With Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware in 2023, the new VMware by Broadcom has undergone an overall program of merger and reorganization, which in turn has led to a restructuring and consolidation of many of the most prominent and popular VMware product offerings. As a result of some of these changes, many customers are seeing significant cost increases at both purchase and renewal for VMware products, with new more expensive subscription bundles replacing common perpetual software licenses. These changes have caused much consternation and concern for customers, with even Broadcom CEO Hock Tan acknowledging and referenced these post-merger;  “We overhauled our software portfolio, our go-to-market approach and the overall organizational structure. We’ve changed how and through whom we will sell our software. And we’ve completed the software business-model transition that began to accelerate in 2019, from selling perpetual software to subscription licensing only – the industry standard.  Of course, we recognize that this level of change has understandably created some unease among our customers and partners. But all of these moves have been with the goals of innovating faster, meeting our customers’ needs more effectively, and making it easier to do business with us. We also expect these changes to provide greater profitability and improved market opportunities for our partners.”  What is this means for customers  VMware by Broadcom has recently made significant changes which includes the end of sale of perpetual licenses, change of license metrics and announcement of new product bundles.  End of Sale of Perpetual Licenses  Where customers have not already transitioned to Subscription licenses, Broadcom by VMware is mandating subscription transitions at renewals and purchase, with the majority of Perpetual Licenses removed from General Availability. For many customers this shift to subscription increases annual costs with subscription licenses generally being more expensive than equivalent perpetual support and maintenance.  Changes of License Metric  In 2020 VMware amended license metrics for many of its most popular products from per CPU to Per Core, with an entitlement of 32 cores per CPU license/subscription. In 2023 VMware shifted this entitlement to 16 cores per CPU subscription, which for many customers with high core counts effectively doubles their license requirements, thus resulting in further purchasing and increased costs. Furthermore in 2024 with the introduction of the new Subscription bundles, VMware by Broadcom moved to per core licensing overall.  New Product Announcements   Upon completing the acquisition, VMware by Broadcom moved quickly to consolidate and “simplify” their product offerings, effectively bundling many popular products into a small number of distinct combined product offerings whilst discontinuing individual sales of individual products. Below is the feature comparison of these new offerings:  The key challenge for buyers is that it severely limits flexibility in terms of product choice. As an example, a customer previously purchasing vSphere Enterprise and vCenter Server, at renewal will no longer be able to purchase those licenses individually, instead now having to purchase subscriptions to VMware Cloud Foundation or VMware vSphere Foundation, thus having to purchase the likes of Tanzu and vSAN, regardless of whether that customer requires these products. These bundles come at an increased cost above the previous individual subscription costs, reflecting the extra value they give customers, however are unavoidable for customers regardless of their need or requirement.  Divestment of VMware Products  Further to Broadcom’s acquisition, in February 2024 Broadcom agreed to divest VMware’s End User Computing decision to KKR, which has become a standalone company called Omnissa.  “Workspace ONE and Horizon are best-in-class platforms chosen by many of the world’s leading enterprises to create seamless and secure digital workspaces with interoperability across increasingly complicated technology stacks,” said Bradley Brown, Managing Director at KKR. “We see great potential to grow the EUC Division by empowering this talented team and investing in product innovation, delivering excellence for customers and building strategic partnerships.”  As a standalone company, the EUC Division will continue to be run by its existing management team led by Shankar Iyer”  For some EUC customers, this may dilute the overall Broadcom investment into another company, potentially resulting in lower Broadcom discounts, and therefore, not only extra costs for remaining VMware investments but also for those divested EUC products.  Longer Term Deals  In addition to these changes, we note that Broadcom are incentivizing longer term deals, offering the most optimal pricing for customers considering 3–5 year terms. Where customers opt for short term renewals, pricing per unit is often much higher, effectively disincentivizing these options and limiting short term extensions.  Quotation Delays  As might be expected with such wide-reaching changes to commercials and business structure, customers are reporting that renewal quotations are taking longer than expected to be provided, which in turn gives less time to review and negotiate.   Reseller Restructures  Along with changes to commercial offerings, Broadcom have restructured their channel sales and resellers. For larger companies, Broadcom has chosen to take these accounts direct, which means customers may no longer have the support of their reseller in ascertaining requirements and facilitating negotiations. Negotiating direct can be very different to via a reseller and may require more preparation and potentially leveraging other Broadcom interests, interactions and investments.  