Top 10 Technology Suppliers to Watch in 2021

Dexter Siglin
Mar. 12,2021 | Software SaaS

Working with our Clients during a time of heightened need has given us a unique perspective on the market with an ability to see the Industry in real time and in practical terms. 

Being ahead of the market has its advantages in that we can see the ‘up and comers’ emerging; those technology suppliers who are showing up in more Client accounts offering high value solutions with real world application and practical use cases.

In our first ever post of its kind, here is our list of the Top 10 Technology Suppliers to Watch in 2021:

One: Veeva

Category: Life Sciences Data Management
Location: Pleasanton, CA
By: Steve Zolman

Veeva Systems is the number one SaaS cloud-computing provider that is specifically specialized for the global life-sciences industry. With ever-evolving regulations, advancements in sciences, and market changes in biotech, Veeva is dedicated to staying atop the market in this rapidly growing industry, making them one to watch in 2021.

The business activity within the life sciences sector is much more active than most may realize; it encompasses managing health systems during times of crisis to research and development firms in addition to the breadth of biomedical and pharmaceutical operations across the globe. Veeva offers a suite of applications customizable across a wide spectrum of evolving use cases and now operates as a total source for cloud-based computing and management.

Veeva founder and CEO Peter Gassner oversees a workforce of 2,500 and runs a company whose total revenues for FY 2021 were $1.465M, up 33% Y/Y. Working alongside technology partners like AWS and Microsoft, as well as big pharma players such as Merck and Teva Pharmaceuticals, Veeva Systems is poised to remain a cloud fixture in life sciences.

Product Features

Delivered Quality Processes Robust Audit Trails
Configurable Forms and Workflows Dashboards and Reports
Application Integration Mobile Access
Intuitive Interface Supplier Access and Visibility

Pricing
As a cloud-based, multi-tenant SaaS vendor, Veeva can present flexible pricing options. Their standard model is user-based pricing. Veeva’s pricing method is straightforward and simple for customers to understand; as users are included, costs will increase.

The user-based pricing model is suitable for small deployments but becomes far less attractive at scale. Veeva does provide an enterprise license pricing method that is a single, annual subscription charge for the utilization of its application(s) and is governed by an enterprise metric (such as employees). And while this model ensures pricing is linked to an incremental unit of value, there are multiple metrics and options making it difficult for customers manage how costs correlate to value. Originally built on Salesforce.com’s Force platform, the Veeva platform has since been refactored, but the premium price has remained, which may partially explain Veeva’s massive profit margins.

Two: Splunk

Category: Data Analysis
Location: San Francisco, CA
Pricing & Capabilities: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/software/pricing.html
By: Tjeerd Edelman

Splunk is a market leader for software that uses log-file based analysis for IT system optimization software, risk analysis, fraud and threat detection, monitoring, and business-trend analysis (including User Behavior Analytics (UBA)). Designed first and foremost for machine data generated by IT infrastructure, Splunk Enterprise software includes a proprietary big-data repository, and analysis software powered by Splunk's SPL (Search Processing Language) for searching, filtering, and manipulating data. Splunk also provides security monitoring specific capabilities and offers drag-and-drop data visualizations and filters for non-technical business users.

Founded in 2003, San Francisco-based Splunk has become a force to be reckoned with in data analysis. With Splunk’s core “Data-to-Everything” platform, companies can parse their large, machine-generated data and turn it into actionable insights. Splunk offers real-time visibility, enhanced search/navigation, and advanced analytic reporting, promising to make information clear and useful.

Led by CEO Doug Merritt, Splunk has generated an enterprise value of over $30 billion with annual revenue surpassing $2 billion, up nearly 50% from the previous year.

Access from Anywhere Application Library
Collect and Index Data Correlate and Analyze
Enterprise Integration High Availability and Scalability
Monitoring and Alerts Open Development Platform
Search and Investigate Security and Administration
Splunk app for Stream Splunk DB Connect
Splunk for ODBC Data Visualizations & Reporting

Pricing
Splunk has a free version for a single user (up to 500MB of data per day). Beyond that, Splunk Enterprise Core pricing is based on the amount of data ingested and starts at $150/1 GB/month (billed annually), offers unlimited users, and includes standard support. Premium products pricing for Splunk Enterprise Security and Splunk UBA are on request.

