CEO Outlook 2023

If the past couple of years have taught the IT industry anything, it’s that businesses need faster returns on their IT investments and flexibility in the form of cloud-first offerings and Capex-based consumption models.

For many vendors, Everything as a Service is the name of the game for 2023. Cisco Systems Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins pledged that the networking giant will continue to accelerate its as-a-service offerings and partner managed services, which Robbins called a $113 billion opportunity for Cisco by 2025.

Meanwhile, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has made good on its 2019 promise to deliver the company’s entire portfolio as a service by 2022. Now, the company is continuing its mission this year with the help of its channel partners.

“Our goal is to give our partners the tools and flexibility to deliver modern cloud services in different ways, depending on where they and our shared customers are in their digital transformation journeys,” said HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri.

But in a time of constant change and architectural shifts—whether it’s grappling with brand-new deployment models or geographically distributed employees—one thing remains certain: Security is at the forefront of everything these companies are doing.

Arista Networks CEO Jayshree Ullal called out security attacks and the ability to truly deploy networks and edge as a service as some of the biggest challenges facing the enterprise today.

“Customers are going to be challenged on whether to add to, refresh or completely redesign their networking capabilities, but we are excited to address the client-to-cloud network experience,” she said.

Here is where some of the leading technology CEOs are placing their bets in 2023 and how the channel will tackle emerging opportunities along with them.—By

Scan here for all of our CEO responses

Gina Narcisi