There’s no need to sugarcoat things. Despite what the stock market tells you, the enterprise technology environment is a tough sell right now, with the tech markets in a general slowdown. But cloud networking startups are doing interesting things in response to this new environment as they go after opportunities for growth, including cost management, AI, and the hybrid cloud.

For now, AI is a bit of a lifeline. But as we track the evolution of the cloud, what is developing is a new wave of networking technology as platforms are refreshed with a focus on long-term multicloud and hybrid cloud networking tools and applications.