What might the cost impact be?  Whilst every customer scenario is different, overall we see that large cost increases are inevitable and indeed crucial to VMware by Broadcom’s growth strategy. Customers exiting and renewing long-term deals may see compounded impact from multiple changes that have as yet not affected them whilst in contract. In real terms customers may see cost increases anywhere from 100% to potentially as high as 800% at renewal    Predominantly the transition to new bundled products is impacting customer costs the most, however these extra bundled entitlements equally bring extra added value which may be beneficial to customers and potentially give opportunity for replacing incumbent products and costs in the technology estate, or optimizing current VMware by Broadcom deployments and operations.  What should customers do?  Act now to understand potential impact and risk, potentially modelling future cost scenarios to drive visibility internally and gain traction for strategy review

Chaque année, l’équipe de recherche de Forrester se réunit pour revoir les prévisions que nous avons faites l’automne précédent. C’est, bien sûr, une joie de voir ce que nous avions vu juste. Mais lorsqu’on prend des décisions aussi audacieuses que celles que nous prenons chaque année, il arrive inévitablement que l’on rate quelque chose. Alors que nous nous préparons à lancer nos prévisions pour 2025 (inscrivez-vous ici pour être alerté(e) dès qu’elles seront disponibles), voici un aperçu de la façon dont certaines de nos dernières prévisions se sont concrétisées. Les succès La prévision : Une action en justice concernant la protection de la vie privée frappera un grand fournisseur de données. La réalité : Cette prévision a fait mouche, car ce n’est pas une, mais deux grandes entreprises qui ont récemment réglé des litiges liés à l’échange d’informations personnelles avec d’autres sociétés. Tout d’abord, ZoomInfo a accepté de payer près de 30 millions de dollars pour mettre fin à des poursuites judiciaires qui l’accusaient d’avoir utilisé les noms et les informations professionnelles de personnes sans leur consentement pour promouvoir son service d’abonnement. Peu après, Oracle a accepté de payer 115 millions de dollars pour mettre fin aux accusations de création de « dossiers numériques » à partir d’informations personnelles et de leur vente à des marketers. Avant cette année, les entreprises B2B n’avaient pas été la cible de litiges en matière de protection de la vie privée ou de mesures réglementaires du type de celles prises à l’encontre des marques grand public. Mais comme de plus en plus de fournisseurs de données B2B se concentrent sur le ciblage des individus et non plus sur les données géographiques de l’entreprise, les risques augmentent. La prévision : 60 % des employés recevront une formation à l’ingénierie de l’IA. La réalité : Dans notre enquête Digital Workplace and Employee Technology Survey, 2024 , 61 % des travailleurs de l’information au niveau mondial ont indiqué avoir suivi un certain degré de formation sur la manière d’utiliser l’IA dans le cadre de leur travail, tandis que 68 % ont indiqué connaître l’ingénierie rapide et la manière de l’utiliser. L’ingénierie rapide étant la clé qui permet d’exploiter les avantages de l’IA générative (genAI), nous avons été heureux de voir cette prévision se concrétiser. La prévision : Le nombre de consommateurs éco-engagés restera constant malgré le chaos climatique et les oppositions.  La réalité : Malgré les preuves d’une augmentation des catastrophes liées au climat et le désir de nombreux consommateurs d’agir de manière durable, nous avons prédit que l’inflation et le coût de la vie influenceraient fortement les décisions d’achat. De nouvelles données de Forrester le confirment, montrant que la part des consommateurs « éco-engagés » – ceux qui prêtent une attention particulière à l’impact des entreprises sur l’environnement et choisissent massivement des produits écologiques plutôt que des options moins chères ou plus pratiques – est restée relativement stable (elle a diminué de 1 à 2 points de pourcentage dans les marchés que nous avons sondés).  Bien que les éco-engagés actifs représentent un segment relativement petit – moins d’un consommateur sur cinq appartient à cette catégorie – notre conseil aux entreprises est de reconnaître la dissonance cognitive que beaucoup ressentent lors de leurs achats. C’est le moment d’innover pour offrir plus de valeur environnementale au même prix, en particulier à mesure que les jeunes consommateurs soucieux de l’environnement gagnent en pouvoir d’achat. Les ratés  La prévision : Les initiatives d’entreprise en matière d’IA augmenteront la productivité et la résolution créative de problèmes de 50 %. La réalité : Nous avons laissé notre optimisme à l’égard de l’IA obscurcir notre jugement sur ce point. Bien que certains processus et certaines équipes tirent profit des applications alimentées par l’IA, son impact est loin d’atteindre les 50 % à l’heure actuelle. Nous croyons fermement que l’IA, et en particulier la genAI, va changer la donne – et l’idée que les gens utiliseraient ces outils pour libérer l’espace mental et la créativité n’était pas fausse. Mais le changement à l’échelle que nous avions prédit prendra plus de temps à se mettre en place. La prévision : Les titans des médias feront de la publicité dans les jeux vidéo le canal médiatique à la