability to manage AI workloads and traffic on their networks

The Lost RSAC 2026 Conversations: Business Enablement vs. Security Risk

PUBLISHED: Wed, 22 Apr 2026 20:03:31 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

RSAC 2026 highlighted a growing disconnect between cybersecurity innovation and business enablement. Amid the surge of “AI-powered” solutions, many organizations risk repeating a familiar mistake: prioritizing compliance, complexity, and hype over real-world outcomes. This blog from EMA's Ken Buckler explores how security measures—past and present—can unintentionally hinder productivity, leading teams to bypass controls in order to get work done. Drawing a parallel between a simple “pen cap hack” and today’s influx of AI-driven tools, it underscores the dangers of security theater and misaligned priorities. The takeaway is clear: effective cybersecurity should reduce friction, support business velocity, and deliver measurable risk reduction—not add cost and complexity without value.

Why Cloudflare’s PQC Roadmap is a Wake-Up Call

PUBLISHED: Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:57:15 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

If you thought "Q-Day" was a problem for the 2040s, it’s time to check your calendar: the goalposts just moved (again), and they moved significantly closer (again). We’ve talked about Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) for a while now, in our regular podcast and most recently with the announcement from Google. But Cloudflare’s recent announcement—targeting full post-quantum security, including authentication, by 2029—changes the vibe entirely. When one of the biggest gatekeepers of the internet sets a hard deadline three years out from now, the rest of us need to stop treating this like a science project and start treating it like a migration project.

Hear from the Experts: Best Practices for Evolving from SD-WAN to SASE

PUBLISHED: Thu, 16 Apr 2026 20:55:53 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

The enterprise networking landscape is currently undergoing its most radical architectural transformation since the inception of the internet, driven by the obsolescence of the traditional division between connectivity and security. Historically, networking teams managed bandwidth "plumbing" while security teams maintained perimeter defenses. However, the dual pressures of cloud ubiquity and a distributed workforce have rendered this bifurcated model ineffective, forcing a convergence of these formerly distinct disciplines. As organizations transition from rigid private circuits to agile Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN), they have gained cost-efficiency but inadvertently expanded their attack surface by pushing traffic onto the public internet. This tension has catalyzed the rise of Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). SASE represents a strategic philosophy that replaces location-based security with an identity-centric infrastructure, weaving protection directly into the network fabric to resolve the long-standing paradox between performance and protection. By moving rigorous security inspection to the cloud edge, enterprises can minimize latency while maximizing defense. This evolution is being further accelerated by the integration of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. As modern network environments reach levels of complexity that defy manual human intervention, the industry is pivoting toward "intent-based" systems. These advanced architectures are designed to be self-healing and self-optimizing, capable of autonomously adjusting to performance fluctuations or emerging security threats in real time. Ultimately, this shift marks the end of the standalone network, replaced by a unified, intelligent service delivery model. Watch this on-demand webinar featuring EMA’s Chris Steffen and experts from Coevolve, Versa Networks, and Zscaler to get insights into WAN transformation research findings and the trends reshaping enterprise networking.

ThoughtSpot Introduces Spotter Semantics, Advancing the Agentic Semantic Layer

PUBLISHED: Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:19:04 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

ThoughtSpot has announced Spotter Semantics, an agentic semantic layer designed to provide governed business context to AI agents at enterprise scale. The release extends ThoughtSpot’s existing search-token architecture with next-generation search tokens and aggregate awareness, a centralized metrics catalog, and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that connects the semantic layer to external AI agents and LLMs. ThoughtSpot positions Spotter Semantics as a deterministic alternative to text-to-SQL approaches, using its patented search-token engine rather than LLM-generated SQL to translate natural language into governed queries.

Alation Introduces Outcome-Based Governance and Curation Automation

PUBLISHED: Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:17:22 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Alation has announced general availability of Alation Curation Automation alongside a broader framework that the company calls outcome-based governance. The core idea is that instead of assigning governance tasks and hoping teams follow through, organizations define the outcome they need and the platform enforces and maintains those standards through purpose-built agents and continuous automation. Curation Automation is the final piece, handling metadata enrichment at scale and joining Alation’s existing CDE Manager and Data Quality products to complete the system.

Confluent Intelligence Expands with Agent Orchestration and Anomaly Detection

PUBLISHED: Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:15:48 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Confluent has announced new capabilities within Confluent Intelligence, its fully managed service for building real-time AI systems on Confluent Cloud. The release introduces two additions: Streaming Agents, which use the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol to connect and coordinate AI agents across enterprise systems using real-time data streams, and Multivariate Anomaly Detection, a built-in ML function that analyzes multiple metrics jointly to detect complex anomalies with fewer false positives.

