Good evening everyone, my paper title is characterization of cystic intracranial brain lesions using diffusion tensor imaging matrix. Background, cystic intracranial lesions are common findings in MR imaging, the differential diagnosis ranging from simple arachnoid cyst to high grade tumors is cystic component where the management grocery differs from cyst which requires no treatment to surgery. Intracranial cyst can be divided into non-neoplastic and neoplastic lesions. And this differentiation of intracranial cystic lesions is sometimes difficult by conventional MR imaging alone. So, such conventional scans are not sensitive to microstructural architecture of tissue. For DTI, it is an advanced MRI sequence based on diffusion weighted imaging that non-invasively displays the pathophageological changes of altered brain structures. In this, the brain tissue water can not move freely in all directions as surrounding tissue structures limit its movement and hence shows preferential movement along certain directions. Likewise, it is easier for water to diffuse along the course of a white matter fiber rather than perpendicular to it. As external membranes and myelin teeth act as a barrier to the movement of water molecules, this property of preferential movement is diffusion anisotropy. The DTI technique basically capture mean diffusivity and fracture anisotropy by placing the cursor on the ROI. Aims characterization of intracranial cystic lesions using diffusion tensor imaging matrix. Total sample size taken is 15. Now cases. First is epidermoid cyst. In this, an ill-defined irregular, lobulated extra axial cystic lesion is seen in the right cerebellum pontine angle, appearing hypointense on T1, hyperintense on T2 with partial separation on flare images, causing mass effect on bones and cerebral peduncle and showing diffusion restriction on the DWI and thin peripheral rim of enhancement on post-contrast scan. The FA value fraction anisotropy is highest that is 327. Now second is dermoid cyst.  In this also, FA is 157 and because of the heterogeneous content in the dermoid cyst. Now third is a recnoid cyst. In this, a well-defined extra axial, well-defined drown lesion seen in the retro cerebellum location posterior to the right cerebellar hemisphere, showing CSF attenuation on all sequences and no diffusion restriction is seen on DWI. Here ADC value is highest because there is no, because it is water CSF density. So moment of water molecules is easy. Now fourth is colloid cyst. In this, a well-defined drown lesion is seen at the foremen of Monroe, appearing iso-intense on T1, T2 and hyperintense on flare. Here FA value is around 150 due to the increased muscine content. So FA value is highest, is little less than the epidermoid cyst. Now fifth is racemos neurocystisarchosis. In this multiple well-defined inter-communicating cystic T1 hyperintense, T2 hyperintense lesion seen along the inter hemispheric fissure showing complete separation on flare images and few cells of A2 segment are seen traversing through the cystic space and no abnormal post-contas enhancement is seen. Sixth is vestibular swenoma. In this, a large, low-related extra axial mass of size 4 into 3 into 2 is noted in the left cerebellum-contine system with inter-canalicular extension of the left internal acoustic canal via porous equestricus. The lesion is hypo-intense on T1, heterogeneously hyperintense on T2 and few areas suppressed on flare, suggestive of cystic changes. Few areas in the mass appears bright on DWI and dark on ADC, suggestive of restriction. Blooming foci are also seen in the mass. Now seventh is pyrocystic astrocytoma. It is a heterogeneously enhancing T2 hyperintense lesion seen in the anterior para-felsine right frontal region with mild perifocal edema. On post-contrast, lesions shows non-enhancing cystic necrotic area and enhancing solid component. ADC value is higher in this because of the CSF nature. Now corollate plexus cyst in this a multi-lubulated cystic lesion noted within the body of lateral ventricle causing moderate dilatation and irregular ependymal lining of lateral ventricles. The lesion shows CSF signal on own sequences. Corollate plexus not visualized separately within the lateral ventricle and mark thinning of the corpus callosum is seen. The next is abscess. An area of altered signal intensity is noted in the left medial temporal lobe adjacent to the left cavernous sinus appearing hypo-toisone T2 flare with smooth peripheral post-contrast enhancement. And in abscess, ADC value is low. Tuberculoma, there are few irregular variable size conglomerated peripherally enhancing lesion seen largest of size 16 to 19 seen in the right cerebellar hemisphere, appearing T1, T2, hypo intense with surrounding peri-lesional edema. No diffusion restriction is seen on the DWI. Centrelurocytoma, a well-defined cystic lesion located in the body of right lateral ventricle, causing its expansion and sifting the septum pallicidum to the left. On SWI images, it shows blooming with hyper intense signal on face as to hemorrhage. The solid areas of lesion source diffusion restriction on post-contrast and the lesion source nodular enhancement with enhancing septa with non-enhancing necrotic area within. Next is cystic pituitary macrodinoma. It is a well-marginated lesion cellar mass with supra-cellar extent, not supra-cellar. It is a well-marginated lesion seen in the cellar and appearing homogenously hyper intense on T2 flare with known visualization of anterior pituitary separately. And the lesion enhances peripherally on post-contrast scan. Now, anaplastic oligodendroglioma. It is a well-delinated peripherally cortical-based interaxial mass that is seen in right parieto temporal region involving cortex and subcortical white matter. It appears hyper intense on T1, hyper intense on T2, iso-hyper intense on flare with few areas of blooming on SWI as to