croissance la plus rapide. La réalité : L’acquisition d’Activation Blizzard par Microsoft l’année dernière et la rumeur d’acquisition de Take-Two par Sony n’ont pas fait exploser la publicité dans les jeux vidéo comme nous l’avions prévu. Malgré la popularité toujours aussi grande des jeux vidéo, les dépenses consacrées à la publicité dans ceux-ci ont en fait diminué en 2024 et représentent aujourd’hui moins de 3 % des dépenses de publicité numérique. Les inquiétudes concernant la facilité d’achat et de planification des publicités dans les jeux ont freiné les annonceurs jusqu’à présent. Le jury n’a pas encore rendu son verdict La prévision : La GenAI fournira des informations qui dicteront le lancement d’un nouveau produit B2B sur cinq. La réalité : Nous nous attendions à ce que les équipes produits utilisent la genAI pour l’idéation et l’innovation, car elle peut les aider à passer rapidement au crible les données clients pour en tirer des enseignements. C’est ce qui semble se produire : Un quart des décideurs en gestion de produits que nous avons récemment interrogés ont déclaré que leur organisation utilisait l’IA générative pour identifier des opportunités de produits. Nous ne pouvons cependant pas affirmer avec certitude que la genAI dicte les lancements de produits à l’heure actuelle, mais les conversations avec nos clients suggèrent que l’élan est en train de prendre cette direction. Que nous réserve l’année 2025 ? Restez à l’écoute pour connaître nos prévisions pour l’année à venir, qui porteront sur des sujets tels que l’automatisation, l’avenir du travail, l’expérience client, les acheteurs d’entreprise et bien d’autres encore. (Si vous êtes client Forrester, consultez nos rapports récemment publiés sur l’intelligence artificielle et les prévisions en matière de leadership technologique). Nous sommes impatients de lancer et de publier ces annonces audacieuses chaque année pour vous aider à

Turns Out … Sales Content And Sales Readiness Are Better Together For the first time, Forrester has published an evaluation of the combined space comprising sales content management and sales readiness (learning and development) capabilities. We call this new category “revenue enablement platforms,” or REPs. Content and readiness have been on a convergence course since the flurry of acquisitions in 2021. This acquisition spree saw legacy providers on each side either scooping up readiness or content platforms or announcing plans to develop the missing capabilities from scratch. Fast-forward to 2024, and we see that the Venn diagram is now a circle — readiness providers have developed content management capabilities, and content platforms now offer readiness features. In August 2024, we published The Forrester Wave™: Revenue Enablement Platforms, Q3 2024, looking at the 12 most significant vendors and how they stack up across 32 criteria. The Wave evaluation emphasizes synergies from combining content and readiness capabilities into a single platform with unified management and reporting. We were looking for a demonstration of how “1 + 1 = 3,” and for the most part, the vendors delivered: They showcase enablement dashboards that highlight how content and training efforts affect sales results and recommend improvements to training and content programs based on program effectiveness. To evaluate the revenue enablement platform vendors, we used three primary sources: responses to a detailed questionnaire, a live product demo, and an in-depth survey of the vendors’ reference customers. The Wave evaluation details the scores and strengths and weaknesses of each vendor. Here are our key findings and the trends that we identified for the REP market. Our Three Key Findings: Effectiveness, AI, And Service Are The Magic Ingredients Vendors are focused on enablement effectiveness, not just tactics. Far more than ever before, vendors are delivering metrics, reporting, and dashboards that allow enablement teams to understand their impact on the business. With CRM integrations, REP vendors can correlate enablement activities in content and learning to real-world sales results. This is an important milestone, representing some of the first legitimate attempts to field a comprehensive enablement dashboard that measures the impact of behavior-change initiatives — something that has been notoriously difficult to assess. The developments could potentially have broader impacts on other departments that also value competency development. AI is already integrated throughout enablement platforms. Vendors are using AI to streamline and improve enablement on multiple fronts: generative AI to create and optimize content and learning pathways, AI-guided pitch practice for sellers, AI-based pitch scoring, AI dubbing and transcription to engage multilingual audiences, and AI creation of quizzes and learning checkpoints. Vendors will continue innovating with AI in pursuit of better productivity and learning, but it remains to be seen how popular the innovation will be with customers. Service still really matters. In our October 2023 evaluation of the sales readiness solutions vendor market and our November 2022 evaluation of the sales content solutions market, we called out the exceptional customer service provided by some of the vendors that was recognized by their clients. We also called out some areas where customer service was lacking. This year, clients again raved about the service from the support teams of most vendors. The ability of support teams to quickly resolve implementation and development issues drives noticeable gratitude and loyalty. Again … revenue enablement platform vendors … you’re probably not paying your CSMs enough! What’s Next? Vendors are continuing along this new path of innovating in a combined readiness-content environment, and their development roadmaps promise exciting new capabilities. Their success hinges on their customers’ appetite to digest the changes as quickly as vendors deliver innovation. We expect big advances in generative AI, integrated content and readiness functionality, and more insightful reporting about the intersection of content, learning, and real-world results. