IT outage opens questions about consolidation in tech: Analyst

Global IT outages caused by a CrowdStrike (CRWD) to some Microsoft Windows (MSFT) devices are rippling through major industries, causing massive issues from grounded planes to down 9-1-1 call centers. TD Cowen senior analyst Shaul Eyal joins Catalysts to discuss the outage and how it's weighing on the tech sector.

CrowdStrike management has addressed the outage as an incident related to an update, not a cyberattack. Eyal notes the issue is reversible but may take a couple of days to be resolved, adding that the company's statement "has been alleviating some of the initial concerns earlier in premarket," as the stock dropped nearly 20% in premarket trading. He explains that the incident highlights concerns over consolidation in the tech sector: "I think we have been seeing a gradual shift to consolidate the market, whereby enterprises have been using a couple of vendors rather than multitude... I think that could potentially be questioned longer term."

Eyal adds, "It's not a matter of if customers, enterprises are going to get hacked. It's just when. We are yet to see one conclusive solution that pretty much proof-shields the entire organization." However, he believes that the industry is "still long" from that solution. He does not expect the outage to have too much of an impact on earnings in the near term, adding, "I think it will have to do pretty much with the second half of 2024. And as we start taking a peek into 2025, what we could be seeing within this time frame is actually a little bit of an emergency spending patterns that, by the way, we had seen with such sizable former cyber-related attacks and outages."

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This post was written by Melanie Riehl