Tag Archives: technology

Gigamon Talks Up Security, Amazon Public Cloud At Analyst Day

Gigamon ( GIMO ) expects its push into security products to gain traction as corporate spending shifts from prevention to detection and containment. Management delivered that message at the company’s analyst day on Tuesday, during which Gigamon also highlighted plans to support public clouds, starting with Amazon Web Services, part of e-commerce giant Amazon.com ( AMZN ). Amazon stock hit an all-time high on Tuesday and has been on a roll since the company posted its Q1 earnings beat on April 28. The IBD Leaderboard stock, however, is extended from both its 603.34 entry and its 638.11 alternative entry, trading Wednesday morning near 708, up a fraction. “In conjunction with its investor day, Gigamon announced field trials for a network visibility product that will work in cloud environments, particularly with Amazon Web Services,” Mark Kelleher, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, said in a research report. “This new product will provide tools vendors with information on data flows, between customer devices within a public cloud, private cloud or hybrid cloud environment. “While initially targeted at the AWS environment, GIMO expects to expand to other public cloud environments, such as Microsoft ( MSFT ) Azure and Alphabet ’s ( GOOGL ) Google. Meaningful revenue from this new offering is not expected until 2017.” Gigamon stock, however, was down 2% in early trading in the stock market today , near 30. Gigamon shares broke out March 11 at a 29.62 buy point, and so they remain within buy range. Gigamon’s roots are in selling communications network hardware appliances that analyze and manage data traffic, but it’s been expanding into security. “Management believes breaches are inevitable, and thus dollars will shift from prevention to detection/prediction/containment — which is where Gigamon plays,” Jason Ader, a William Blair analyst, said in a report. “The network is the most content-rich source of information for all kinds of security tools as the network touches everything, including users, devices, and applications. “But historically, the network was used mainly for connectivity. GigaSecure can look at all traffic and extract the right information and feed it to the right security and analytics tools.” Gigamon stock is up about 13% in 2016 so far. It reported Q1 earnings and revenue that topped estimates, and its shares touched a two-year high at 35 on April 29. Gigamon has an IBD Composite Rating of 95 out of a possible 99, putting it among the top 5% of all stocks in key metrics such as earnings and revenue growth.

National Instruments Corporation (NATI) Ex-Dividend Date Scheduled for May 12, 2016

National Instruments Corporation ( NATI ) will begin trading ex dividend on May 12, 2016. A cash dividend payment of $0.2 per share is scheduled to be paid on June 06, 2016. Shareholders who purchased NATI prior to the

Amazon, Comcast Content Delivery Network Push Could Hurt Akamai

Comcast ( CMCSA ) and Amazon Web Services, part of Amazon.com ( AMZN ), are becoming bigger players in the content delivery network market, posing a challenge to CDN leader Akamai Technologies ( AKAM ), according to Goldman Sachs. CDNs increase the speed of e-commerce transactions, business software downloads and video streaming to mobile devices. “Amazon is growing its Cloudfront CDN to an estimated $1.8 billion in 2016 revenues and shifting its own video delivery from independent CDNs to its own network, and startups like Fastly are growing share,” Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini said in a research report. AWS is part of the e-commerce giant’s fast-growing cloud computing business. Amazon stock surged to an all-time high on Tuesday, as the Wall Street Journal reported that Salesforce.com ( CRM ) was building a new service that uses AWS. AWS was a big reason Amazon reported its highest sales growth in nearly four years when it posted first-quarter earnings on April 28, sending the stock up nearly 10% the following day. Amazon is an IBD Leaderboard stock, with a strong IBD Composite Rating of 95, where 99 is highest. Akamai has a 59 CR. Bellini, who has a sell rating on Akamai stock, attended the 2016 Content Delivery Summit in New York on Monday, gaining views on market trends. “A key takeaway was that the competitive landscape remains intense, as Comcast looks to triple its CDN capacity next year,” wrote Bellini. Comcast, the No. 1 cable TV company, has been expanding commercial services to businesses. Comcast moved into CDN services in late 2014, Bellini noted. One market trend could work in Comcast’s favor, said the Goldman Sachs analyst. “Multi-CDN deployments were a key theme of the conference,” she wrote, “with new startups making it easy to route traffic across multiple CDNs.” Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai is the No. 1 provider of CDN services. Worries that big customers such as Apple ( AAPL ) and Facebook ( FB ) are shifting more of their data traffic to their own CDNs have pressured Akamai stock. Aside from AWS and Comcast, Akamai competes with Level 3 Communications ( LVLT ), Limelight Networks ( LLNW ), and Verizon Communications ( VZ ), as well as startups Fastly and CloudFlare.