hemorrhage. It shows patchy areas of restriction and shows post-contrast heterogeneous enhancement with non-enhancing area as to necrosis. Now, craniopharyngeoma. It is a multilobulated solid cystic mass noted predominantly in the supra-cellar region. And it is the cystic component of the mass is hyper intense on T1 and T2 and not completely suppressed on flare. Solid component of the mass is iso intense on T1 and hypo intense on T2. Blooming foci are seen peripherally around the lesion on SWI. Solstice of calcification, no evidence of diffusion restriction is seen and on post-contrast scan the mass is showing peripheral enhancement and MRSO's large leptate peak. Hemangioblastoma. It is a well-defined predominantly cystic lesion with enhancing neural nodule seen in the right cerebellar hemisphere with mass effect as described. Now, results are the studies revealed that fractional isotope and mean diffusivity values helps in differentiating various cystic brain lesions. And epidermoid cysts found to have increased FA value but ADC values similar to that of the normal white matter. So, basically, FA is increased because of the creatinine content which leads to compact internal architecture. Neurosystic sarcosis showed high FA next to epidermoid cyst and DTI helpful in characterizing various stages of NCC. Brain abscess showed decreased ADC values while cystic tumor showed increased ADC and low FA values. Brain abscess showed decreased diffusion due to the inflammatory cells and debris within. While tumor cyst showed increased diffusivity due to clear fluid and less inflammatory cells. Arachnoid cyst, coratlexus cyst showed high ADC values and low FA value because of the CSF nature and less hindrance to the water molecules. Low-grade tumor cyst showed decreased FA and high ADC values and high-grade tumor cyst showed increased FA and decreased ADC due to more cellular component. Tuberkloma showed decreased ADC values and dermoid cyst and colloid cyst showed increased FA. The ADC values were found to be higher than that of the normal brain parenchyma but less than that of the CSF. The viscous nature of the content inside the colloid cyst leads to increased diffusion. Hence, diffusion tensor imaging derived matrix helpful in distinguishing cystic brain lesions. Conclusion. DTI with calculated FA MD values that is ADC values add more information to the MRI in differentiation of cystic brain lesions and help in therapeutic decision making and eventually patient outcome. Thank you.


Okay, well, since that nobody turned in their binder, looks like we... Actually, I got mine done. So mine's, my production's about a girl and a guy and they fall in love and they both get married and they kiss once. I really think that Zach is the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my life. I've been on this earth 40 some odd years and what I can tell you is that that child has done more damage to me than Afghanistan and my ex-wife combined. Zach? Ears. Sometimes we make Zach wear earmuffs when we don't want to hurt his feelings. Okay, does anybody, anybody literally have anything else? Literally anything. Okay, Zach, we're done. Okay, Zach, since you're the only one that turned anything in, I guess we can do production on your film. You can go ahead and start to cast. Okay, I choose on big and Sarah. The only reason why I'm taking this class is because my counselor explicitly told me that it was an easy A. The only thing that's easy about it is how easy I think it would be to take Zach's head and shove it right up his head. I think Sarah and I get along really well because we're both leos, we both know how to have a good laugh and we both love film, of course. Okay, let's just remember that I'm going to be showing your final film to the assistant board of directors. So. This is supposed to be my chance to break into the industry and I'm pretty sure everybody knows that. Okay, let's start with some simple breathing exercises. Why don't we sit up in our chair, sit up, come on. All right, and then let's fill our lungs with air, breathe in. I think the best way to create a film is to take your time and to make sure the actors are in the correct head space to fulfill their roles. How are we feeling? That's kind of nice. Wait. What's that? Who's on ice? All right guys, why don't we do some voice exercises? Ready, I'll start, I'll start. Ah! Okay, let's go one more one. Okay, that's a good one. What do we do? Okay, so overall, I personally found it kind of weird that he was the only one doing the vocal exercises when he also has zero lines in the film. All right guys, can I get lights? All right you guys, let's get the first shot of the day off. We haven't been filming. Did he just waste his time? I don't like your attitude. Jake, you've been fine, but your attitude is way too high. Mike, I'm here and you're literally a joke. This whole thing is a joke. I like this attitude. No, this is a motion.  Jake, wait, Jake. Don't you mean attitude? No, attitude. So when you get the director attitude, it's called actitude, because you're an actress. So it's called attitude. So from what I heard at least, he got that center from like some weird form, like directors or whatever. Oh, his username is sir interacts a lot I didn't cut the attitude. Do you realize that everything you're doing, it's not gonna matter? You don't matter. So, you okay now? I'm so fed up with this. Okay, listen, I get it completely. I understand. I don't want to do this either. Remember, this is big break or whatever. As long as we just get it done, just go through. He'll be gone. He'll be out of the class. He'll be done, okay? We just have to get through it. I swear to God, if he calls it one more time. Do you kids think something like this would ever be good?  As a matter of fact, I've already sent this to the board of assistant directors and just like I'm just getting their response.