 

Three: okta

Category: Identity Management
Location: San Francisco, CA
By: Scott Braden

Founded in 2009 by Todd McKinnon and Frederick Kerrest (both previously of Salesforce) Okta has over 100 million registered users and an impressive customer roster of 8400 customers (a 30% increase in this year alone).

Best known for their single-sign-on platform that allows users to log into multiple systems via one portal, Okta also offers an API authentication service (while maintaining over 7,000 pre-built integrations to other applications and services) and utilizes facial recognition and touch ID technologies in their cloud-based services to keep user data safe and secure.

Centralized IAM Zero Trust Security
Internal Security and Control Remote Security Enablement

With these features, Okta customers can benefit in a number of way, from adopting Office 365, to modernizing their infrastructure, to better enabling digital transformation.

Okta’s stock has risen 12% over the past month, recently hitting a 52-week high of $213.19. Okta anticipates a 32% revenue increase in 2021, putting projected revenues at $775 million. The company’s services are built using the Amazon Web Services cloud. Okta thrives in a very competitive market against the likes of IBM, Microsoft, OneLogin, Salesforce, and Oracle among others.

On March 3, 2021, Okta announced a deal to acquire Auth0, which sells a developer tool providing coders with easy API access to single-sign-on functionality. With just a couple of lines of code, the developer can deliver identity and access management tooling without having to build it themselves. Auth0 co-founder and CEO Eugenio Pace told TechCrunch’s Zack Whittacker, “Nobody cares about authentication, but everybody needs it.”

Pricing

Okta pricing varies between $2 and $6 per user per month, depending on service. Negotiated discounts can be obtained, depending on specifics and volumes, of more than 90% from the published list pricing.
https://www.okta.com/pricing/ 

 

Four: Veeam

Category: Data Management and Backup
Location: Baar, Switzerland
By: Fred Teekens

Headquartered in Baar, Switzerland, Veeam is a global leader in IT backup solutions, specializing in physical, cloud-based, and multi-cloud storage technologies. Veeam has grown from a backup and replication utility to a full suite of data protection solutions. Additionally, it offers fully-automatable restoration in case of emergency outage with its Availability Orchestrator. When disaster strikes, complex processes are automated and set into action while the business creates a plan to move forward. Veeam’s intelligent data management tools are simple, flexible, and most importantly reliable.

In 2020, Veeam was acquired by long-term investment partner Insight Partners at a valuation of $5 billion and is now poised to expand services from Europe into North American markets. The company, founded in 2006 by Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov, is helmed by CEO William Largent, whose experience includes previous executive roles in and out of the company. Before serving as EVP at Veeam, Largent oversaw Applied Innovation, Inc. Veeam’s software products are currently used by over 375,000 customers worldwide, including alliance partners like Amazon Web Services and Cisco Systems.

Veeam has a 100% Channel-Eco system, which means they only resell though their channel partners, amongst which they have exclusive resellers like HPE, NetApp, Cisco and Lenova. Veeam, is currently operating in over 30 countries. 

Product Features Veeam v11:

Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Expanded Instant Recovery
Reliable Ransomware Protection Veeam Powered Backup-aas & DR-aas
Amazon S3 Glacier and Azure Archive Google Cloud Storage Support

Pricing

  • Effective April 1st 2021, Veeam is scheduled to increase the pricing of their Perpetual and Subscription licensing by up to 6.7%.
  • The VCSP Rental pricing will increase up to 6% per point, Effective April usage (reported in May).
  • Veeam Sales will try and leverage this upcoming price increase for longer term commitments to lock in current March 2021 price levels.

Five: Akamai

Category: Cloud Computing
Location: Cambridge, MA
By: Philippe Anav

Born at MIT, Boston-based Akamai is a company that has taken cloud services and security to the next level, becoming one of the biggest players in content delivery network (CDN) systems transporting an estimated 25% of all web traffic. Simply put, if you have used the internet in the past two decades, Akamai has been your undercover chaperone.

In 2020, Akamai benefited from the pandemic as internet traffic and cyberattacks grew substantially. The company reported 2020 annual revenue of $3.19 billion, an 11% increase over 2019.

Akamai stands to gain from its last-mile cybersecurity offering and the emergence of 5G and IoT, but AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure also want to get closer to end users with their own edge platforms. There are also few disruptive upstarts such as Fastly, Moovweb XDN and CloudFlare among others.

Security products
Sites running on Akamai can defend data centers on all ports and protocols against complex attacks.

