We have just taken the wraps off our comprehensive analysis of the Top 10 technology providers in each of the four pillars of the Acceleration Economy: AI/hyperautomation, cloud, cybersecurity, and data modernization.
Three of those four categories of tech leaders (AI/hyperautomation, cybersecurity, and data modernization) are newly created and reflect the real-world insights of our team of practitioner analysts in these critical categories. The lists build upon a long-standing ranking of the largest and most influential cloud category vendors — The Cloud Wars Top 10 — by Cloud Wars founder and Acceleration Economy co-founder Bob Evans.
In all three categories, the selections were led by Evans, Acceleration Economy co-founder John Siefert, founding analyst Aaron Back, and myself, in collaboration with our practitioner analysts noted by category below.
It’s important to understand why we’ve created the lists, and how you as a business or tech decision-maker benefit from the in-depth analysis of the companies in each category that you can expect throughout 2023.
Each of the 10 companies newly minted in the AI/hyperautomation, cybersecurity, and data modernization categories share common traits that have the potential to help you grow your business today:
- Innovative mindset that addresses business challenges in a new way
- Customer-centric product development rooted in helping you solve the business challenges you’re facing today
- Results-oriented approaches — performance metrics, customer engagement, revenue growth — to help you dazzle your customers
- Financial strength. The companies range from late-stage startups to publicly held companies but in all cases, they have the financial wherewithal to weather storms – an important consideration in today’s turbulent economic environment. As a prospective customer, you don’t need to worry about the durability of these companies
How should you use these lists? Because they have been created by your practitioner peers, you should view them as pre-vetted suppliers worthy of serious consideration as you execute your business strategy, and identify the technology platforms that support it, in 2023.
Our team has put these companies through the paces — in many cases on a hands-on basis — so you can have confidence they belong on any shortlist that you’d develop. That’s not to say every one of them will be right for your specific use case, industry, or business function, but our analysts have concluded that they merit your investment of time to evaluate them against the specifics of your business.
It’s important to understand the difference between these lists and the longstanding Cloud Wars Top 10 providers. The Cloud Wars Top 10 companies typically play across many categories; they have massive footprints, customer bases, and market capitalization.
Using Microsoft, number 1 on the Cloud Wars Top 10, as an example, it’s prominent in hyperautomation, cybersecurity, and data modernization categories. But it’s not on these new lists because of its broad swath of products — and because it already holds a place on the Cloud Wars Top 10. Our new top 10s have a primary focus in each of the categories they’re a part of.
AI/Hyperautomation
Our Top 10 list of AI and Hyperautomation Impact Enablers includes software suppliers that range from developers of robotic process automation (RPA) (UiPath and Automation Anywhere are two examples) to process mining and execution management (Celonis) to highly focused developers of AI tools (C3 AI, Dataiku) to analytics providers (SAS).
The category represents an expansion from its original roots in RPA and analytics to a much broader focus. The companies on the list have proven track records of bringing automation in its many forms to bear so that customers run their businesses more efficiently and capitalize on growth opportunities. And they’ve got the customer references to support their placement on this list.
In many cases, we’ve analyzed these companies extensively and provided an ongoing flow of insights to our audience. In some other cases, they are newly added to our coverage.
The hyperautomation practitioners involved in selection of our artificial intelligence (AI) and hyperautomation list are Ronak Mathur, Toni Witt, and Kenny Mullican.
Cybersecurity
Acceleration Economy’s Top 10 list of Cybersecurity Business Enablers similarly compete in a range of product categories that range from software supply chain security (ChainGuard) to open source governance (Endor Labs) to ransomware protection (HYCU), and endpoint-to-cloud security (Lookout).
According to Chris Hughes, one of our three CISOs and analysts who led the selection of these 10 companies, they are employing AI, automation, and cloud technology to drive down risk while attacking age-old security problems or using the most modern technology to attack the up-and-coming security problems that CISOs must grapple with. As such, the list strikes an important balance between systems that guard against problems that will never go away, as well as problems that crop up newly or unexpectedly.
As with our other lists, this includes companies that we’ve focused on previously (Lookout, HYCU), as well as companies that our practitioners have experience with, but that experience will be delivered to readers for the first time (and on an ongoing basis) through this initiative. In addition to Chris Hughes, the CISO practitioners who developed our list are Robert Wood, Frank Domizio, and CIO Kenny Mullican.
Data Modernization
Our Data Modernization Enabler Top 10 list includes companies that align into four categories: databases (Couchbase, SingleStore), analytics (Teradata and Qlik), governance and extract, transform, load or ETL (Informatica), and security (Rubrik).
CIO and analyst Wayne Sadin worked with our team to develop this list along with Joanna Martinez, Tony Uphoff, Scott Vaughan, Pablo Moreno, and Chief Data Officer John Muehling.
Sadin noted that all these companies, regardless of which subset of the data modernization field they compete in, are building cool, innovative technology that’s helping their customers use data as a competitive weapon.
Closing Thoughts
Data, and technology, as competitive weapon is a perfect way to summarize all the companies on our Top 10 lists. Whether it’s hyperautomation, cybersecurity, or data modernization, these companies have developed technology that drives business outcomes and gives you competitive weapons to create new revenue streams and grow your business. That’s technology leadership.
If you are interested in discussing our evaluations and choices, feel free to reach out to me.
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