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More The AI Platform Alliance announced today the expansion of its consortium aimed at combining the key chips and hardware required to operate a modern AI compute service with more open, economical and sustainable solutions. Formed last year at the Open Compute Conference, the group was initially comprised of AI accelerator companies, or companies that make chips for accelerating AI software. The alliance has now expanded to include cloud managed service providers, system suppliers and integrators, and software companies, reflecting a maturing ecosystem for the most demanding AI inference use cases. The evolving alliance ecosystem has focused on providing practical and easily adoptable solutions through a new marketplace now available on the AI Platform Alliance website. The solutions offered by alliance members increase both the power and cost efficiency of AI inference while delivering better overall performance than more commonly seen solutions featuring GPUs today. New companies joining the AI Platform Alliance include Adlink, ASRock Rack, ASA Computers, Canonical, Clairo.ai, Deepgram, DeepX, ECS/Equus, Giga Computing (Gigabyte), Kamiwaza.ai, Lampi.ai, Netint, NextComputing, opsZero, Positron, Prov.net/Alpha3, Responsible Compute, Supermicro, Untether, View IO and Wallaroo.ai. These companies join founding members that included Ampere Computing, Cerebras Systems, Furiosa, Graphcore, Kalray, Kinara, Luminous, Neuchips, Rebellions and Sapeon. The members include more than 30 organizations spanning five key sectors of the industry supplying products and services to the burgeoning AI inference industry. The AI Platform Alliance was formed specifically to promote better collaboration and openness when it comes to AI. This solidarity of vision comes at a pivotal moment not just for the technology industry, but for the world at large. The explosion of AI has created unprecedented demand for compute power to not only run AI algorithms, but also to pull together all the systems, applications and services required to implement a modern AI-0 enabled digital service. While solutions to date have mainly addressed AI training of ever more powerful models, AI inference can require up to 10 times more traditional compute support processes to run a complex AI-enabled service. These stacks require an ecosystem of technology, services, and applications working together seamlessly to integrate best in class ingredients and easy to adopt recipes to scale AI inference use cases. AI Platform Alliance members will work together to validate joint AI solutions that provide a diverse set of alternatives to vertically oriented GPU-based status quo platforms. By developing these solutions as a community, this group will accelerate the pace of AI innovation while making AI platforms more open and transparent, increasing the capacity of AI to solve real-world problems, accelerating the rate of practical adoption, and delivering environmentally friendly and socially responsible infrastructure at scale. Various members of the AI Platform Alliance are expected to showcase solutions at Yotta 2024 in Las Vegas October 7 to October 9. The AI Platform Alliance is open today to potential new members looking to change the AI status quo. Companies interested in joining can access more information and apply here. source

Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is and What It Should Be • By Diane Coyle • Princeton University Press • 257 pages • ISBN: 978-0-691-21059-9 • $24.95 / £20    A couple of weeks ago, Jack Monroe set off a storm in the UK by detailing the three-digit inflation that applies to the basic food ranges poor people depend on. Within a fortnight, the Office of National Statistics was redesigning how it calculates inflation across the UK and Asda had restored its basic range to the shelves.  Monroe’s exercise in practical economics is a good example of one of the complaints Cambridge economist Diane Coyle makes in Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be: the false belief that the profession is neutral and objective. As Coyle writes, the choice and design of the index that underlies how we calculate benefits payments ensures that there will be winners and losers. The choice, therefore, cannot be values-neutral. Cogs and Monsters is a personal journey through economics, based on a series of lectures with interspersed anecdotes. Coyle, who has worked as a journalist, regulator, consultant, and academic, has watched the digital economy increase inequality since 1994, exacerbated by the 2008-2009 financial crisis. For that reason, her work is of particular interest here.  