Pricing
Akamai’s pricing model is scalable; customers are billed on a pay-as-you-grow basis. While an excellent product, Akamai is expensive, and challenges related to migrating to alternative suppliers foster an elevated incumbent premium. Their core products such as Aqua ION and Kona Site Defender carry a base fee but then are billed on a per Mbps consumption basis as well, so costs can add up quickly. If your web traffic is growing, but your business is not producing additional revenue from this increased traffic, costs and value can easily get out of alignment.

Scope creep can also threaten to chip away a the value you expect to get, as with Akamai’s depth of services and astute sales team, they are quite capable and notorious for up-selling you once they get started. Akamai offers free security trials for prospects that would like to test out the CDO for 30 days but does not provide public pricing. In the market, we have seen prices as high as $3500 for 10TB.

Six: Qualtrics

Category: Experience Management
Location: Seattle, WA / Provo, UT
By: Dexter Siglin

Founded in 2002 (IPO January 2021), Qualtrics is an experience management and survey (XM) software company focused on improving four core areas of business interaction: customer, employee, brand, and product. Qualtrics splits its headquarters between Provo, Utah, and Seattle, Washington. With more than 2500 employees at offices stretching across the world, the company still expects to grow its workforce substantially. In 2019, Qualtrics was acquired by SAP for $8 billion, but then spun it off just 20 months later, opting to IPO the firm and remain its largest shareholder (outside of Founder, Ryan Smith). In their latest full year filing, Qualtrics reported a YoY revenue jump of 29% or $172.3M USD. Operating loss was $272M, but a dramatic improvement from prior years $994M loss.

Qualtrics’ customers include some of today’s most well-known brands, including BMW, Jet Blue, and Under Armour. Expanding beyond basic customer relationship management (CRM), Qualtrics’ XM platform measures experiential data across each metric, runs it through AI and machine-learning analytics, and provides actionable insights and tracks improvement, covering everything the client sees and interacts with, allowing for an enterprise to stay connected and informed. EmployeeXM provides utilities for tracking performance and incentivizing each team member. Product and Brand Experience tools enhance a company’s ability to create and market new ideas empowered by intelligent data, ensuring consistency and marketability. Qualtrics its solution as a single “System of Action.”

Product Features

Market Segmentation A/B Testing for Products/Experiences
Product Dev and Testing Research Panel Management
Competitive Benchmarking Ad Testing and Optimization
Purchase Behavior Tracking Respondents on Demand
Mobile Experience Optimization Research Services
Market & Industry Trend Tracking Brand Tracking
Conjoint Analysis Concept Testing

Pricing

Although Qualtrics does not publish pricing to the public, they do have entry level free subscriptions. These are primarily ‘teaser’ accounts that give you a base set of limited functionalities but does serve to give you a sense for how the platform can help you and what additional tools you may want to pay for. For standard pricing, you need to get a quote from them which will be based on several criteria around: number of users, features required, and overall size of your business. Free trial of the survey tools will get you a small set of outbound emails, questions, and response limits with access to a small set of reporting tools. Public information shows plans starting at $1,500 a year, up to $5,000 a year.

Seven: databricks

Category Data Analytics
Location San Francisco, CA
By: Mike Welsh

Founded in 2013 by the founders of Apache Spark, Databricks is a rapidly growing open-source distributed computing framework that provides clients with automated cluster management. They recently released a data lake analytics tool called Delta Engine, which they claim to be eight times faster than Apache Spark. In June of 2020, the company acquired Redash, which works with data scientists and analysts to build unique dashboards around their data for optimum visualization. Mozilla, Soundcloud, and Atlassian are all current customers of Redash.

Databricks AI is currently being used by Virgin Hyperloop to speed up its data processes as it works on building the next generation of travel while navigating the infrastructure and policies that go along with it. Databricks raised $1B in Series G on Feb 1, 2021, matching the previous $1 billion it has raised previously in rounds A-F.

Pricing

Like many of its peers, Databricks pricing resembles the pricing of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in that it is usage-based. Databricks main platform is metered by DBU or Databricks Unit hourly which is billed based upon usage per second. Pricing varies by edition and by service. Editions offered are Standard, Premium and Enterprise. The services are carved up based upon the nature of the compute which includes Jobs Compute, SQL Compute and All-Purpose Compute. The range for costs is almost 1000% so understanding requirements and anticipated use is critical.