Oh man a bunch of you reached out to me and let me know about this brand new Laura Lee video and I finally had a chance to watch it and now I know why everybody was telling me to watch it so let's break this thing down. What is up everybody this is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel what I try to do take different topics going on in the YouTube community try to see what lessons we can learn from them to improve our own mental and emotional well-being and check this out this is part one of a two-parter when it comes to breaking down Laura Lee's video I want to take a look at it from two different angles so make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell so you don't miss out on part two all right but anyways yeah and if you're not following me on social media make sure you do at the Rewired Soul over on Instagram and Twitter and before we get started real quick make sure you watch this entire video because I have not one but two special announcements later on in this video one of them's like hidden in the middle because I know some of you like to just skip to the end and find out what the announcement is so one of them's going to be hidden right in the middle all right but yeah let's talk about this so Laura Lee just released her video about why she adopted her niece Erin and yeah so we're break this down I pulled some clips that I want to discuss in this video so those of you who are just now meeting me hi my name is Chris and I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic I'm also the son of an alcoholic mom all right so my sobriety date is June 23rd 2012 so a few months ago I just celebrated seven years sober all right my drug of choice it started off with alcohol then I got really into prescription pain medications opioids and I was pretty much just doing both but anyways I can relate a lot to this story especially coming from a family where addiction runs rampant all right but anyways let's take a look at this first clip I never really had an intention on ever having this conversation with you guys and it's not because I don't care about you guys but it's because it's such a sensitive subject and such a big thing that happened in my family and but I know that when I implemented her in it was just like her just here and it was so much left unsaid so with talking to my sister and with talking to Aaron they both agreed they're really excited for me to film it and talk about it now so something I forgot to mention is aside from being in recovery I also worked at a drug and alcohol treatment center for a little over three years and I'm currently pursuing my CADC which is a certified alcohol and drug counselor license so with that clip right there I want to discuss like the power of sharing your story and it's one of the reasons why I wanted to work in a treatment center all right like I'm so grateful that not only Laura Lee but her niece and her sister are willing to open up and share this story like it's it's difficult for a lot of people it took me two years I refer to myself in my first two years as a closet recovering addict because I didn't tell anybody if you weren't a very close friend or family member nobody knew but eventually what happened for me was I got to a point where I was like man I never thought I could even get two days clean and sober now I have two years how many other people feel like that I need to share my story right so it's so awesome that Laura Lee and her family are sharing this story and I really really hope it inspires some other people it caused a lot of chaos it caused a lot of fights it caused even violence in our household and parents singing along and on top of that we were a low income family my water and power were cut off literally all the time cable cut off all the time phones cut off all the time and it was really chaotic but I don't want you guys thinking I'm telling you this so you're like have empathy for me and feel bad for me I just want to be candid and let you guys know the real world and what really went on because I know there are so many people out there in the exact same situation as I was in and I want you to know you're not alone and that you can get through it and you know your life can change completely so I wanted to toss in that clip right there because this this kind of thing really bumps me out it bumps me out because like creators you know when we sit down and make a video like just like being open and vulnerable which in my opinion are some of the best videos on YouTube like I'm not even subscribed to Loreley but this is the best video I've ever seen from her like but it bumps me out that people have to like preface them sharing their story like I'm not looking for pity I'm not looking for you to feel bad for me or anything like that it's like god like it just it bumps me out because it kind of shows you the state that we're in as a culture where we're always expecting the worst out of people we're expecting everybody to have the worst intentions the worst motives right so creators like Loreley they have to say I'm not trying to get pity or anything like that she has to explain her motivations behind it which is trying to help others you know what I mean like the fact that she hasn't gone into this story before should be enough but especially because of the you know controversy Loreley was in last year I understand why she did it but I want you as the viewers to kind of think about that how how isn't it sad that creators have to say I'm not looking for pity I'm just trying to share my story to hopefully help people like it's a little silly how we have to do that when my sister was 16 she was pregnant with Aaron so she was a teen mom I was 14 years old I'm two years younger than my sister and this is what led up to my parents divorce which I think needed to happen probably before this but when my mom found out my sister was pregnant she thought it was a bit of a mistake how she raised all three of us with my dad and so she told us she was divorcing my dad to take my sister and her new baby and me away from the situation just she wouldn't have to raise Aaron in the same situation that me my brother sister were raised so in that clip right there I want to talk about this like her mom leaving the husband like that is so powerful and I don't think many people understand how powerful that is all right so when I was working at the treatment center I had so so many people mainly women who came through treatment and their life depended on getting sober or their kids well being depended on the the mom getting sober right but they would say I can't leave my husband I can't leave I'm like the hell you can't you can leave this dude right the thing is we don't want to all right so like Laura Lee when she's talking about how when her niece was uh you know about to be born the mom was finally like you know what I do not want her to go through what my kids went through and she finally gained the courage to leave you know that man and my mother she um I'm gonna show a little bit about what it was like growing up with an alcoholic mother in a little bit but she's coming up on 14 years clean and sober and one of the only reasons she's still sober today is because she finally left her husband all right not my dad it was my step dad but she left my dad too anyways anyways like this is really powerful I just want you guys to know like when it comes to our recovery like this is a life and death situation in most cases like we have to leave people that are not there helping us get better or in this case with Laura Lee's mom if you're in a relationship with an addict or alcoholic if they're refusing to get help if they're refusing to stay well and do what they have to do to