Salesforce’s “Simplification” Playbook: The Uninvited Bundle and the Real Math Behind Core, Advanced, and Max
Salesforce has officially launched a major overhaul of its CRM editions, renaming and repackaging its flagship Sales and Service portfolios into Core, Advanced, and Max. The marketing narrative is standard enterprise SaaS fare: a cleaner catalog, all-in-one AI bundles, and claims of delivering "up to 70% more value". In enterprise procurement, however, when a vendor like Salesforce announces it has "simplified" its packaging, it usually means your bill is about to get more expensive. Maybe not now, but certainly in the near future. If we go back Salesforce's retiring of Performance Edition (what effectively became the now retired Unlimited ...
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The Cybersecurity Superplatform Land Grab What Palo Alto Networks’ Reported Interest in Datadog and Okta Could Mean for Enterprise Buyers
What Palo Alto Networks’ Reported Interest in Datadog and Okta Could Mean for Enterprise Buyers A recent report from The Information revealed that Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora explored potential acquisitions of Datadog and Okta. There is no confirmed or pending transaction involving either company, and the reported discussions may never produce one. Still, the names themselves are noteworthy. Datadog is a major observability platform, while Okta is one of the most recognizable identity and access management providers. Either would extend Palo Alto Networks much further into the daily operations of enterprise technology. The broader ...
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How You Can Tame AI-Driven IT Spend Before It Eats the Entire 2026 Budget
Artificial Intelligence was supposed to make businesses more efficient. Instead, for many executives, it currently resembles a very intelligent toddler with access to the corporate credit card. AI initiatives are exploding across enterprises in 2026. Boards want AI. Business units want AI. Vendors definitely want AI. Everyone has a “transformational” roadmap, a usage-based pricing model, and an urgent recommendation that you scale immediately. What nobody seems eager to discuss is the invoice. Across the market, organizations are running into a new reality: AI-driven IT spend is becoming wildly unpredictable. Consumption-based pricing for ...
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The Q2 Mid-Year Renewal Window: Leverage Most Companies Miss
Every year around this time, something very predictable happens in the enterprise software market. A large number of the biggest technology vendors all approach key financial deadlines at roughly the same time. Fiscal year-end, half-year close, quarter pressure, it all converges in late spring and early summer. For companies with renewals coming up, this creates a window of opportunity that is often overlooked. Why This Moment Matters Many of the largest software providers are heading into critical reporting periods right now. Fiscal Year End (FYE): Microsoft, June 30: Microsoft tends to push hard on E5 and AI attach (Copilot) at year-end, ...
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2026 IT Budget Surge: Turning 10%+ Increases into ROI vs a Vendor Windfall
The 2026 IT Budget Surge: How to Turn 10%+ Increases into Measurable ROI, Not Vendor Windfalls The consensus with most analyst firms, is that worldwide IT spending is projected to reach $6.15 trillion in 2026, up 10%+ year over year, driven by an 80.8% surge in AI-related spending, a 31.7% jump in data center systems, and acceleration in software spend - projected to grow by over 14% driven by data analytics, cybersecurity, and integration of AI platforms into core business functions. At the enterprise level, 75% of CFOs expect tech budgets to rise, and 48% are planning increases of 10% or more. The largest allocations are going to IT, AI, ...
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The End-of-Year Advantage: How to Outsmart Suppliers as They Race to Close Their Fiscal Year
Pressure Season for Suppliers and Your Window of Opportunity As the calendar flips toward the end of the fiscal year for major technology suppliers, procurement teams are entering a critical, and often perilous, window. January fiscal year-end suppliers are pushing hard to “make the number,” and their account teams are laser-focused on closing deals that boost quarterly and annual performance metrics. That urgency can cut both ways. While suppliers will apply every sales pressure tactic in their playbook to close favorable deals for them, savvy buyers can use this moment to turn the tables and secure exceptional commercial outcomes, if they ...
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Fight Tableau’s SaaS Squeeze: A Customer Guide
At NET(net), we’ve spent decades exposing technology suppliers’ tactics—from over-selling to blatant coercion. But Tableau’s latest move under Salesforce is a new low: forcing customers to abandon millions worth of perpetual licenses for a costly SaaS trap. This isn’t business, it’s betrayal. Unfortunately, it echoes our earlier warnings as we revealed how suppliers devalue past investments and create artificial urgency to trap customers. The recent moves by Tableau, now under Salesforce’s umbrella, are a strong reminder of what’s at stake. Their aggressive push to force customers to abandon their perpetual license rights in favor of a ...
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Netsuite's Trojan Horse for Mid-Market Customers
NetSuite, a cloud-based ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, rose to prominence by offering businesses a unified platform for managing finances, inventory, customer relationships, and more. Acquired by Oracle in 2016, NetSuite has become a juggernaut in the Cloud-based ERP SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) space, praised for its scalability and functionality. However, beneath the surface lies a potential pitfall for businesses, especially those considering (or currently running) the seemingly cost-effective Mid-Market solution. NetSuite's pricing structure utilizes a tiered system (based on the number of licenses you purchase), with the ...
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Internal Developer Portals (IDPs): The Market & How You Can Save
We are diving into the market of IDPs… What are they? Why do we need it/them? How can we optimize what we spend on it? First, it's important to know the two variations of IDP acronyms, Internal Developer PLATFORMS and Internal Developer PORTALS. Since IDP is often co-mingled to mean both (or either) Internal Developer Platform or Internal Developer Portal, we’ll use an analogy to help describe the difference. Imagine a software development team as a well-oiled machine. The Internal Developer Platform (IDPf) is the engine room, providing the core functionality that powers everything. It houses all the essential tools – code repositories, ...
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Calling all Mid-Market Organizations Challenged with Reducing IT Spend, Learn How to Save on IT Like the F500 Do.
With recent announcements from Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, Coinbase, Twitter, and Meta (among others) indicating that there would be cuts to staffing in the coming weeks and months, it’s clear that the recession is in full force. As outlined in my previous blog, we discouraged organizations from making drastic changes to the muscle (the workforce) and bone (the facilities) of their organizations. Yet, many of the big-tech powerhouses (like the ones mentioned above) have been announcing job cuts to curb recessionary pressures. Cutting costs and managing value through downturns can be a far tougher challenge for SME’s than their large ...
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