Seven: (tie) Snowflake

Category: Cloud-Based Data Warehousing
Location: San Mateo, CA
By: Mike Welsh

Founded in 2012, Snowflake is a cloud data platform that provides a data warehouse-as-a-service designed for the cloud. Snowflake claims to enable fast, easy to use, and flexible data storage, processing, and analytic solutions. The Snowflake data platform is not built on any existing database technology or “big data” software platforms such as Hadoop.

Snowflake delivers the Data Cloud — a global network where thousands of organizations mobilize data with near-unlimited scale, concurrency, and performance. Inside the Data Cloud, organizations unite their siloed data, discover, and share governed data, and execute analytic workloads. Wherever data or users live, Snowflake delivers a single experience across multiple public clouds. Snowflake’s platform is the engine that powers and provides access to the Data Cloud, creating a solution for data warehousing, data lakes, data engineering, data science, data application development, and data sharing.

Pricing:

Like Databricks, Snowflake’s pricing also resembles Amazon Web Services (AWS) pricing. Any user of AWS or its ilk is aware that the unit prices are fairly low by traditional standards and are usage-based and metered but add up quickly as they are billed by the hour. Anyone who has used AWS knows that the costs mushroom quickly and Snowflake’s pricing is positioned to do the same.

Snowflake is priced based upon the edition and the number of credits. Credits are priced per hour based upon the edition: Standard ($2), Premier ($2.25), Enterprise ($3) and Business Critical ($4). Instances consume credits based on the instance size which ranges from X-Small to 4X-Large.

Credits Consumed per Hour

XS S M L XL 2XL 3XL 4XL
1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128

The range for costs of Snowflake is almost 26,000% so understanding requirements and anticipated use is critical.

Eight: iCIMS

Category: Talent Acquisition
Location: Holmdel, NJ
By: Andrea Alterman

When it began in 2000, iCIMS was Colin Day’s vision for an all-in-one talent searching software. Twenty years later, the company is a leading HR cloud recruitment platform serving more than 4000 companies worldwide. In the global marketplace of labor, applicant tracking systems are more important than ever, and iCIMS is a leader in the emerging field of marketing to talent.

Even cloud-based businesses cannot function without humans, which is why iCIMS offers a complete recruitment marketing software suite, providing businesses with the right tools to attract the perfect team members. Career pages and application systems are easily customized, ensuring high-quality candidate experiences. Additionally, enhanced communication and engagement keep talent pools from draining completely. The platform also eases the pains associated with furloughing and rehiring staff, a common problem during the pandemic economy.

As the world becomes less reliant on in-person staffing, the company’s new CEO Steve Lucas is ready to guide iCIMS boldly forward. Lucas previously saw success leading Marketo as it grew before it was acquired by software giant Adobe. iCIMS shows similar potential, as it currently generates about $250 million in recurring revenue. Based in Holmdel, New Jersey, iCIMS also operates out of offices in Manhattan, UK, Washington, DC, and San Jose.

Product Features

Simple and Easy to use Candidate Portals Supports Career Development with AI Powered Chat Bots to Match Employees with Opportunities
Automated Pre-Configured Process Flows History of Rapid Implementation with Reasonable Fixed Costs
Seamless Transition from Developing a Talent Pool to Onboarding New Employees Implements Own Solution Cutting Out the Middle Man. 
Easy Integration to Third-Party Supporting Products like Video  

Pricing

Unlike other providers in this space, iCIMS prices based on actual users that require access (i.e. by recruiters and administrators) versus total size of enterprise or interactions by recruits and employees. Its pricing model is fairly flexible as it is tied to both user access as well as the number of iCIMS products. A customer is not required to buy an all or nothing talent management suite and can align its budget and investment to the products that will provide the most significant ROI.

For smaller, less complex organizations, iCIMS offers a low-cost pre-configured solution that can be deployed within a matter of days that includes a defined number of users and the ability to add additional users at a set unit cost.

