July is traditionally a hot month, at least here in the U.S., and this year it lived up to the hype. The tech sector was equally hot, with key mergers and acquisitions, as well as C-suite swaps (whew, try to say that fast three times), keeping our writers busy.

In our top story for the month, executive editor Dan Meyer analyzed the pending VMware acquisition by Broadcom as it seemed to clear the hurdle of U.K. regulatory approval (at least provisionally). Who will the winners be when the deal closes? That remains to be seen. But the losers are starting to look like VMware's “tag-on” solutions like Tanzu and Carbon Black.

Our second most-read story last month was about the revolving door that Dish Network's executive suite has become. In efforts to turn around its shaky finances, Dish has been working aggressively to slash costs. And people, apparently.

And as with every month, cloud, security and artificial intelligence (AI) are top of mind and on our Top 10 list. Check it out here. Rankings are based on unique visitors aggregated during the month.

United Kingdom regulators gave a provisional stamp of approval to Broadcom’s pending $69 billion acquisition of VMware, which continues to gain momentum toward an increasingly likely closing. However, analysts remain concerned on the long-term ramifications of the proposed deal.

Dish Network is set to lose another executive, with the latest exodus coming from its wireless network executive ranks. The changes come on the heels of a broader push by the company to slash spending for the build-out of its open radio access network (RAN)-based 5G network.

While some may arrive at multicloud on purpose, most are getting there organically. In fact, multicloud really is a natural progression of an organization’s requirement to leverage best-of-breed technology from any number of cloud providers to enable innovation. And innovation is the true value of cloud computing.

Microsoft introduced its new zero-trust network access (ZTNA) and secure web gateway (SWG) services under its Entra suite, leading to its official entry into the busy SSE market. The tech giant also rebranded its popular Azure Active Directory (AD) into Microsoft Entra ID.

Generative AI is sweeping across the tech landscape at an unprecedented rate, upending operational models despite most still not fully grasping what it is or what it can do. That uncertainty is especially challenging for the telecommunications space that has a history of reticence when it comes to change and is perhaps facing the most pressure to adopt generative AI-supported change.

AT&T, Orange Business and Verizon garnered top marks from a pair of research firms in their latest ranking of worldwide managed SD-WAN providers, with one stating that the U.S. accounts for the largest share of consumed SD-WAN services.

Cisco announced plans to acquire Oort, an identity threat detection and response (ITDR) technology provider, in a move to boost its identity security portfolio.

Cisco released a security advisory that alerted its customers of a high-severity vulnerability (CVE-2023-20185) in its Nexus 9000 fabric series switches. The flaw could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to read or modify intersite encrypted traffic and, for now, the vendor has not released any software updates to address this vulnerability and no workarounds have been suggested.

Today’s IT estates are massive, comprehensive and increasingly difficult to manage. IT leaders want to be more efficient, intuitive and sustainable — but they often don’t know where to start.

“Enterprises today are sitting on mountains of data that, in many cases, they do not know how to mine, analyze or use to benefit their business,” said Antoine Shagoury, global CTO of Kyndryl.

Asset management firm TPG struck a $2.45 billion deal to acquire security company Forcepoint‘s Global Governments and Critical Infrastructure (G2CI) business from Francisco Partners.