China aims to Regulate Corporate Spending

Some algorithmic draft regulations come from China's  'Cyberspace Administration' about company spending. 

China Swoops on Algorithms in Latest Tech Clampdown

Reuters, Brenda Goh, August 27, 2021   via ACM

The Cyberspace Administration of China has issued draft rules to prevent companies from developing algorithmic models that encourage users to spend significant amounts of money, or to spend money in a manner that could be disruptive to public order. The draft rules would enable Chinese authorities to review algorithms and request fixes if they are deemed necessary. The rules would affect some of the biggest tech companies in China, including Alibaba Group. Trivium China's Kendra Schaefer noted, "This policy marks the moment that China's tech regulation is not simply keeping pace with data regulations in the European Union but has gone beyond them."

Spending in a Solarwinds and COVID Context

Interesting to see the specific implications of security and supply chain contexts. 

Breaking Analysis: How the SolarWinds Hack & COVID are Changing CISO Spending Patterns By David Vellante  FEBRUARY 13 2021  in WikiBon

Top security pros say that the SolarWinds hack and the pandemic have accelerated a change in their cyber security spending patterns. Not only must CISOs secure an increasingly distributed workforce, but they now must also be wary of software code coming from reputable vendors, including the very patches designed to protect them against cyber attacks. Organizations are increasingly prioritizing zero trust approaches including simplified identity access management, better endpoint protection and cloud security. While leading solutions in these sectors are gaining momentum, traditional legacy offerings are being managed down from a spending perspective. 

In this Breaking Analysis, we’ll summarize CISO sentiments from a recent ETR VENN session and provide our quarterly update of the cybersecurity sector. In an upcoming episode we’ll be inviting Erik Bradley of ETR to provide deeper analysis on these trends. Here we’ll give you a first look and our initial take on what’s happening in the information security sector as we kick off 2021. 

The SolarWinds Attack was “Like Nothing We’ve Ever Seen”

It’s been covered in the press but in case you don’t know the details, SolarWinds is a company that provides software to monitor many aspects of on-prem infrastructure, including network performance, log files, configuration data, storage, servers, etc. Like all software companies, SolarWinds sends out regular updates and patches. Hackers were able to infiltrate the update and “trojanize” the software. Meaning when customers installed the updates, the malware just went along for the ride.   ... ' 

Bob Herbold: IBM Spending

My former colleague Bob Herbold, on IBM spending and results.  In his always gutsy blog:

IBM: Spent $97 Billion; Result: 20 Consecutive Quarterly Declines!
The primary job of a leader is to constantly assess the situation, develop an impactful plan that will make a significant difference, and then implement with excellence.  Being a leader is not about simply managing a bunch of activities that enable you to participate in some manner in what’s going on in your industry.  Unfortunately, that’s what the IBM CEO, who has been in the job five years now, seems to be doing.

The 20 straight quarterly revenue declines have left IBM very weak on many dimensions.  Over that five year period, revenue has dropped from $105 billion to $79 billion, net income has declined from $16.5 billion to $11.9 billion, and operating margin dropped from 20.5% to 16.4%.  Over the five years, total shareholder return for IBM is -7.8% while it was +69.6% for the S&P 500. .... "