SCC to unveil petrochemical JV structure on October 29, 2026

International Business Machines announced a new collaboration with Zscaler and Red Hat to tighten application security for enterprise clients. The joint effort combines IBM and Red Hat software platforms with Zscaler threat intelligence to provide real-time protections at the application layer. The partners plan to coordinate vulnerability discovery, automated policy updates, and validated software remediation workflows for shared customers. International Business Machines is a US-based IT group with a reported market value of about $214.0 billion, and its integrated solutions and services span the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific. One figure to watch is how much of IBM's reported US$24.6b of annual recurring revenue comes from security and hybrid cloud offerings connected to Red Hat and Zscaler style deployments.

As unauthorized access to companies surges, electronics giants offering cyber defense services are receiving a flood of consultations and inquiries. In September, Hitachi launched a service that uses advanced AI models from U.S. firms such as Anthropic and OpenAI to provide end-to-end support spanning risk assessment, monitoring, and recovery. Fujitsu announced its cyber defense strategy in late August, and inquiries from client companies have poured in since then, increasing further in recent days, prompting it to establish a specialized organization of about 100 people effective October 1. NEC began offering a service in late September for financial institutions, manufacturers, and distributors that uses AI to automatically analyze risks and formulate response policies. Each company is strengthening its systems in anticipation of sophisticated AI-driven cyberattacks, and demand appears set to keep expanding.

Zscaler reaffirmed its fiscal 2027 outlook, guiding first-quarter revenue to about US$935 million to US$939 million and full-year revenue to roughly US$3.91 billion to US$3.94 billion, while outlining a long-term ambition for much higher annual recurring revenue. The company also announced a collaboration with IBM and Red Hat aimed at protecting private applications during the gap between vulnerability disclosure and patching. The reaffirmed guidance supports Zscaler's near-term execution story, though slower expected revenue growth remains a key risk if competition tightens or deal cycles lengthen. Zscaler's narrative projects US$5.3 billion in revenue and US$178.4 million in earnings by 2029, requiring 16.6% yearly revenue growth and a US$241.6 million earnings increase from negative US$63.2 million today. More cautious analysts assume revenue of about US$5.2 billion and earnings near US$16 million by 2029, a more restrained view of how quickly Zscaler's newer security pillars could scale.

Cisco Systems closed fiscal 2026 with $9.3 billion in hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders, about 4.5 times fiscal 2025, and roughly $4 billion in related revenues, and now expects hyperscaler AI revenues to reach $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027. For fiscal 2027, Cisco projects revenues of $72.2-$73.4 billion and non-GAAP earnings of $5.05-$5.11 per share, while for the first quarter of fiscal 2027 it expects revenues between $18 billion and $18.2 billion, non-GAAP earnings of $1.32-$1.34 per share, a non-GAAP gross margin of 65-66% and an operating margin of 35.5-36.5%. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, networking product orders rose 40% year over year, the eighth straight quarter of double-digit growth, and company-wide orders excluding hyperscalers rose 25%. Cisco won three new hyperscaler designs in the quarter, covering a P200 scale-across system, a G200 scale-out system and an optical line system, with fiscal 2026 hyperscaler AI orders about 60% Silicon One-based systems and 40% optics, while Acacia generated more than $1 billion in orders in the last reported quarter. Security revenues increased 14% year over year in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, with firewall orders up more than 30% for the second consecutive quarter, and Cisco expects security growth to move from low single digits in fiscal 2026 to high single digits in fiscal 2027 and reach double-digit growth as the year progresses.

Cloudflare has become a public Certificate Authority, issuing post-quantum ready TLS certificates to external organizations. The company also introduced Basin, an open-source serverless data platform designed to handle application data without dedicated infrastructure management. In addition, Cloudflare entered a major partnership with Deutsche Telekom to offer joint security and connectivity services to enterprise clients across Europe. The moves extend Cloudflare beyond protecting and accelerating traffic into owning key trust primitives and a neutral, open data layer, in contrast to more closed ecosystems at players like Amazon or Microsoft. The Deutsche Telekom tie-up deepens enterprise penetration through large multi-product deals while testing a flagged risk around customer concentration and execution at scale.