Coyle has more criticisms: economics lacks diversity to an extraordinary degree, and its decades-long focus on ‘efficiency’ is unsuited to the modern economy. It is particularly unsuited to the digital economy, which is full of externalities and network effects. What you don’t measure — quality of life, technical debt, the loss of social infrastructure as a result of austerity — remains invisible. SEE: What is digital transformation? Everything you need to know about how technology is reshaping business As a result, we still use labour statistics that don’t capture the shift to the gig economy, social change, or innovation. Some policy options are lost entirely, such as regulations to solve coordination problems where no single actor dares to embrace change until everyone does. This has particular value in the digital economy, where open standards have created huge new markets. And we remain unable to answer key questions, like how we can make society better as a whole, and how we can tell if we’ve done it — questions that are gaining urgency as AI begins to infest decision making. Coyle concludes with a discussion of the challenges presented by the digital economy. These include the scale and leverage that today’s giant technology platforms derive from their huge collections of data, and the way the infrastructure they’ve built can help to gain control over wholly different market sectors in ways that require change to competition law. The method of assessing consumer welfare popular in recent decades relied on price, which means nothing in today’s world of pay-with-data services, as new FTC chair Lina Khan made her name observing.  The crucial open question Coyle is currently working on is how to value data. At the 2021 ODI Summit, she rejected the comparison to oil and suggested using air as an alternative analogy to understand the value everyone derives from data when it’s seen as a public good rather than a commodity. At a 2018 event, she asked this provocative question: “Does data age like fish — or like wine?” The answer to that is still a work in progress. RECENT AND RELATED CONTENT What the metaverse means for you and your customers Global research: 3 out of 4 professionals do not feel ready to work in a digital-first world China wants in on digital economy pact, pledges global collaboration Here are 8 steps to create a customer-unified, resilient company in a hybrid work market Tech jobs are booming: Here’s what employers are looking for Read more book reviews source

Once again, Aarron Spinley SVP of the newly acquired Thunderhead (by Medallia), provides the kind of thought leadership that has some real meaning. He’s a paradigm for executives on how to be an internal thought leader who has an external impact. This piece is particularly germane since we are all at the stage of deciding whether the metaverse is nothing more than a. Facebook trying to save its own butt or b. the latest fast riser in the hype cycle (Remember Clubhouse?) or c. has some real substance that has to be accounted for in corporate/business planning in multiple ways? Me? I’m sticking to the DC Comics Multiverse. There, all the alternate universes have been fully resolved into a single universe. There’s something to be said for that.  Take it away, Aarron. Four Key Principles for Executives and Marketers  A lot of people who are watching the arrival of new terms like web3 and the metaverse have realised that this suggests yet another shift. Maybe even a big one.  But like many things in life, it is not the thing itself, but the effects of the thing that we should focus on. That, and the repeatable, and sustainable, management of the thing. Once we understand that, anxiety fades. So, it is useful to understand that the metaverse is a bit like the second coming of technological capabilities that we have long recognised. In essence, it is the convergence of things like artificial reality and virtual reality to, perhaps finally, realise the intersection of the physical and digital realms that “Industry 4.0” inherently promised. Why is the metaverse only just now emerging? Because other enabling technologies – better cloud computing, broadband access, virtual currencies, collaboration tools et al – weren’t ready when metaverse-related tech first arrived.  In short, the Metaverse represents the start of the shift from a 2D internet world, to a 3D one. Or so the marketing slogan goes. But while it is something old, it is also something new. Underestimate it at your peril. Most are expecting it to spawn whole new industries, to revolutionise commerce, the “creator economy” and, of course, the very nature of communication and collaboration both personally, and professionally. Ergo: Marketers and other customer professionals will have an opportunity to think differently — at least in execution — about how to interact with customers in completely new ways. Although, thinking differently, has often proved a stretch too far in an industry that chows down on buzzwords and loves to follow the pack. Here’s an example. Instead of calling a contact centre for a phone conversation, you or your avatar for that matter might be sitting in a booth with the avatar of the service agent talking through your problem.  What are the ripple effects of that type of interaction? How would we consume that, relate to it, process it emotionally, or react to different stimuli within that context? There are a million use cases and ideas, but the really big question is this: How do we establish principles that allow us to harness the opportunities repeatably, and how do we do that safely? Hopefully, this helps. The Metaverse is a Service Layer Issue In my estimation, and depending on the category, the service layer accounts for over 90–98% of the interactions that any brand has with its customers. From the car park to the website, to the contact centre to the mobile app, and into a store experience (if you have one), these are all “services.”     