Domo Positions Around AI Agents/Semantic Infrastructure at Domopalooza 2026

PUBLISHED: Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:11:40 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

At its annual Domopalooza conference, Domo announced a broad set of capabilities that together signal a strategic repositioning from BI platform to AI orchestration layer. New agentic AI capabilities include AI Agent Builder, AI Toolkits, a centralized AI Library, and a Domo MCP Server that connects enterprise data and workflows to external AI platforms through the Model Context Protocol standard. BI modernization capabilities include Worksheets (a spreadsheet-native exploration interface, now GA), Report Builder for PDF (beta), Data Models for reusable dataset relationships (beta), and semantic layer enhancements that formalize business definitions across the platform.

EMA™ PRISM Report for Post-Quantum Cryptography

PUBLISHED: Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:54:33 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Welcome to the Enterprise Management Associates™ (EMA) PRISM report on post-quantum cryptography (PQC) solutions. EMA is an industry-leading analyst firm specializing in a wide range of technology areas, including cybersecurity. We are dedicated to providing comprehensive research, analysis, and insights to help organizations make informed decisions about their technology investments. The EMA PRISM report is a broad overview of a particular product set in a larger technology space. It is designed to provide practitioners and business leaders with a starting point for solutions in a common vertical. It uses publicly available information and sentiments, as well as the expertise of EMA researchers, to create an easy-to-understand and digestible overview of significant vendors/solutions in a space. It is NOT meant to be a detailed or thorough examination of the solutions in that vertical, nor does it include all of the solutions in that vertical. The information presented in this report acts as a starting point for decision-makers and practitioners to evaluate the vendors and solutions that best align with your organization’s needs and requirements.

As AI transforms the enterprise, the financial sector, including banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), is deliberately slowing deployments to As AI transforms the enterprise, the financial sector, including banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), is deliberately slowing deployments to prioritize risk mitigation, resulting in lower adoption rates. Yet even as firms express confidence in their ability to scale AI, new survey data from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) reveals a critical roadblock: legacy Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems are not keeping pace. Compared to other sectors, financial institutions report significant shortfalls in key areas such as resiliency (11.8%) and security (10.8%)—gaps that directly impact their ability to safely implement AI. This operational disconnect has led to what can be described as a “SaaS paradox.” Financial organizations are 17.2% more likely to prefer all-in-one platforms, yet they still require deep customization and large scale to function. Join Ken Buckler, Research Director at EMA, and Damon Tepe, Head of Product Marketing at Ory, for an insightful webinar as they:

Unpack these new survey findings and compare financial services data with broader industry trends
Examine where traditional IAM platforms fall short in supporting emerging agentic AI use cases
Explore how a composable IAM approach can help organizations innovate without compromising compliance

From ChatGPT to OpenClaw: Field Testing the Agentic Enterprise Problem

PUBLISHED: Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:40:47 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

In this blog, EMA’s Herb Blecher shares a hands-on journey from ChatGPT to OpenClaw to reveal a bigger issue: the “agentic enterprise” isn’t a tool problem, it’s an architecture problem.

While AI tools excel at reasoning with the right context, they still struggle with execution, especially across systems. Add in challenges around observability, scalability, and cost, and it’s clear most organizations aren’t ready to move from pilot to production.

The takeaway? Success with agentic AI isn’t about picking the right tool, it’s about building the infrastructure to make them work together.

AI Was Never Really Coming For Your Job – But Your Job Will Be Different

PUBLISHED: Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:28:07 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

AI isn’t coming for your job, but it is changing it. In this new blog, EMA’s Chris Steffen explains that just like virtualization, cloud, and DevOps before it, AI is a force multiplier not a replacement. It’s taking over repetitive tasks and freeing IT professionals to focus on higher-value work. What AI can’t replicate? Experience, intuition, and the “tribal knowledge” built over years in the field. That human expertise is still critical, especially as overreliance on AI can introduce risk without proper oversight.

Apica has expanded its Ascent product suite with Ascent 2.16, positioning it as agentic-ready telemetry infrastructure built for AI-scale operations. The release emphasizes a pipeline-first architecture that processes, enriches, and governs telemetry before it reaches downstream observability platforms.

Agentic AI is pushing observability beyond insight into autonomous action.

In this episode of the Enterprise Automation Excellence podcast, Dan Twing and Tom O’Rourke sit down with Arturo Oliver, Senior Director, Market Strategy and Analyst Relations at ScienceLogic, to explore how observability is evolving from reactive diagnosis to proactive prevention powered by AI agents.

Key shifts discussed:

From root-cause analysis to prediction and prevention
From noise reduction to AI-driven recommendations
From scripted automation to autonomous, action-taking agents

But the real challenge ahead? Connecting agents across tools and systems and building the trust, transparency, and institutional knowledge required to make agentic operations work at scale.

Key takeaway for automation leaders: Don’t wait for perfection. Start finding practical agentic AI wins now while prioritizing prevention, context, and verifiable AI outcomes.