stay sober it is time for you to leave that relationship all right as much as we wish our love or think our love could make someone get better and by staying with them they can make them get better like in many cases it's actually keeping them in that bad place and then we moved into a two-bedroom apartment where Aaron and my sister could share a room and then me and my mom shared a room our then income went from being low to being like really low because my mom's a daycare teacher and they don't make a lot of money she always she's been a daycare teacher for like over 20 years and so the money we have from my dad's job literally was gone and we just were living off her income so my mom had picked up two extra jobs she got another daycare teacher job after work and then really late at night she worked at a pet store almost every night so my mom was working her hardest I was in school and my sister was about to have her baby I just want to show that clip right there because Laura Lee if you ever see this tell your mom that she is a badass like I love I love hearing stories about this like her mom left the dad and is working multiple jobs to support these kids and her new granddaughter I'm like dang like sit back like when we think about all the excuses we have not to go out and do stuff like we need to look at stories like that and be like damn if Laura Lee's mom could do that what can I get done well definitely want to say something about it because if it will help anybody it's worth telling um I just never thought that I would be somebody to be addicted to a drug I've had you know boyfriends in the past who were addicted and I tried to help them to them where we have um our dad you know with an alcoholic so um I never really realized what it meant to be and actually to have a tiny one and so addiction definitely doesn't discriminate so right there Laura Lee's sister talks about how she never thought she'd be addicted and I can definitely relate to that so as the child of an alcoholic mom like I swore like I'm never gonna touch that stuff you know what I mean and I actually didn't get drunk for my first time until the end of my senior year but I was like you know I this this won't happen to me I'm not gonna turn into that person and Laura Lee's sister kind of shares a little bit about how she was just off and running once she started and that was my story too and then second we're gonna talk about genetics and everything when it comes to addiction but for some of us that's the case like if any of you are in recovery or even currently in addiction like feel free to leave a comment down below like did you realize that you were hooked the second you got higher drunk the first time because that's what happens to so so many of us all right and something else I was just thinking about is I'm really glad that Laura Lee is talking about this and her whole family's involved because like everybody out there needs to care about addiction like it affects everybody like on average I think the current statistic is one out of every 10 or 11 people is addicted to a substance so that means like even if you're not addicted if you know 10 or 11 people someone you know is addicted and like Laura Lee talks about it affects the entire family like you might be affected by this so it's important to understand that stuff all right do you think it was hereditary in any way or do you think like you know our childhood was a little crazy with mom and dad um yeah I think like I don't know like they say it's hereditary with those alcoholics and I don't know I think it's just like a disease that we have so right there when she's asking like do you think you know you got it from dad or you know whatever it is right so here's the thing when it comes to addiction there are a variety of different risk factors so I used to teach a class in the rehab center about the science of addiction and one of the things I would start off with was the risk factors because something I got to a point with my recovery was I was like why me why did I become addicted so there are a variety of different risk factors and just from listening to this story like one of them is genetics all right there is an addiction gene and if you have that gene you have a 50 50 chance of becoming addicted it doesn't mean you will become addicted like Laura Lee it doesn't sound uh or we don't know like but it doesn't sound like she has a problem with drugs or alcohol it doesn't happen to everybody that has that addiction gene all right the other thing is too people who are raised by alcoholics or drug addicts are at a much higher risk of addiction all right so if your caregiver is an alcoholic or a drug addict your chances increase to I believe it's about 80% all right so there's a 50% chance based on genetics but an 80% chance just by being raised in that environment so even if you are adopted and raised by an alcoholic or a drug addict your chances of becoming addicted are extremely high but then there are other risk factors such as mental illness um Laura Lee mentioned that they were pretty broke when she was growing up poverty is another contributing factor factor towards addiction but anyways anyways if you're interested in this stuff and learning about the science of addiction the course I taught at the rehab center I actually have it up on my website all right and it was 100% free all right the course is only like an hour hour and a half long okay so that is going to be linked down in the description below so if you want to learn about the science of addiction go check that thing out I truly am really grateful and have so much family that actually love and care about me and like I put that for granted you know like mom is so awesome and you and Erin just everybody that's been so forgiving of me that you know just all the horrible things that I did while I was on drugs and it just it's crazy how everybody just you know came back to me and like trusting me and it feels really good even if I do have to go to prison down the road you know God forbid I don't have to I hope I don't but if I do I know that I have my family and you guys behind me it it's a different mindset it really is right there that is such a powerful part all right when she's talking about like even if I eventually have to go to prison I have my family like I remember when I first got clean I heard people talking like this and like that is madness that is absolute bananas like I don't know about y'all but I didn't get clean and sober to go to prison you know what I mean but as we stay sober like a lot of us have to we call it cleaning up the wreckage of our past and some things come up like for example I'm seven years sober and some stuff came up earlier this year from before I got sober all right like these things can happen and sometimes I've seen people go to jail for stuff they did before they got sober even though they had years of recovery but here's the thing when we get sober and we start living this new life like we get our family back right like I'm gonna talk about my son in a second but we get our children back like we have hope you know what I mean and I've met people who have gotten locked up and stayed sober you know so I think it's awesome that Lorely's sister's in a place where she can share that I know that she's happy and I'm happy that she's happy and I'm just so thankful that my family took you know over and came and stepped in where I put it because there's so many people out there that their children are in foster care and they're fighting I see them in class fighting to get them out and I feel like this is beyond blessed that both my children didn't have to go that you know my family members stepped up and so that's a blessing so