It’s a busy time of the year at theCUBE around the holiday season, clearing the decks and setting the table for what surely will be another exciting year in 2024. For industry analysts John Furrier and Dave Vellante, it’s also a chance to look back on the year that was.

“I look at my 2023 predictions. Every year I go back and I publish how I did,” Vellante (pictured, right) said on the latest episode of theCUBE Podcast. “I did OK. I don’t think I did great, though. I said tech spending increases four to five percent. That was wrong.”

But Vellante was right on cost optimization being a big theme. In addition, he made accurate predictions on developments in security.

“I said Cisco is going to buy; they did, obviously, big $28 billion acquisition,” he said. “Zero trust gets real, that’s true. Gen AI hits where metaverse missed — that was right. Cloud expands to supercloud as edge computing accelerates, Cloudflare wins. That’s not bad.”

Vellante and Furrier (left) discussed more of their predictions along with the latest developments in the technology world in the latest episode of theCUBE Podcast. Other big predictions came to pass over the past year, according to Furrier.

“I think we successfully predicted supercloud, next-generation impact of multiple clouds,” he said. “I think we also predicted the generative AI wave. Again, we underpredicted. That came in heavier than we thought.”

A look ahead in 2024

2024 is poised to be an interesting year for several companies, including Amazon.com Inc. That’s because Amazon Web Services Inc. is likely to accelerate growth again this year, in part because of gen AI, according to Vellante.

“I think IT spending is going to pick up a little bit, especially in the second half of the year,” he said. “I really like Amazon because that’s going to drop right to their operating profits. And I like Google. I mean, the company prints money, despite the fact that I think [Google Cloud Platform] is kind of underperforming.”

Broadcom Inc. was also an interesting stock to watch over the past year. What will be interesting moving forward is how its acquisition of VMware Inc. fits into how Broadcom runs its business, according to Vellante.

“[Broadcom CEO] Hock Tan doesn’t rely on business A to help business B,” he said. “They have to be standalone businesses. I think VMware is an awesome standalone business. I do think customers are concerned about the acquisition, they’re concerned about pricing, but they don’t have anywhere to go.”

Better times, worse times, uncertain times

When looking ahead at the year to come, the road ahead is far from simple. But in a recent edition of his Breaking Analysis series, Vellante quoted Amazon Web Services Inc. Chief Executive Officer Adam Selipsky, who said at AWS re:Invent in late November that we’ve seen better times, we’ve seen worse times, but we’ve never seen such uncertain times.

“I think that sums it up. It’s very hard to predict right now. Is it supply? Is it demand? What’s the consumer going to do?” Vellante asked. “Inflation, interest rates [are] coming down. But what about employment? It’s really hard to predict what’s going to happen.”

The key is that businesses have to remain agile, resilient and flexible and to invest in those types of things, according to Vellante. That’s why AI is such a huge investment vector in 2024.

“It’s going to help you be more business resilient, be more productive, be more automated, but it’s very hard to predict what the impacts are going to be on jobs and the economy. It could have a massive, wonderful impact on the economy,” Vellante said. “It could have a near-term bump downward in the economy, as good as it could affect jobs. To me, it’s very hard to predict.”

All told, 2024 looks to be another year of rapid innovation and change as AI continues to impact everything. For theCUBE, closing the page on 2023 is also a chance to say thank you to everyone who has followed along with coverage on theCUBE.

“It’s going to be an exciting 2024 for us. And our Pod, we’re going to mix things up. Forty-one episodes in, and we’re going to do a review, a look back on what worked, what didn’t work,” Furrier said. “We’re going to iterate this podcast, keep changing it. Keep DMing us and emailing us on what you think we should do or not do to make this podcast better. Better insights, better experience.”

Watch the full podcast below to find out why these industry pros were mentioned:

Patrick Thornhill, field marketing manager at Dell Technologies
Sanjeev Mohan, principal at SanjMo
Jonathan Heiliger, general partner at Vertex Ventures US
In Sik (Insik) Rhee, general partner at Vertex Ventures US
Warren Buffet, chairperson of Berkshire Hathaway
Jim Cramer, investment pro and media personality
Hock Tan, president and CEO of Broadcom
Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS
Wendi Whitmore, SVP of Unit 42 at Palo Alto Networks
Kevin Mandia, CEO of Mandiant, a Google LLC company
Scott Raynovich, founder and CTA of Futuriom, part of Rayno Media
Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of FTX
Sarbjeet Johal, founder and CEO of Stackpane

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Photo: SiliconANGLE