Nine: Qualys

Category: Cloud Security
Location: Foster City, CA
By: Dave Young

Qualys Inc. is a pioneer and leading provider of disruptive cloud-based IT, and security & compliance solutions with over 15,700 active customers in over 130 countries including a majority of each of the Forbes Global 100 and Fortune 100. Qualys helps organizations streamline and consolidate their security and compliance solutions in a single platform and build security into digital transformation initiatives for greater agility, better business outcomes, and substantial cost savings. The native Qualys Cloud Platform and its integrated apps deliver 360-degree visibility across on premises, endpoints, cloud, containers, and mobile environments providing the visibility businesses need to assess critical security intelligence and to automate the full spectrum of auditing, compliance, and protection for IT systems and web applications.
Qualys recently introduced its game-changing VMDR® (Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response) app to discover, assess, prioritize, and patch critical vulnerabilities in real time and across the global hybrid-IT landscape – all from a single solution. And the company will soon bring the unified power of its cloud platform to endpoint detection and response with Qualys Multi-Vector EDR which will collect and correlate vast amounts of IT, security and compliance data, providing vital context and comprehensive visibility into the entire attack chain for a complete, accurate risk-based response.

Qualys is best known for their Vulnerability Management Service and is used by the leading Managed Security Services providers as part of their portfolio, including SecureWorks and IBM. The product identifies exposures and weak spots in your environments by performing highly accurate external scanning and internal scanning across the network. Vulnerability Management enables world-class vulnerability scanning without the hardware, software and maintenance requirements of scanning products. Vulnerability results can then be integrated into your other vulnerability assessment tools, allowing threats against vulnerable and non-vulnerable systems to be assessed and prioritized accordingly. Qualys also offers Container Security to help protect against inadvertent use of third-party software components that have vulnerabilities, as integrated into the DevOps pipeline, as well as container runtime security to immediately detect and act upon container behavior that violates security best practices specified by the security teams.

Pricing

Qualys Vulnerability Scanning is priced separately for Internal IP vs. External IP, with external IP costing about 10 times the cost of IP on a per unit (IP) basis. Cost per internal IP scan target is typically offered by Qualys in the range of $15 to $20 per year. Web Application Scanning is typically offered in the $525 to $550 range per Web application. The SaaS solution is based on a 1 or 3 year term commitment.

Ten: Anaplan

Category: Cloud-Based Planning
Location: San Francisco, CA
By: Matt Ryan

Anaplan offers cloud-based Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) software enabling planning, modeling, and collaboration services, and boasts a simple interface to its Smart Business Platform, combining connection, versatility, foresight, scale, and self-service. Anaplan App Hub enables customers and partners to build, share, and deploy apps.

Anaplan claims to give you the power and flexibility to plan for any areas of your business, enabling collaborative decision-making to drive improved business performance across your organization, representing a game-changing leap beyond traditional business intelligence and enterprise performance management systems. Anaplan’s powerful modeling and calculation engine helps customers model and evaluate expected results from different decisions before acting on them, providing them with forward-looking insights by evaluating backward-looking data with an evidence-based approach.

Anaplan has experienced high revenue growth, with smaller bookings growth, meaning it is getting more value from its customer base. With a total of 1,900 employees (as of Dec 2020), and $348 million in revenue (as of 31 Jan 2021), Anaplan is on the rise. Many of the large suppliers (Oracle, IBM, SAP) offer EPM software but none specialize on it as Anaplan does. I encourage clients to try their free demo.

Product Features

Simplified Design Management Intuitive Model Building Capability
Connected Planning Integration Advanced Support Offerings

Pricing

Uniform to the SaaS market, Anaplan offers three tiers of user levels depending on feature set. Anaplan starts at Basic User, upgrading to a Professional User, and upgrading to an Enterprise User. Anaplan prices transactionally from specific purpose-driven quotes. Generally, the more users you buy, the greater discount you can expect to receive.

More information can be found at https://www.anaplan.com/pricing/ 

So, what did you think of our list?
Are there any suppliers on this list undeservedly?
Are there are any suppliers you feel we missed in our Top 10?
Let us hear from you...

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Founded in 2002, NET(net) is the world’s leading IT Investment Optimization firm, helping clients find, get and keep more economic and strategic value. With over 2,500 clients around the world in nearly all industries and geographies, and with the experience of over 25,000 field engagements with over 250 technology suppliers in XaaS, Cloud, Hardware, Software, Services, Healthcare, Outsourcing, Infrastructure, Telecommunications, and other areas of IT spend, resulting in incremental client captured value in excess of $250 billion since 2002. NET(net) has the expertise you need, the experience you want, and the performance you demand. Contact us today at info@netnetweb.com, visit us online at www.netnetweb.com, or call us at +1-866-2-NET-net to see if we can help you capture more value in your IT investments, agreements, and relationships.

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