right there like that is so true like her sister talking about how there's other people like fighting to get their kids out of foster care and yeah she was very fortunate um that Laura was able to adopt you know her daughter Erin um I am very fortunate as well like I was addicted until my son was three years old and I wasn't allowed to see him I didn't see him for the last four months of my addiction and then I didn't see him until I was about four or five months sober all right and thank god for his mom like I am so lucky to have such an amazing baby mama she is awesome and her family is amazing and it took some time but we've repaired our relationship like today is my son's little brother's birthday and we were able to like get him some presents and everything like that and my son's little brother is the kid of my baby mama and her new husband you know what I mean like my life is just extraordinary today and I hear stories like this and it makes me so grateful like even Laura Lee's sister you can hear that gratitude that Laura Lee was able to adopt Erin you know what I mean like I've I've met other people who got sober and they've had family members adopt their kids you know and it's it's something that a lot of people who aren't in recovery won't understand but yeah like that's definitely better than your kids ending up in foster care you know what I mean yes and that is that you just have to give it time and I know that sounds horrible but it eventually gets better if it didn't nobody would recover lastly I love that part right there where you know she just wants to tell anybody out there struggling like it gets better and like that's the same thing I would tell anybody out there struggling or just in early recovery like when we when we get sober so many of us we we think that it's going to get better right away we think we're going to get clean and sober for like 30 days and the family's going to come back we're going to get a job we're going to have money and everybody's going to forgive us and all this other stuff it takes time like there's a saying in the rooms of 12 step programs that don't leave before the miracle happens right and I'm the type of person I don't know about you but I'm like when when is this when is this damn miracle going to happen right and nobody nobody could tell me that but they promise me that as long as I stay sober one day at a time and try to become a little bit better of a person one day at a time things will get better and there were so so many times that I wanted to relapse in my first couple years sober but I remember to just give it more time and now my life is phenomenal and those of you who who have been around for a little while you know that I've had a very very rough year but relapse is not an option for me because even during my horrible days while sober there's still way better than the life I used to live all right but anyways tomorrow I will be making a video um the part two of this video and I'm going to discuss being a loved one of an addict or an alcoholic because like I said I'm the son of an alcoholic mom luckily she's sober now but I want to discuss this from the angle of Laura Lee and her daughter Erin so make sure that you stay tuned and that exciting announcement I was telling you about I actually wrote a book called caught in the crossfire and I wrote that book for anybody who has a loved one struggling with addiction all right it has intervention strategies but mainly it's how you can keep your head on straight whether or not the other person gets sober all right so down in the description below there's a coupon code and the first 10 people to use that code get a free copy of caught in the crossfire all right if you miss out on the coupon code it's only three bucks but anyways anyways if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on patreon everybody who supports the channel in other ways by getting merch or buying my books and all that kind of stuff all of it helps a lot and I love you for it all right thanks again for watching I'll see you next time


From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. CIOs in the most recent September ETR spending survey tell us that they expect a slight sequential improvement in Q4 spending relative to Q3, but still down 4% from Q4 2019. So this picture is still not pretty, but it's not bleak either to wit. Firms are adjusting to the new abnormal and are taking positive actions that can be described as a slow thawing of the deep freeze. Hello everyone, this is Dave Vellante and welcome to this week's Wikibon Cube Insights, powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis, we're going to review fresh survey data from ETR and provide our outlook for both Q4 of 2020 and into 2021. Now we're still holding at our 4% to 5% decline in tech spending for 2020, but we do see light at the end of the tunnel with some cautions. Specifically, more than 1,000 CIOs and IT buyers have, we've surveyed, expect tech spending to show a slight upward trend of roughly 2% in 2021. This is off of a Q4 decline of 4% relative to Q4 2019, but I would put it this way, a slightly less worse decline sequentially from Q3. Last quarter, we saw a 5% decline in spending. So generally more of the same, but things seem to be improving, again with caveats. Now in particular, we'll show data that suggests technology project freezes are slowly coming back and we see remote workers returning at a fairly significant rate. However, executives expect nearly double the percentage of employees working remotely in the midterm and even longterm than they did pre COVID. That suggests that the work from home trend is not cyclical but showing signs of permanence. And why not? CIOs report that on balance productivity has been maintained or even improved during COVID. Now of course, this all has to be framed in the context of the unknowns, like the fall and even winter surge. What about fiscal policy? There's uncertainty in the election, social unrest. All right, so let's dig into some of the specifics of the ETR data. Now I mentioned the number of respondents at over 1,000. I have to say this was predominantly a US based survey. So it's 80% sort of biased to the US. But it's also weighted to the big spenders in larger organizations with a nice representation across industries. So it's good data here. Now you can see here the slow progression of improvement relative to Q3, which as I said was down 5% year on year with a 4% decline expected in Q4. Now ETR is calling for roughly 4% decline for the year. And I've been consistently in the 4% to 5% decline range and agree with that outlook. And you can see CIOs are planning for a 2% uptick in 2021 as we said at the open. Now in our view, this represents some prudent caution. And I think there's probably some upside, but it's a good planning assumption for the market overall in my view. Now let's look at some of the actions that organizations are taking and how that's changed over time. You can see here that organizations, they're slowly releasing that grip on tech spending overall. You know, still no material change in employees working from home or traveling. But you can see that hiring freezes are down. That's positive in the green as our new IT deployment freezes. And a slight uptick in acceleration of new deployments. Now as well, you see fewer companies are planning layoffs and while small, the percent of companies adding headcount has doubled from last quarter's minimal number. All right, so this is based on survey data at the end of the summer. So it reflects that end of summer scent of it. So we got to be a little bit cautious here. And I think CIOs are by nature cautious on their projections of 2% up in 2021. Now importantly, remember