Listen to the full episode to learn how observability is becoming the foundation for autonomous IT operations.

Q-Day Just Got Way More Real

PUBLISHED: Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:46:03 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

The timeline for "Q-Day"—the hypothetical day when quantum computers become powerful enough to break modern digital security—has shifted from a distant worry to an urgent reality. The latest research from Google Quantum AI and a startup called Oratomic has revealed that the "skeleton key" needed to crack current encryption is much closer than previously thought. This matters for everyone from Bitcoin holders to corporate leaders.

Many Network Engineers Want DDI Vendors to Add Agentic AI Features

PUBLISHED: Mon, 30 Mar 2026 22:38:49 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

In conversations with network teams, one theme keeps emerging: AI-powered management tools are no longer a “nice to have.” Engineers want agentic interfaces that can gather data, detect issues, and help respond to problems across DNS, DHCP, and IP address management (DDI) environments.

EMA’s DDI Directions 2026 research shows:

43% say AI capabilities are essential when evaluating DDI vendors
Nearly all organizations would use AI features if available
66% want agentic AI that can proactively detect and respond to issues — not just chatbots

The challenge? Most DDI vendors are still early in their AI journey.

As agentic capabilities begin to arrive over the next 6–12 months, network teams will need to balance innovation with caution. Early adopters already report challenges validating AI insights — making governance and verification critical.

The message is clear: the future of core network services is agentic, but evaluation and trust will matter as much as automation.

Mean Time To Insight – Episode 22: DNS Security

PUBLISHED: Mon, 30 Mar 2026 19:12:15 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

DNS may be known as the “phone book of the internet,” but it’s quickly becoming one of the most exploited layers of enterprise infrastructure.

In this episode of the Mean Time to Insight podcast, EMA’s VP of Research Shamus McGillicuddy explores why DNS security is rising as a critical concern for network and security teams — from real-world misconfiguration risks to AI-enhanced attacks targeting DNS environments.

Key insights include:

40% of enterprises experienced a DDI-related security breach in the past two years
Malicious redirection and DNS abuse rank among top security concerns
Visibility, automation, and cross-team ownership are essential to improving DNS security posture

The takeaway: DNS isn’t just networking plumbing, it’s a frontline cybersecurity asset.

Listen to the full episode to learn how organizations can strengthen DNS security and reduce hidden risk.

Connect Real Time Business Impact with Observability and AI

PUBLISHED: Mon, 30 Mar 2026 17:23:04 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

Modern digital businesses must make critical decisions in real time, yet many teams remain reactive, overwhelmed by data that offers little insight into actual business impact. Traditional metrics and alerts fail to show what matters most, who is impacted, or how issues affect revenue-generating and mission-critical processes as they unfold. Recent Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) research highlights the urgency of this challenge, with many panelists suggesting the same improvement, best summarized by one individual response: “I would improve the end-to-end visibility across services, infrastructure, and applications. Right now, monitoring is fragmented across multiple tools, making it difficult to quickly identify root causes of incidents.” 55% of the panelists in this same survey report that their teams are “moving to a cross-functional team approach” or that they’re expressly “organized to align with business services.” These realities mean that AI-powered observability across traditional silos of business and IT are now required. So, how do these organizations succeed? Watch this on-demand webinar featuring experts from EMA Research, Dynatrace, and DXC to learn how leading teams shift from monitoring system performance to understanding business outcomes. Additionally, you’ll discover how organizations:

Get real-time visibility into customer journeys and revenue-building transactions
Prioritize issues based on business impact—not just technical severity
Use AI and intelligent agents to anticipate problems and guide action
Align IT, operations, and business teams around shared, outcome-driven insights

Key Takeaways from RSAC 2026

PUBLISHED: Fri, 27 Mar 2026 21:03:57 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

The cybersecurity world descended on San Francisco's Moscone Center this week for RSAC 2026, the 35th annual flagship event – and the numbers alone tell you this is no niche gathering. Around 43,500 attendees, 700 speakers, 600 exhibitors, and 400 members of the media converged on the conference, which spans multiple stages and countless hands-on experiences. That's a lot of people, and a lot of opinions; some of which are ones I hope you are paying attention to, and some that I would prefer you ignore. After spending the week meeting with some of the best vendors at the conference, as well as a few passing conversations in elevators and airplane queues, four themes kept coming up again and again – and if you're serious about your security program, they're worth paying attention to.

Actian, the data and AI division of HCLSoftware, has launched Data Observability Agents and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Actian Data Observability. The release targets a growing enterprise risk: AI agents acting on data without verifying its quality at the point of execution.