That means if we know what we are doing, our goal for all of them is to be as low-friction as possible, and utterly unmemorable. Yes, I know. Our industry is infatuated with the word, “experience.” But most of the time, those using the term are referring to service interactions because, in truth, much of the industry has no clue what the difference is, and has co-opted the word ‘experience’ to mean, well, everything. So be it.  If you’re not clear on the demarcation between services and experiences, read this.  But to understand where the metaverse will really move the needle for brands, and how to think about it, the distinction is important.   Aarron Spinley’s” Engagement Stack” Now, there is a multitude of exotic ideas for brand activations and the like using the metaverse. These are clearly experiences. Equally, we should expect that some services when delivered through the metaverse will, for a short time, be also very experiential (memorable) in nature due to the novelty factor. But as the metaverse normalises this won’t sustain. So most opportunities for your company, simply because of the way an engagement stack works (see above) will present themselves in the service layer. And that means that you have to get your head around 2 key things: Journeys, and Choice. Dictation is Dead The mistake so many companies make is to apply old ideas to new surroundings. Case in point, many make the critical error of using the populist but dated idea of journey mapping in today’s world. They may not know it, because “engagement-literacy” is so low, but it fails abysmally. And it will be a royal cluster you-know-what in the metaverse. As a technique, and even as an evolving toolkit, this was an important approach to better understand customers for a fair while. Although the more accurate summation of the practice, its real intention if you like, was always to dictate their resulting buying journey — not to understand their journey in of itself. In the main, this worked, until somewhere around 2010–2014, depending on your view.  You see, when journey mapping was popularised, it was off the back of work by Colin Shaw in 2002, who had originally coined it “moment mapping.” But in 2002 — a full twenty years ago as I write this — most brands were managing an average of just two or three channels.  What followed was the explosion of the Internet, mobile, cloud, social media, and device proliferation, such that by the close of 2019, we found ourselves dealing with up to 100 channels

European businesses, much like their global counterparts, are caught in a delicate dance, with CISOs coping with sector-specific vulnerabilities, a regulatory maze, and geopolitical complexity. Forrester’s report, European Cybersecurity Threats, 2024, offers European security leaders some much-needed clarity. Security Fundamentals Matter More Than Security Theater Technology and security professionals often find themselves captivated by the allure of the exotic, shiny technology toy. While exploring new innovations and attack mechanisms might seem to keep you ahead of the curve, don’t forget that true strength lies in a solid foundation. Most cyberattacks stem from neglecting the fundamentals. Patch management, endpoint detection and response, vulnerability scanning, and asset management are the cornerstones of any robust security effort, regardless of how alluring other “a la mode” topics may be. Security pros will see the following trends this year: Operational technology (OT) security needs to move from PowerPoint plans to implementation. European cyberthreats continue to evolve, with nation-state actors deploying advanced, persistent threats to infiltrate critical infrastructure, government networks, and private-sector systems. Critical sectors such as energy, telecommunications, healthcare, and defense are prime targets for cyber-espionage groups and need to level up their security, as “planning” for OT is not sufficient — you need to execute now, as threat actors have gone beyond “planning,” “roadmaps,” and “visioning sessions.” With the NIS2 Directive casting the net even further, regulators will also start asking difficult questions about OT security. Implementing threat hunting and leveling up contingency planning are required in order to get ahead. Cyberattacks are inevitable, and while it is important to have extensive detection capabilities, organizations also need to plan for system failures. As threat actors innovate and find new ways to evade detection systems, security leaders need to invest in threat hunting capabilities to proactively identify embedded actors and containment capabilities to minimize impact. European security leaders should test contingency plans to respond to regulatory demands for resilience and rapid recovery, given the rocket boosters provided by NIS2. Personal data theft has seen a resurgence. Incidents involving personal data theft increased in the last year within European organizations, consistent with global trends. A rise in exotic social engineering techniques such as deepfake audio means that it is only a matter of time before fine-tuned AI models designed to mimic specific individuals are applied to social engineering attacks. The data used to train these models will come from your organization if you do not secure personal data beyond compliance. Forrester provides practical guidance on how to deal with the threats introduced by emerging technology. The report goes into the threats that European security leaders face and how they can deftly address them today while anticipating the intrigues of tomorrow. Forrester clients can book a guidance session with one of us and can read the complete report here. source