this does not get us back to 2019 spending levels. So we may be seeing a kind of a long, slow climb out of this, you know, tepid market. Maybe 2022 gets back over 2019 before we start to see sustained growth again. And remember, these recoveries are rarely smooth. They're not straight line. So you got to expect some choppiness with, you know, some pockets of opportunity which we'll discuss here. In this slide, we're showing the top areas that respondents cited as spending priorities for Q4 and into 2021. So the chart shows the ratings based on a seven point scale. And these are the top spending initiatives heading into the year end. Now, as we've been saying for the better part of a decade, cyber security is a do-over. And I've joked, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, well COVID broke everything. And cyber is an area that's seeing long-term change, in my opinion. End point security, identity access management, cloud security, security as a service. These are all trends that we're seeing as really major waves as a result of COVID. Now it's coming at the expense of large install bases of things like traditional hardware-based firewalls. And we've talked about this a lot in previous segments. Cloud migration is interesting. And I really think it needs some interpretation. I mean, nobody likes to do migrations. So I would suggest this includes things like, I have a bunch of people answering phones and offices or I had and then overnight, boom, the offices are closed. So I needed a cloud-based solution. I didn't just lift and shift my entire phone routing system from the office into the cloud, but I probably pivoted to a cloud solution to support those work-from-home employees. Now, my guess is I think that would be included in these responses. I mean, I do know an example of an insurance company that did migrate its claims application to the cloud during COVID, but this was something that they were, you know, planning to do pre-COVID. And I guess the point here is twofold. Again, as I said, migrations are hairy, nobody wants to do them. And I think this category really means I'm increasing my use of the cloud. So I'm kind of migrating my operations over time to the cloud. All right, look at collaboration, no shocker here. We've pounded, you know, Zoom and WebEx to death. Analytics is really interesting. We have talked extensively and have been covering Snowflake and we pointed out that there's a new workload that has emerged in the cloud. It's not just Snowflake, you know, there are others, AWS Redshift, Google with BigQuery and others, but Snowflake is the off-the-charts hot IPO and so we talk a lot about it, but it relates to this easy setup and access to a data layer with having, you know, requisite security and governance. And this market is exploding, adding AI on top and really doing this in the cloud so you can scale it up or down and really only pay for what you need. That's a real benefit to people. Compare that to the traditional EDW, snakes swallowing a basketball. I got to get every new Intel chip. You're not dialing up, dialing down. You're over provisioning and half the time you're not using half. Most of the time you're not utilizing what you paid for. All right, look at networking. You know, traffic patterns changed overnight with COVID. DDoS attacks are up 25 to 40% since COVID. Cyber attacks overall are up 400% this year. So these all have impacts on the network. Machine learning and AI, I talked about a little bit earlier about that, but organizations are realizing that infusing AI into the application portfolio is becoming really an imperative, much more important as the automation mandate that we've talked about becomes more acute people. You can't scale humans at the pace of technology. So automation becomes much more important. That of course leads us to RPA. Now you might think RPA should be a higher priority, but I think what's happening here is IT organizations, you know, they were scrambling to plug holes in a dike, whereas RPA is somewhat more strategic and planful. Our data suggests that RPA remains one of the most elevated spending categories in terms of net score, ETR's measure of spending momentum. So this means way more people are spending more than spending less in the RPA category. So it really has a lot of legs. In fact, with the exception of container orchestration, I think RPA is a sector that has the highest net score. I think you'll see that in the upcoming surveys. It's as high or even higher than AI. I think it's higher than cloud. It's just that IT, and remember this is an IT survey and a lot of the RPA stuff is going on at the business level, but IT had to keep the ship afloat when COVID hit, which somewhat shifted priorities, but RPA remains strong. Let's go back to the work from home trend for a moment. I know it's been played out and kind of beat on, really heavily covered, but I got to tell you, ETR was the very first on this trend. It was way back in March, and the data here is instructive. It shows that the percentage of employees working from home prior to COVID, currently working from home, the percent expected in six months, and then those expected essentially permanently. And this is primarily work from home versus I don't work a day or two per week. It's really the five day of weekers. I work remotely. As you can see, only 16% of employees were working from home pre-pandemic, whereas more than 70% are at home today. And CIOs, they actually see a meaningful decline in that number over the next six months. We'll see based on how COVID comes back. And this fall and winter surge and how that'll affect these plans. But look what it does long-term. It settles in at like 34%. That's double pre-COVID. So really a meaningful and permanent impact is expected from the isolation economy that we're in today. And again, why not? Look at this data. It shows the distribution of productivity improvements so that while 23% of respondents said work from home productivity impacts were neutral, nearly half, I think it was 48%, if you add up those bars on the right, nearly half are seeing productivity improvements. Well, less than 30% see a decline in productivity. And you can see the ETR quants, they peg the average gain at between three and 5%. That's pretty significant. Now, of course, not everyone can work from home. If you're working at a restaurant, you really, unless you're in finance, you really can't work from home. But we're seeing in this digital economy with cloud and other technologies that we actually can work from pretty much anywhere in the world. And many employees are going to look at work from home options as a benefit. It was just a couple of years ago, remember that we were talking about companies like IBM and Yahoo mandated coming into the office. I mean, that was like 2017, 2018 timeframe. Well, that trend is over. Now, let me give you a quick preview with some of the other things that we're seeing and what the ETR data shows. Now, let me also say, I'm just scratching the surface here. ETR has deep, deep data cuts. They have the SaaS platform allows you to look at the data all different ways. And if you're not working with them, you should be because the data gets updated so frequently every quarter there's new data, there's drill down surveys and it's forward looking. So, you know, a lot of the survey data or a lot of the data that we use, market share data and other data are sort of looking back. You know, you use your sales data, your sales forecast, that's obviously forward looking, but the ETR survey data can actually give an observation space outside of your sales force.  