AIOps platforms have improved visibility and reduced alert noise, yet many operations teams still rely on humans to interpret signals, triage incidents, and execute remediation. The next phase of operational intelligence introduces role-based AI agents designed to support specific operational responsibilities—from frontline responders to platform specialists. In this webinar, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) Vice President of Research Shamus McGillicuddy will be joined by Grokstream’s leadership team. Josh Kindiger, Co-Founder & COO, will present the path to Predictive and Agentic Operations, outlining how classical machine learning, generative AI, and operational memory are driving self-healing IT and network operations. Larry Lien, Chief Product Officer, will provide a live demonstration of Grok’s L1 Agent, showcasing how role-based agents reason over signals, orchestrate workflows, reflect on outcomes, and safely execute actions at the frontline. The session will examine:

How today’s IT and network operations teams are embracing AI solutions
The challenges and pitfalls IT groups should watch for with AI
The architectural foundations of role-based agentic operations
How L1 operational agents are transforming frontline incident response

Databricks Advances Agentic Data Work with Genie Code and Quotient AI

PUBLISHED: Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:49:11 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Databricks has launched Genie Code, an autonomous AI agent designed to handle data engineering, data science, and analytics workflows end-to-end. Databricks describes the agent as going beyond code assistance, capable of reasoning through problems, planning multi-step approaches, writing and validating production-grade code, and maintaining the result. Alongside the launch, Databricks announced the acquisition of Quotient AI, a platform specializing in evaluation and reinforcement learning for AI agents. Quotient’s capabilities will be embedded across Genie, Genie Code, and Agent Bricks to provide continuous performance monitoring, regression detection, and automated improvement cycles.

Monte Carlo Introduces Agent Observability for Production AI Systems

PUBLISHED: Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:46:22 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Monte Carlo has announced new Agent Observability capabilities that provide unified visibility across the full lifecycle of AI agents in production. The release is organized into four monitoring domains: context (validating the data agents rely on), performance (tracking cost, latency, and error rates), behavior (verifying agents follow intended workflows), and outputs (evaluating quality before and after deployment). New features include Agent Metric Monitors, Agent Trajectory Monitors for workflow validation, pre-production evaluations against golden datasets integrated into CI/CD pipelines, and a hosted OpenTelemetry deployment option in AWS. The release also expands platform support to Google BigQuery and AWS Athena.

Virtana has launched a new Application Observability capability that connects application performance issues to the system dependencies behind them, including infrastructure, networks, storage, Kubernetes, and AI workloads. Virtana frames the offering as a step beyond code-centric Application Performance Monitoring (APM), correlating signals across the enterprise stack and identifying root causes without forcing operators to stitch insights together across multiple tools.

ServiceNow launched Autonomous Workforce, a new capability on the ServiceNow AI Platform that deploys AI specialists to execute enterprise work from end to end with defined scope, authority, and governance. At the same time, ServiceNow introduced EmployeeWorks, which combines Moveworks’ conversational AI and enterprise search with ServiceNow’s unified portal and autonomous workflows. Together, these offerings connect natural language requests to governed execution across IT, HR, procurement, and other functions. ServiceNow positions Autonomous Workforce and EmployeeWorks as a platform solution to fragmented, feature-level AI by unifying intelligence, workflows, and control, so enterprises can convert AI from pilots and experiments into measurable outcomes at scale.

ControlUp Advances Autonomous Endpoint Management with Unipath Acquisition

PUBLISHED: Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:36:34 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

ControlUp recently acquired Unipath to accelerate its Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM) strategy. By introducing agentic AI capabilities, ControlUp now automates remediation without requiring manual scripting or complex workflow design. This acquisition represents a major leap over traditional automation; it combines real-time telemetry with AI-led contextual decision-making to remove friction from issue detection, analysis, and resolution. By embedding Unipath’s self-learning automation into its Digital Employee Experience (DEX) platform, ControlUp empowers IT teams to shift toward autonomous operations, boosting employee productivity while slashing helpdesk demand and operational complexity.

Airrived announced the launch of AetherClaw, a governance and security execution layer designed to make agentic AI viable for enterprise deployment. Introduced at RSA Conference 2026, AetherClaw addresses a critical gap in early agentic frameworks: the absence of policy enforcement, auditability, and structured human oversight. The solution functions as a purpose-built control layer—delivering fine-grained access control, policy-as-code governance, and full audit trails embedded directly into agent execution.

Broadcom has released Automation Analytics & Intelligence (AAI) 24.4, strengthening its long-established automation analytics platform with expanded cross-scheduler correlation, predictive SLA modeling, and contextual workflow insight.

Snowflake announced a definitive agreement to acquire Observe, Inc., extending its AI Data Cloud strategy into the $50+ billion IT operations management market through large-scale observability and operational intelligence. The acquisition brings a telemetry-native, data lake-oriented observability platform directly into Snowflake’s core architecture, aligning logs, metrics, and traces with analytics, AI, and governance workflows. Observe’s platform was designed around open standards, high-volume telemetry economics, and AI-assisted troubleshooting, making it structurally compatible with Snowflake’s data-centric operating model. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions. If executed effectively, this acquisition materially shifts Snowflake’s role in enterprise IT operations by collapsing the boundary between operational telemetry and business data, repositioning observability as a first-class data platform workload rather than a standalone monitoring function.

