Zscaler gave some heads up at Zenith that they are moving into Business Analytics. This is Zscaler moving from security into IT tools atop their platform.
They have bundled together ZDX (Digital Exp Monitoring), their new Risk360, and a new Business Insights product into a suite of tools called “Business Analytics”.
ZDX looks at the end-user perspective, tracking insights from apps, devices, and networks (ISPs, etc).
Risk360 gives the overall10000ft view over security risk profile.
Business Insights gives the view over the usage of SaaS apps and locations.
The new Business Insights product is quite interesting, in that it is leveraging their SASE network to provide insights over app and location usage within their network. Companies can utilize this to monitor SaaS usage and costs, as well as office location usage.
Overall PR over this new suite, plus all the AI advancements to ZDX and Risk360.
CrowdStrike is another one to watch as they move from Security platform into IT tools.
These new ZS tools seem to be getting more into network observability, event correlation, anomaly detection, and reporting. There are some nice executive and IT analyst reports. Enterprises will need to decide whether to use a general purpose observability or SIEM (Security Event Management) service that spans all applications Or just get these addons onto their existing ZS platform. Observability and SIEM technology provides the ability to perform a variety of correlation techniques to integrate different sources, in order to turn data into useful information. Dashboard tools can take event data and turn it into informational charts to assist in seeing patterns, or identifying activity that is not forming a standard pattern.
All in all, these ZDX business analytics are very nice extension to the ZS platform and should generate some additional revenue. But I believe many larger enterprises will already have or prefer an observability service that is security service ‘agnostic’. ZS is one of my largest holdings so seeing natural evolutions to expand their platform is a good thing. One additional thought is that the new ZS business analytics reports can help in selling ZS services to the executives during the purchase evaluation process. Thx muji for the update.