CrowdStrike still doesn't know how much its Falcon flame-out will cost CrowdStrike can't yet confidently predict the financial impact of the failed update to its Falcon software that crashed millions of computers around the world last July, but is confident its third quarter results show customers can't find a better security product. The security vendor on Tuesday posted $1.01 billion revenue, $ …
That is sad.
Failure should not be rewarded with better revenue.
On the other hand, experience can only come by learning from one's mistakes.
In that case, CrowdStrike has just become the most experienced security vendor on the planet, so . . .
This is all about sales. Too many are incapable of looking back at what has happened with the results we see, failure is rewarded with success.
You only have to look are the constant pressure to push everything into "The Cloud" to see that.
Buying into the cloud Kool-Aid is part of that. Sales know this and constantly refer to any thing that is not in The Cloud or SaaS as "Legacy". Managers then take fright and rip out perfectly viable solutions on prem and against all the advice of techies.
If more people actually did review what was happening then cloud growth would not be what it is.
The sad fact is that most decision makers are unable to remember what happened last week let alone 3 months ago. The only focus is where the next freebie comes from and for that you have to buy new stuff (services).
CrowdStrike (like most "Modern AV solutions") is crap but the snake oil sales people target C-Suite execs who are taken in. The provide a long list of big name customer who are (have) used it and so the circle continues.
"Buying into the cloud Kool-Aid is part of that. Sales know this and constantly refer to any thing that is not in The Cloud or SaaS as "Legacy". Managers then take fright and rip out perfectly viable solutions on prem and against all the advice of techies."
One of the main reason is how beancounters perceive things...
For them CAPEX ( Capital Expenditure ) is seen as something bad as it depreciates over time and needs to be replaced every so often... That's the on prem solutions on hardware you own, and you get to pay yearly taxes over it.
For them OPEX ( Operational Expenditure ) is the perfection, as it's just a recuring cost... and there's just the VAT ( if it can't be redeemed ).
So beancounters ( we all know they are the ones that pull the strings of the corporate manglement ) loves cloudy stuff and WhateveraaS because they don't get stuck with some hardware that lose value in the CAPEX column of their excel sheet, but instead have a monthly or yearly line for a service in the OPEX column. Also in dire tme, it's easer to cull a WhateveraaS by not renewing the contract than getting rd of some hardware... There's the hassle of recycling and all the paperwork related to properly gettng rid of the hardware to take into account.
Also in dire tme, it's easer to cull a WhateveraaS by not renewing the contract than getting rd of some hardware...
Two things there :
1) Not renewing the contract for WhateveraaS (I like that word BTW !) means that Whatever stops working. If that is a key thing your business needs in order to run then not paying to renew the contract means your business dies. And as we've been warning for some time, and seen reports from various quarters confirming, once you are into WhateveraaS then most likely the supplier of WhateveraaS is not going to make it easy to up sticks and move it somewhere else (such as back on-prem when you realise that could be cheaper). From various reports I've read, it seems that cloud vendors tend to give you about 3 years to get properly locked in - and then the rates start to rise once they know it's going to be sufficiently painful for you to tell them where to stick their price rises.
2) Typically, getting rid of some hardware isn't going to save you anything (apart from a bit off the lecky). You've already paid for it, which also means that instead of replacing it automatically when it's 3 years old, you can just keep using it for a bit longer - i.e. spread the cost over more time and thus reduce the cost of running something on-prem. Yes I know there are good reasons for hardware refreshes, but unlike your WhateveraaS which stops working if you stop feeding it cash, the on-prem option just keeps working as long as you feed it lecky. As an side, with a previous work hat on, I was deploying hand-me-down hardware which as one of my colleagues put it was "6 years past it's refresh date" !
As others have stated elsewhere, on-prem can be cheaper than cloud. That is going to be dependent on the business, it's workloads, what software it used, how big it is (as in, does employing specialists to keep it running make sense or do you have to outsource that), yada, yada, yada. Logically, if you go cloud then you are using a computer someone else bought, running on lecky (and other costs such as lecky for the cooling) that someone else pays for, and that someone else will want you to pay your share plus their profit margin. OK, for a smaller business it makes sense to pay for a small share of all those because running them yourself would be a bit expensive; but for a large business it's a different situation.
And don't get me started on "so where does my data (which is subject to GDPR and the like) actually live, and who actually has access to it ?"
1) I agree, but in many case WhateveraaS has several level of *Service* and Beancounters can cut back cost by going from one level to the lower one.
For example, take the well known Offce365... You can have the whole shebang with gadgets like Engage, Viva, Insight, and more... and you can have several reduced versions up to the point where you only have the basic : Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNotes, Teams & Sharepoint...
2) I also agree, but as I mentionned, you may have to pay taxes every years on hardware you own. That's how it works in France, you pay some taxes on what we call immobilized hardware, t gets reduced over the years and except for extremely expensive HW after 5 years you don't pay anymore, that's something you don't have to pay with WhateveraaS.
I also agree that on prem can be cheaper in the long run in many cases, but Beancounters don't see it that way, they work from quarter to quarter because that's what is important for the stock value of the company.
*for a smaller business it makes sense to pay for a small share of all those because running them yourself would be a bit expensive; but for a large business it's a different situation*
But it's the large business that are the most fond of WhateveraaS. Would you be surprised if I tell you that all the car companies in Europe and the US are usng TIaaS ( Telecom Infrastructure as a Service [parse that as Cloudy Mobile Network provided by $TELCO equipment builders]) for all the over the air suff in modern cars.
as for GDPR : if the beancounters are so fond of cloud but you need to know the daa location, there's always the prvate cloud... It defeats the whole thing as you build your own hardware to host a WhateveraaS on prem... But it may make some beancounters happy : they have a WhateveraaS, even if the mnthly cost is an internal cost.
Mate.
The reason this event happened and the same reason why they were selected soo many times is because the industry is filled with frauds who present themselves as managers and experts and BUY or advice others to buy something.
The truth is the entire management layer is one big fraud most of the time, and this is just a perfecgt example. Its obvious managers everywhere are not firing themselgves for selecting CS... thats the problem, they are the problem.
The company I work for never had any Crowdstrike software prior to the debacle, but since then, we've all suddenly got the "Crowdstrike Falcon Sensor" icon in our system tray. That's thousands of licences we are now paying Crowdstrike for. I was relieved we weren't using it at the time, but it looks like we may have fun times ahead of us....
TBH it's not a market I've been following, but isn't there a parallel with the Windows/MS Office/365 malarky ?
To say that people buy into the MS stuff because they like it is probably a bit wide of the mark. As a user, I ****ing hate the stuff I'm afflicted with at work. But, however many floating pieces of excrement there are under the surface, they are all polished enough that the people who make the decisions thing it looks and works nicely, and because MS have done so well in their (often illegal) efforts to exclude any viable competition, there is realistically no other option* for most businesses. So people buy into the MS ecosystem, which further entrenches the MS ecosystem, which means people have to buy into ...
I suspect Cloudstrike is in a similar position where there's little competition in at least some parts - so unless you want piecemeal protection with all the management overhead that entails, then you just stump up for "the market leader". You might hate them, but the pain of doing something else is more.
* I'm a fan of FOSS, I use FOSS, no, there is no practical alternative for most businesses that comes anywhere near replacing the MS ecosystem. You could replace some small bits, but MS have cleverly gaffer tapes stuff together well enough that replacing any individual part would be painful. We nearly had commercial competitors, but MS made sure to kill them off decades ago.
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