Rafay Systems released Version 4.0 of its infrastructure orchestration and workflow automation platform, introducing new capabilities aimed at strengthening governance, simplifying Kubernetes lifecycle operations, and accelerating cloud native workload delivery across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The release delivers enhancements in managed Kubernetes services, developer self-service, secure GitOps workflows, blueprint lifecycle management, and workflow automation. These updates are designed to address the operational and governance burdens facing platform engineering teams as Kubernetes estates grow in scale and complexity. The 4.0 release solidifies Rafay’s position as a control plane for platform teams that need consistent, policy-aligned infrastructure delivery while enabling faster developer velocity and safer Day-2 operations.

Rafay Systems and Aviz Networks announced a partnership to deliver full-stack orchestration for GPU cloud environments, combining Rafay’s Kubernetes, GPU, and cluster lifecycle automation with Aviz’s AI-optimized networking fabric, visibility, and multi-tenant control. The joint solution targets enterprises and GPU cloud providers seeking to accelerate AI infrastructure deployment, reduce operational complexity, and enable secure, tenant-aware consumption of GPU resources. By integrating cluster orchestration, GPU lifecycle management, fabric-level automation, and correlated observability, Rafay and Aviz move beyond traditional provisioning toward a unified operational plane for AI workloads. The announcement highlights the market’s shift toward end-to-end AI infrastructure orchestration, where compute, networking, and lifecycle governance function as a coordinated system rather than isolated components.

In this episode of the Cybersecurity Awesomeness Podcast, Chris Steffen and Ken Buckler gear up for RSAC 2026, where 45,000+ attendees and hundreds of vendors will converge in San Francisco. From Agentic AI and autonomous security solutions to the growing urgency of Post-Quantum Cryptography, the conversation separates real priorities from industry hype. The hosts explore why AI isn’t a silver bullet, what leaders should actually be securing today, and how organizations can prepare for the coming reality of Q-Day. They also share practical advice for navigating the show floor, including why the Innovation Sandbox and Early Stage Expo remain must-visit destinations, and why, despite all the technology on display, community and face-to-face connection still deliver the greatest value. Tune in for insights before heading to RSAC.

Data Trust: Architecture vs. Policy

PUBLISHED: Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:00:51 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

How much of data trust can tools actually solve? It's a question EMA's Herb Blecher keep encountering, and the market isn’t structured to answer. Observability, quality, and governance are converging into a shared architectural layer, and the tooling is genuinely better. However, organizations that struggle with trust don't always lack tools; they have a gap between what their policies say and what their infrastructure enforces. No amount of platform consolidation can close that gap on its own. Read the blog to learn more.

Transforming the business does not require expensive technology changes, it can be accomplished through business partnership and better use of existing systems and information. In this episode of the Enterprise Automation Excellence podcast, Rich Corbridge (CIO, SEGRO plc) joins Dan Twing and Tom O'Rourke to discuss how they are using automation and AI to significantly improve their ERP capabilities, without replacing their ERP systems. Focusing on business value, SEGRO is piloting AI-enable orchestration to create workbenches that tie together disparate systems for timely access to information, improving decision making. Crucially, this approach introduces agentic AI within a centralized orchestration model, ensuring governance, consistency, and controlled deployment rather than uncoordinated agent sprawl.

On March 2, 2026, IFS finalized the acquisition of Softeon, launching IFS Softeon to bridge the gap between Industrial AI and tier-one warehouse management software (WMS). This move targets a critical enterprise blind spot: the disconnect between strategic ERP planning and the reality of the warehouse floor.

NinjaOne Expands Unified IT Platform with Native IT Asset Management

PUBLISHED: Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:56:29 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

NinjaOne has introduced NinjaOne IT Asset Management (ITAM), a new capability that unifies endpoint and asset management in a single platform. NinjaOne ITAM gives IT teams a continuously updated inventory across hardware, software, connected systems, unmanaged devices, and offline assets. By centralizing asset data and tying it directly to endpoint control, NinjaOne aims to help organizations extend asset lifecycles, reduce costs, strengthen security, and simplify compliance. The new offering turns static asset records into operational intelligence that supports budgeting, risk reduction, and faster IT decision-making at scale.

ScienceLogic recently launched Skylar Advisor™, a new AI-native offering within the ScienceLogic AI Platform. This technology helps IT teams shift from reactive operations to proactive, evidence-based decision-making. Unlike retrofitted AI chatbots, Skylar Advisor applies real-time reasoning to enterprise telemetry and institutional knowledge. It delivers verifiable recommendations that accelerate issue resolution, reduce operational risk, and preserve institutional memory. Built for full-stack visibility and trusted automation, Skylar Advisor enables IT teams to prioritize critical tasks, act with confidence, and scale expertise across diverse roles.