I wanna make it available and make the community aware of it. All right, so let's do a little speed round on some of the vendors of interest that we've talked about in the last several segments, last couple of years, actually, many years, decade. Anyway, start with AWS. AWS continues to be strong, but they have less momentum than Microsoft. This is sort of a recurring pattern here, but AWS churn is low, low, low. Not a lot of people leaving the AWS platform, despite what we hear about this repatriation trend. Data warehousing is a little bit soft, whereas we see snowflake very, very strong, but AWS's share is really strong inside of large companies. So cloud and teams and security are strong from Microsoft, whereas data warehouse and AI aren't as robust as we've seen before, but Microsoft Azure cloud continues to see a little bit more momentum than AWS. So we'll watch that next quarter for AWS earnings call. Now, Google has good momentum and they're steady, especially in cloud, database, AI and analytics. We've talked a lot about our Googles behind the big two, but nonetheless, they're showing good momentum. Service now, very low churn, but they're kind of hitting the law of large numbers, still super strong in large accounts, but not the same red hot momentum as we've seen in the past. Okta is showing continued momentum. They're holding close to number one of that top spot in security that we talked about last time. No surprise, given the increased importance of identity access management that we've been talking about so much. CrowdStrike last survey in July, they showed some softness, despite a good quarter, and we're seeing continued deceleration in the survey. Now, that's from extremely out of elevated levels, but it's significantly down from where CrowdStrike was at the height of the lockdown. I mean, we like the sector of endpoint security and CrowdStrike is definitely a leader there and well managed company, but maybe they got hit with a quick COVID injection with a step up function that's maybe moderating somewhat.  I really don't see that. I think it's, maybe there's some survey data isn't reflective of what CrowdStrike is seeing. We're going to see in the upcoming earnings release, but it's something that we're watching very closely. Two survey snapshots with CrowdStrike being a little bit softer, doesn't make a sustained trend, but we would have liked to seen a little bit stronger this quarter. The data is still coming in, so we'll see. Sale point is one we focused on recently and we see very little negative in their numbers so they're holding solid. Zscaler showing pretty strong momentum and while there was some concern, last survey within large organizations and see that might have been a survey anomaly because Zscaler, they had a strong quarter, they had a good outlook and we're seeing a strong recovery in the most recent data. So also looks like Zscaler is pressuring some Palo Alto networks dominance and momentum heading into the quarter. So we'll pay close attention to that. We've said we like Palo Alto networks but they're so big they've got some exposures but they can offset those and they're doing a better job in cloud with their pricing models and sort of leaning into some of the market waves. Sale point appears to be holding serve, you know, heading into the fourth quarter. Snowflake, I mean, what can we say? It continues to show some of the strongest spending momentum going into Q4 and into 2021. No signs of slowing down. They're going to have their first earnings reports coming up, you know, in a few months so I got to believe they got it together and they're going to be strong reports. UiPath and momentum is slowing down a bit but existing customers keep spending with UiPath and there's very few defections so it looks like their land and expand is working pretty well. Automation anywhere continues to be strong despite comments about the sector earlier which showed, you know, maybe it wasn't as high a priority some other sectors but as I said, you know, it's still really, really strong in terms of momentum. And Automation anywhere in UiPath they continue to battle it out for the top spot within the data set, within the automation data set. But I should say within RPA, I mean, companies like Pegasystems have a broader automation agenda and we really like their strategy and their execution. Databricks, you know, hot company, once a hot company, still hot but we're seeing a little bit of a deceleration in the survey even though new customer acquisition is quite strong, put it this way. Databricks is strong but not the off the charts outperformer that it used to be. This is how ETR framed that, their analysis. So I want to obviously credit that to them. Datadog showing the most strength in the application performance management or monitoring sector, whichever you prefer. But generally the net scores in that sector as we talked about last week, they're not great as a sector when you compare it to other leading sectors like cloud or automation, RPA as an example, container orchestration. You know, APM is kind of significantly lower. It's not as low as some of the on-prem infrastructure or some of the on-prem software but given Datadog's high valuation, it's somewhat of a concern so we keep an eye on that. MongoDB, they got virtually no customer churn but they're losing some momentum in terms of net score in the survey which is something we're keeping an eye on. And a big downtick in large organization acquisition within the data. So in other words, they had a lot of new acquisitions within large companies but that's down. Now again, that could be anomalies in the data. I don't want to go to the bank on that necessarily but that's something to watch. Zoom, they keep growing but ETR data sites a churn of actually up to 7% due to some security concerns. So that was widely reported in the press. And somewhere slower velocity for Zoom overall due to a possible competition from Microsoft Teams. But I tell you, it has an amazing stat that ETR threw out. Pre-COVID Zoom penetration in the education vertical was 15%. Today, it's over 80%. Wowza. Cisco, Cisco's core is weak. As we've said, you've seen that in their earnings numbers. It's their softness there but security, Maraki, those are two areas that remain strong. Same kind of similar story to last quarter survey. Pure storage, the high flyer, they're like the one eyed man in the land of the storage blind. So storage, not a great market, we've talked about that. We've seen some softness in the dataset from in pure storage and really often sympathy with the generally back burner storage market. Again, they still outperforming their peers but we've seen slower growth rates there in the survey and that's been reflected in their earnings. So we've been talking about that for a while, really keeping an eye on pure. They've made some acquisitions, trying to expand their market, enough said about that. Rubric, Rubric's interesting. They kind of were off the charts a couple of surveys ago and they really come off of those highs. Anecdotally, we're hearing some concerns in the market. It's hard to tell, the private company, Cohesity has overtaken Rubric in spending momentum now for the second quarter in a row. They're still not as prevalent in the dataset. We'd like to see more ends from Cohesity. Remember, this is sort of a random sample across multiple industries. We let the, or ETR lets the respondents tell them what they're buying and what they're spending on. But Cohesity has the highest net score relative to compares like Rubric, like Veeam. I even threw in when I looked at Nutanix, Pure, Dell EMC's, VxRail. Those are not direct competitors, but they're kind of quasi-compares, if you will. New Relic, they're showing some concerning trends on churn and the company is way off its 2018 momentum