$CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.(CRWD)$ Here are my thoughts: The COO of Delta was let go, and it's not surprising given the situation. Having 50,000 remote servers out of physical reach and beyond the immediate control of IT staff is a poor practice and something I've never encountered in my experience managing systems. It seems like a case of some IT professionals engaging in questionable practices without proper oversight.
The real challenge is dealing with CEOs who are skilled at deflecting blame to justify their positions. Blaming Microsoft was a desperate move. CrowdStrike (CRWD) will likely have to take most of the blame since they can't fault their customers. Typically, the COO is responsible for approving the staffing budgets for the CIO, while the CIO usually seeks approval for large capital expenditures directly from the CEO.
CRWD might need to offer discounts on services, but they're unlikely to lose many customers. Palo Alto or any other host-based solutions are generally more cumbersome and inefficient to deploy on live systems compared to CrowdStrike. I can't imagine trying to implement Palo Alto's host-based services on over 50,000 hard-to-manage systems—it's just not practical.
As for the upcoming earnings, it's uncertain what will happen. However, in the long term, I'm not worried about CRWD. Most analysts believe the stock has already bottomed out. Best of luck to all CRWD longs!
Comments