EmberOT Updates Free OT PCAP Analyzer with PCAPng Support

PUBLISHED: Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:46:34 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

EmberOT recently announced significant updates to its free OT PCAP Analyzer, now including support for the PCAP next-generation (PCAPng) file format. This updated version enhances the tool’s capabilities, offering improved performance, error handling, and a more comprehensive analysis of network traffic, which is critical for those working within industrial control systems (ICS). The introduction of PCAPng support allows analysts to leverage detailed packet insights, ultimately aiding in the security and efficiency of critical infrastructure operations.

BigID and Atlan have announced an enhanced integration that brings structured and unstructured data discovery, classification, lineage, and cataloging together under a combined governance and security control plane. The integration feeds BigID’s data security posture management (DSPM) signals directly into Atlan’s data catalog, giving security and governance teams a shared operational surface. The goal is to give CISOs and CDOs a common foundation so enterprises can advance AI initiatives from experimentation to production without governance becoming the bottleneck.

In this episode of the Cybersecurity Awesomeness Podcast, Chris Steffen and Ken Buckler prepare for the RSA Conference (RSAC), often described as the "Super Bowl" of cybersecurity, by talking about the EMA Vendor Vision report. To help attendees navigate the overwhelming presence of over 600 exhibitors, the hosts break down EMA’s "Vendor Vision" report, which spotlights ten essential innovators. The discussion covers a broad technological spectrum, ranging from Straker’s cutting-edge adversarial AI in the Early Stage Expo to Sky High Security’s leadership in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM). Key highlights include AWS’s unified cloud security suite, Acalvio's deception technologies, F5’s API-driven AI protections, and the evolving identity landscape spearheaded by Yubico and SailPoint. The hosts also examine the maturation of Privileged Access Management through Delinea and Keeper Security, alongside Proofpoint’s focus on human-centric vulnerabilities and business email compromise. By filtering the noise of the Moscone Center, this episode provides a strategic roadmap for identifying the technical trends that will define the industry for the coming months. It serves as an indispensable guide for anyone looking to maximize their impact and insight during the conference.

Vendor to Watch: Hex

PUBLISHED: Thu, 12 Mar 2026 18:59:19 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Hex built a collaborative data science notebook that became structurally aligned with LLM workflows — and leveraged that advantage to rapidly expand into conversational self-service, agent governance, and enterprise analytics within a single governed environment.

Are You Scaling Intelligence — or Just Scaling Errors?

PUBLISHED: Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:31:51 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

In this episode of the Don’t Panic, It’s Just Data podcast, host Shubhangi Dua, Podcast Producer and B2B Tech Journalist at EM360Tech, sits down with Herb Blecher, Research Director of Data and Analytics at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). This conversation challenges a common belief in enterprise tech – that gathering everything ensures insight. Blecher, alluding to the modern-day AI craze, cautions the enterprise audience that just because you can access vast amounts of unstructured data doesn’t mean you should.

FINBOURNE Technology and Alkymi Announce Integrated Credit Risk Monitoring

PUBLISHED: Mon, 09 Mar 2026 16:00:27 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

FINBOURNE Technology and Alkymi have announced a strategic partnership delivering an integrated credit risk monitoring solution for private credit. The joint offering connects Alkymi’s AI-powered document ingestion and monitoring platform with FINBOURNE’s LUSID data and investment management infrastructure. The combined solution enables asset managers, lenders, and asset owners to detect deteriorating credit facilities earlier by integrating borrower documents, financial data, and covenant monitoring in real time.

Ataccama Launches Agentic Data Observability to Extend Data Trust Platform

PUBLISHED: Mon, 09 Mar 2026 15:54:47 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Ataccama has launched Agentic Data Observability within Ataccama ONE, embedding pipeline monitoring directly into its unified data trust platform. The release connects observability signals with data quality rules, lineage, catalog, and governance in a single workflow. Pipeline monitoring spans orchestrators including dbt, Airflow, Dagster, Azure Data Factory, and AWS Glue. Ataccama also introduced an MCP Server that extends governed data access to AI tools such as Claude and Microsoft Copilot. The release is particularly relevant for regulated enterprises, where data integrity must hold up under audit and AI deployments create additional compliance risk.

ElastiFlow, a provider of network telemetry solutions, announced general availability of a Kubernetes observability technology called Mermin. Mermin leverages the Linux kernel’s extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) to extract network flow data from Kubernetes clusters.

Park Place Technologies Optimizes Data Collection with Entuity v23

PUBLISHED: Mon, 09 Mar 2026 15:46:24 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

With version 23 of its network observability product, Entuity Software™ introduced significant enhancements to how it collects data from IT infrastructure and services. This update gives IT operators more flexibility in how they collect data, a more secure approach to monitoring operating systems, and new options for collecting real-time network telemetry.