highs in the survey and we talked about this last week, some of the challenges New Relic is facing. But we like their tech, NRDB is purpose built for monitoring and performance management. And we feel like they can retain their leadership if they can pull it together. We talked about Elliott management being in there, so that's something that we're watching. Red Hat is showing strength and open shift, really, really strong IBM services exposure. It's not the greatest business in the world right now. At the same time, I mean, there's crosswinds there. At the same time, people need some services and they need some help there, but certainly the outsourcing business, so there's countervailing crosswinds within IBM. But open shift, bright spot. I think when I look at the Red Hat acquisition, yeah, 34 billion, but it's pretty obvious why IBM made that move. But anyway, IBM's core business continues to be under pressure. That's why Red Hat is such an important component, which brings me to VMware. VMware has been an execution machine at VMworld this past week. We talked last month about the strength of VMware Cloud on AWS and it's still strong and VMware Cloud portfolio with VMware Cloud Foundation and other offerings, but other than Tanzu, VMware is in this October survey, the first look shows some deceleration really across the board. One potential saving grace ETR shared with me is that the Fortune 500 spending for VMware is stronger.  But there seems to be some potential exposure there. We won't know for sure until late next year how the Dell reshuffle is going to affect them. But it's going to be interesting to see how Dell restructures VMware's balance sheet to get its own house in order. And remember, Dell wants to get to investment grade for its own balance sheet, yet at the same time it wants to keep VMware at investment grade. But the interesting thing to watch is what impact that's going to have on VMware's ability to fund its future. And we're not going to know that for a long, long time, but we'll keep an eye on those developments. Now Dell for its part showing strength and work from home and also strengthen giant public and privates, which is a bellwether in the ETR data set. These are huge private companies, for example, Coke Industries would be one, massive private companies, Mars would be another example, necessarily that they're the ones responding, although my guess is they are, it's anonymous, but actually ETR actually knows and they can identify who those bellwethers are. And it's been a predictor of performance for the last, better part of a decade. So we'll see. VxRail is strong, service and storage, they're still muted relative to last year, but not really down from July. So, you know, holding on, Dell holding on to a tepid spending outlook, they had such huge exposure on-prem.  And remember, they still have the, still have, they have a PC business unlike HPE, which I'll talk about in a moment, I'll talk about now. Aruba is the bright spot for HPE, but servers and storage, those seem to be off, you know, similar to Dell, but maybe even down further. I think, you know, Dell is kind of holding relative to last quarter survey, you know, down from earlier this year and certainly down from last year, but HPE seems to be on a steeper downward trajectory in storage and service from the survey. We'll see, again, you know, one snapshot quarter does not a trend to make, but again, storage looks particularly soft, which is a bit of a concern and we saw that, you know, in HPE's numbers, you know, last quarter. Customer acquisition is strong for Nutanix, but overall spending is decelerating versus a year ago levels. We know about the $750 million injection from Bain Capital. Basically, you know, in talking to Bain, what essentially they're doing is they're betting on upside in the hyper-converged marketplace. It's true that from a penetration standpoint, there's a long, long way to go. And it's also true that Nutanix is shifting from a, you know, perpetual model, you know, boom by the CapEx to an annual recurring revenue model and they kind of need a bridge of cash to sort of soften that blow. We've seen companies like Tableau make that transition and Adobe successfully made that transition. Splunk is in that transition now and it's, you know, kind of funky for them. But anyway, you know, within that infrastructure software and virtualization sectors, you know, Nutanix is showing some softness, but in things like storage, actually Nutanix looking pretty strong, very strong actually. So again, this theme of these crosswinds supporting some companies, whereas they're exposed in other areas. You certainly see that with large companies and Nutanix looks like it's got some momentum in some areas and, you know, challenges and others. Okay, so that's just a quick speed dating round with some of the vendor previews for the upcoming survey. So I just want to summarize now and we'll wrap. So we see overall tech spending off four to 5% in 2020 with a slightly less bad, slightly less bad Q4 sequentially relative to Q3. All this is relative to last year. So we see continued headwinds coming into 2021 and expect low single digit spending growth next year. Let's call it 2%. And there are some clear pockets of growth taking advantage of what we see as a more secular work from home trend, particularly in security, although we're watching some of the leadership positions. Cloud, despite the commentary earlier, remains very, very strong. AWS, Azure, Google, Red Hat OpenShift, serverless, Kubernetes, analytic cloud databases, all very, very strong. Automation also stands out as a priority in what we think is the coming decade with an automation mandate. And some of the themes we've talked about for a long time, particularly the impact of cloud relative to on-prem. You know, we don't see this so-called repatriation as much of a trend as it is a bunch of fud from on-prem vendors that don't own a public cloud. So you just don't see it. I mean, I'm sure there are examples of, oh, we did something in the cloud. We lifted and shifted. It didn't work out. We didn't change our operating model. Okay, but the number of successes in cloud is like many orders of magnitude, you know, greater than the numbers of failures. On the plus side, however, for the on-prem guys, the hybrid and multi-cloud spaces are increasingly becoming strategic for customers. So that's something that I've said for a long time, particularly with multi-cloud, we've kind of been waiting. It's been a lot of vendor PowerPoints, but that really, we talk to customers now, they're hedging their bets in cloud. They're putting horses for courses in terms of workloads. They're not betting their business necessarily on a single cloud. And as a result, they need security and governance and performance and management across clouds that's consistent. So that's actually a really reasonable and significant opportunity for a lot of the on-prem vendors. And as we've said before, they're probably not necessarily going to trust the cloud players, the public cloud players, to deliver that. They're going to want somebody that's cloud agnostic. Okay, that's it for this week. Remember, all these episodes are available as podcasts wherever you listen, so please subscribe. I publish weekly on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com and don't forget to check out etr.plus for all the survey action and the analytics. These guys are amazing. I always appreciate the comments on my LinkedIn posts. Thank you very much. You can DM me at dvalante or email me at david.valante at siliconangle.com and this is Dave Vellante. Thanks for watching this episode of Cube Insights powered by ETR. Be well and we'll see you next time.