BlueCat Horizon: A SaaS Platform that Unifies DDI and Network Observability

PUBLISHED: Mon, 09 Mar 2026 15:41:51 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

BlueCat Networks is introducing Horizon, a set of SaaS-based platform and infrastructure services that unifies its core DNS, DHCP, and IP address management (DDI) solutions with the network observability solutions it acquired via LiveAction Networks.

Vendor Vision 2026 RSAC Edition

PUBLISHED: Mon, 09 Mar 2026 15:08:54 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) has released its fifth annual Vendor Vision report, highlighting ten trailblazing cybersecurity companies to watch at the 2026 RSA Conference in San Francisco. Curated by analysts from the EMA Information Security practice, the report serves as a strategic guide for navigating the event's 600+ exhibitors. The 2026 visionaries are recognized for their innovation in securing agentic AI and protecting the autonomous enterprise against machine-speed threats. By identifying industry-leading solutions across diverse security verticals, EMA provides attendees with a comprehensive roadmap to the most significant technological advancements showcased at the Moscone Center.

AI adoption in cybersecurity is hitting a reality check. In this episode of the Cybersecurity Awesomeness Podcast, hosts Chris Steffen and Ken Buckler examine how CISO priorities are shifting as organizations move from rapid AI experimentation to a more disciplined, risk-aware strategy. The “deploy first, secure later” approach to AI—especially autonomous or agentic systems—is proving risky. Real-world incidents already highlight the dangers:

An AI agent deleting a production database during a code freeze
Another repeatedly ignoring “stop” commands while wiping a Meta executive’s inbox

As the hosts put it, AI can feel like “graduate-level intelligence with the gullibility of an eight-year-old.” The takeaway: marginal productivity gains aren’t worth catastrophic security risks. CISOs must apply the same guardrails used for human users—especially around identity, access, and accountability—to AI agents. Done right, AI becomes a powerful business enabler. Done wrong, it becomes a liability.

Enterprise Automation Excellence – Episode 30: From Order Taker to Change Agent

PUBLISHED: Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:23:07 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

Enterprise automation leaders must maintain reliable services supporting business and operational processes while also driving change in their organizations. In this episode, Dan Twing and Tom O'Rourke discuss the challenges and opportunities of becoming a change agent, and why it is important to step forward rather than waiting for direction from above. They advocate behaving like an entrepreneur in identifying problems to be solved, building business cases, and actively selling their proposals to leadership. Key Points

Many automation groups only get attention when something is broken, functioning as a service rather than being recognized as a strategic asset
Senior managers often do not understand how automation enables the business
Automation leaders often wait for someone above them to provide direction on when to act
No matter where you are in the organization, you have a role to play in moving change forward
Automation leaders need to behave like entrepreneurs, driving change to improve their business impact
Marketing and selling are not words; automation leaders must frame proposals in business terms, understand executive and stakeholder priorities, and actively communicate the value automation delivers.

Takeaways for Automation Leaders Create a "State of Automation" briefing that your management and non-technical stakeholders can read to understand why automation matters to the business Meet with your management to understand: - their expectations of what the automation team needs to work on, - what business initiatives automation should be performing, and - whether the leadership team feels the automation team is moving quickly enough Design and propose a small pilot where automation can deliver a measurable business improvement

A Path Toward Trusting Agentic NetOps

PUBLISHED: Wed, 04 Mar 2026 20:44:44 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

As AI reshapes network operations, enterprise teams increasingly expect intelligent capabilities embedded within their infrastructure and management platforms. Yet while demand for AI-driven NetOps continues to grow, trust remains the defining factor for adoption. Research from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) shows that although AI heavily influences vendor selection, only a small percentage of IT professionals fully trust the AI tools managing their networks. For agentic NetOps to succeed, AI must be transparent, explainable, and verifiable. Network operators need clear insight into how AI systems generate recommendations through data attribution, visualized reasoning, and manual confirmation workflows. Trust is not about perfection; it’s about visibility, accountability, and continuous improvement. Organizations that prioritize these principles will empower their teams to confidently embrace AI and unlock faster operations, reduced errors, and smarter infrastructure management.

Quantum computing is rapidly moving from theoretical possibility to operational reality, and its impact on cybersecurity could be profound. In this episode of the Cybersecurity Awesomeness Podcast, EMA's security experts Chris Steffen and Ken Buckler examine the concept of Q-Day, the moment when quantum processors may become powerful enough to break today’s encryption standards, including AES-256.

The discussion explores the growing threat of “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” attacks, where adversaries collect encrypted data today with plans to unlock it once quantum capabilities mature. While quantum technology promises transformative advances across industries — the so-called Quantum Dividend — it also introduces urgent security challenges that organizations must begin addressing now.

Listeners will gain insight into why quantum readiness requires a long-term strategy, how quantum-resistant cryptography is reshaping security planning, and why preparing for a post-quantum world is becoming essential for protecting sensitive data, intellectual property, and national security interests.

ServiceNow Acquires Pyramid Analytics to Close the Insight-to-Action Gap

PUBLISHED: Thu, 26 Feb 2026 22:37:30 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

ServiceNow has agreed to acquire Pyramid Analytics, a decision intelligence platform that unifies data preparation, business analytics, and data science in a single environment. The acquisition targets a persistent gap in enterprise workflows: the disconnect between analytical insight and operational action. By embedding Pyramid’s capabilities into its platform, ServiceNow enables users to move from asking questions to triggering workflows without switching tools.

This is the research summary for EMA’s recent report, “DDI Directions 2026: Preparing Core Network Services for an Agentic, Multi-Cloud World.”

This research report explores how enterprises implement and operate solutions for DNS, DHCP, and IP address management (DDI), the core network-addressing technologies that IT organizations depend on for efficient, secure, and resilient network communications. Based on a survey of 300 IT professionals, this report identified DDI best practices and key challenges.

AI is Making “As-Code” Inevitable

PUBLISHED: Wed, 25 Feb 2026 19:49:43 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping how organizations build, manage, and govern data and analytics systems. While no-code and self-service platforms once promised democratization, many enterprises discovered that ease of use often came at the cost of governance, consistency, and trust.

Today, AI is changing the equation. As large language models generate and reason about code, “as-code” architectures — once limited to highly technical teams — are becoming the foundation for scalable, auditable, and AI-ready operations.

In this blog, EMA Research Director Herb Blecher explores why AI is accelerating the shift toward declarative, version-controlled systems across the modern data stack, from transformation and observability to analytics and orchestration. Readers will learn how AI agents interact with structured environments, why text-based systems are inherently more compatible with AI, and how organizations can balance self-service usability with the governance required for trusted automation.

Lightrun has announced what it describes as the industry’s first AI Site Reliability Engineering (AI SRE) capability built on live, in-line runtime context. The platform enables engineering and operations teams to expose deeper execution-level signals directly within running systems, allowing investigation, hypothesis testing, and remediation validation without redeployments or permanent instrumentation changes. Rather than relying solely on static telemetry or pre-instrumented observability data, Lightrun’s approach allows teams to dynamically increase runtime visibility when deeper understanding is required and then return systems to their optimized operational state. While positioned within the emerging AI SRE category, the announcement reflects a broader shift in how organizations manage the longstanding trade-off between operational efficiency and semantic depth in software systems.

Cybersecurity Awesomeness Podcast – Episode 146: Demystify Quantum Computing

PUBLISHED: Fri, 20 Feb 2026 20:56:34 +0000

AUTHOR: Raleigh Gould

In this episode of the Cybersecurity Awesomeness Podcast from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), cybersecurity experts Chris Steffen and Ken Buckler explain how quantum computers differ from traditional systems, what qubits are, and why post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is rapidly becoming a priority for enterprises, governments, and financial institutions. They explore how advances from major technology players such as Google signal accelerating progress and why organizations must prepare now for the potential disruption quantum computing could bring to modern encryption.

The discussion covers the “harvest now, decrypt later” threat, the concept of “Q-Day,” and what security leaders should be thinking about today to protect sensitive data in a post-quantum world.

Whether you’re a security practitioner, IT leader, or technology strategist, this episode delivers a clear, practical introduction to one of cybersecurity’s most transformative emerging challenges.

The current hype about AI has left many enterprise automation leaders feeling anxious about how they will integrate these rapidly evolving AI solutions whilemaintaining reliability and resilience. Hosts Dan Twing and Tom O'Rourke recommend taking a pause to recognize that there are more similarities than differences with past waves of integrations of new technologies into automation platforms. These integrations succeeded by following proven change management practices: start with small pilots, iterate based on learnings, collaboration with stakeholders, and maintaining production discipline.

WAN Transformation 2026: Best Practices for Evolving from SD-WAN to SASE

PUBLISHED: Thu, 19 Feb 2026 16:31:48 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

The enterprise networking landscape is currently undergoing its most significant architectural shift since the inception of the internet. For years, the industry operated under a clear division of labor: networking teams focused on the “plumbing” of connectivity and bandwidth, while security teams built defensive perimeters around centralized data centers. Today, that bifurcated model has been rendered obsolete by the dual forces of cloud ubiquity and a fundamentally distributed workforce.

Vendor to Watch: Zenarmor

PUBLISHED: Thu, 19 Feb 2026 16:13:37 +0000

AUTHOR: Nicole Godek

Zenarmor offers a unique secure access service edge (SASE) solution that maximizes performance and flexibility through an efficient network architecture.

How can we help you?Get in touch with us

How can we help you?
Get in touch with us