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RAIN Group Research Reveals Pipeline Is Growing, but Sales Performance Isn’t Keeping Pace

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New study finds sales leaders need stronger capabilities and execution discipline to turn opportunities into revenue

BOSTON, June 18, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — RAIN Group, a global sales training company helping enterprise teams drive business outcomes through tailored learning experiences, coaching, and technology, released the results from its latest study, 2026 Sales Challenges & Priorities.

Our latest research shows that pipeline growth alone doesn’t guarantee stronger sales performance. The real question is whether organizations have the capabilities, manager reinforcement, and execution discipline to convert pipeline into revenue.

Led by the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research, analysts examined responses from more than 250 sales management, leadership, and enablement professionals to identify the top challenges facing sales organizations, how sales performance has changed, and where leaders are focusing their priorities for the year ahead.

As the third wave of this study, following research fielded in 2019 and 2023, the findings show that while pipeline momentum is improving, many organizations are struggling to translate that momentum into wins, quota attainment, and revenue growth.

“For years, sales leaders have pushed for more pipeline, more opportunities, and more at-bats,” said Scott McDonald, CEO of RAIN Group. “But our latest research shows that pipeline growth alone doesn’t guarantee stronger sales performance. The real question is whether organizations have the capabilities, manager reinforcement, and execution discipline to convert pipeline into revenue.”

Among the performance trends uncovered in the study:

47.2% reported an increase in qualified pipeline37.1% reported an increase in quota attainment39.7% reported an increase in opportunities won48.4% reported an increase in sales cycle length

The data reveals that opportunity flow is improving for many organizations, but performance is not keeping pace. Conversion gains remain inconsistent, and deal velocity continues to be under pressure.

Respondents also reported widespread challenges across the sales environment. The top challenges, ranked by the percentage of respondents who said they were very or somewhat challenging, include:

Recruiting and hiring strong sales talent: 86.3%Selling in an uncertain economy: 86.1%Dealing with longer sales cycle times: 83.0%Losing deals to no decision or status quo: 82.4%Winning against strong or difficult competitors: 80.2%Developing sales managers: 79.6%Dealing with more decision makers, buying teams, and committees: 79.5%Developing sales skills: 79.5%Generating qualified sales-ready opportunities: 79.3%Buyer budget constraints: 79.0%

“Sales leaders are facing immense pressure from every direction,” McDonald added. “Many of these challenges can’t be controlled directly. What leaders can control is how well their teams qualify opportunities, communicate value, engage stakeholders, tackle no decision delays, and execute consistently throughout the sales process.”

While overall sales priorities span pipeline generation, customer growth, coaching, and execution, the study found that when respondents were forced to prioritize, leaders concentrated their attention on a narrower set of issues tied directly to conversion, retention, and revenue realization.

The top forced-choice priorities were:

Win more against difficult competitors: 44.0%Reduce sales lost to no decision: 40.8%Improve customer retention and renewals: 39.7%Improve ability to communicate value: 30.0%

According to the research, stronger execution capabilities are especially critical as market pressure increases. Opportunity planning, value communication, stakeholder engagement, deal qualification, no-decision prevention, coaching, and manager reinforcement all influence whether opportunities advance, stall, or convert to revenue.

McDonald continued, “The organizations that improve performance in 2026 won’t be the ones that simply demand more activity. They’ll be the ones that diagnose where performance is breaking down and build the sales capabilities and management systems needed to improve conversion.”

Download the full report at: https://hubs.li/Q04lssxq0

About RAIN Group

RAIN Group is an award-winning leader in sales transformation, with over 20 years of researching and enabling top sales performance. The firm’s modular, multi-modal approach to sales training provides flexible, tech-enabled, and customizable solutions for complex global teams. Trusted by leading companies, RAIN Group partners with clients to ensure learning is adopted, creates lasting behavior change, and drives measurable results. Learn more at raingroup.com.

Media Contact
Aly Jamison, APR, RAIN Group, 1 508-405-0438, ajamison@raingroup.com, https://www.rainsalestraining.com

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SOURCE RAIN Group

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CNCF Welcomes Adyen as Platinum End User Member to Advance Open Source Financial Infrastructure

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Operating over 100 Kubernetes clusters across €1.39T in volume, Adyen brings production-scale fintech expertise to CNCF governance and open source projects

Key Highlights

Adyen joins the CNCF as a Platinum End User Member, gaining seats on the CNCF Governing Board and End User Technical Advisory Board.Operating over 100 Kubernetes clusters with Cilium, Prometheus, and OpenTelemetry, Adyen brings production-scale operational expertise to the open source community.Adyen open sourced kubectl-rexec, a Kubernetes tool that supports auditable kubectl exec access for regulated cloud native environments.

SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — KUBECON + CLOUDNATIVECON NORTH AMERICA – The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, today announced that Adyen, the global financial technology platform, has joined the foundation as a Platinum End User. The move comes as 87% of financial organizations report clear business value from open source, according to the FINOS 2025 State of Open Source in Financial Services Report, reinforcing Adyen’s commitment to advancing the open source technologies that help power secure, scalable financial infrastructure.

Processing billions of transactions each year and €1.39 trillion in volume in 2025, Adyen is investing at the Platinum level to help advance the secure, reliable cloud native infrastructure that financial services require. Its participation brings the operating perspective of a global fintech platform to the open, vendor-neutral community shaping the technologies on which modern finance depends.

“End users are the operational backbone of the cloud native ecosystem, and Adyen represents the pinnacle of high-scale, zero-downtime engineering,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director, CNCF. “Operating over 100 Kubernetes clusters at a global scale gives Adyen unique technical insights. We are thrilled to welcome them as a Platinum End User and look forward to their leadership on our Governing and Technical Advisory Boards.”

Adyen’s membership provides the cloud native community with a direct feedback loop from an environment where platform availability, performance, and security carry immediate financial weight.

Beyond leveraging Kubernetes, Cilium, Prometheus, and OpenTelemetry across its global infrastructure, Adyen actively contributes solutions designed for regulated engineering teams. This includes open sourcing kubectl-rexec, a tool that adds strict auditability to Kubernetes container-access workflows while preserving native developer velocity.

“Investing in the CNCF helps us to maintain full control of our technology,” said Pedro Oliveira, VP of Infrastructure. “When you operate at our scale, vendor lock-in isn’t an option, and having a seat at the table matters. Bringing our real-world experience to the community lets us help shape the tools we rely on every day, making them more reliable for us and for the broader ecosystem.”

As a Platinum End User Member, Adyen will hold a seat on the CNCF Governing Board, which provides business, marketing, and budget oversight for the foundation. The company will also appoint a representative to the End User Technical Advisory Board, which brings end-user needs and perspectives to CNCF community discussions.

To learn more about becoming a CNCF member, visit https://www.cncf.io/about/join/.

About Cloud Native Computing Foundation
Cloud native computing empowers organizations to build and run scalable applications with an open source software stack in public, private, and hybrid clouds. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy. CNCF brings together the industry’s top developers, end users, and vendors and runs the largest open source developer conferences in the world. Supported by nearly 800 members, including the world’s largest cloud computing and software companies, as well as over 200 innovative startups, CNCF is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. For more information, please visit www.cncf.io.

Media Contact
The Linux Foundation
pr@cncf.io

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SOURCE Cloud Native Computing Foundation

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Tiger Analytics Achieves AWS Premier Tier Status in the Amazon Web Services Partner Network

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The recognition reflects Tiger Analytics’ demonstrated technical expertise, customer success, and continued investment in its AWS partnership, strengthening its ability to deliver enterprise-scale cloud, data, and AI solutions.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Tiger Analytics, a global leader in AI and analytics, today announced that it has achieved AWS Premier Tier Services Partner status in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN).

Achieving AWS Premier Tier Services Partner status differentiates Tiger Analytics as an AWS Partner who demonstrated expertise and notable success in helping customers design, architect, build, migrate, and manage their workloads on AWS.

“Achieving AWS Premier Tier marks an important inflection point in Tiger Analytics’ relationship with AWS,” said Puneet Piplani, Head of Strategic Growth and Alliances. “It recognizes the expertise and customer impact we have built together, while creating an even stronger foundation for what comes next. Our ambition is to combine Tiger Analytics’ deep data and AI capabilities with the scale and innovation of AWS to help enterprises move faster from AI ambition to measurable business outcomes. Premier Tier is an important milestone, and we believe the biggest opportunities in our partnership are still ahead of us.”

To earn Premier Tier, companies must complete a rigorous approval process through accreditations and certifications, must demonstrate a long-term investment in their relationship with AWS, and must have extensive expertise in deploying customer solutions on AWS. AWS Premier Tier Services Partners also have a strong team of AWS Trained & Certified technical consultants and have deep expertise in project management and professional services.

The impact of this collaboration is reflected in customer engagements such as Cross River Bank, where Tiger Analytics worked with AWS to establish a governed foundation for developing and deploying agentic AI across banking functions.

“Together with Tiger Analytics and AWS, we’ve built a foundation that allows us to rapidly develop and deploy agentic AI across banking functions,” said Pravesh Rijal, Chief Data and AI Officer at Cross River Bank.

About Tiger Analytics

Tiger Analytics is a global leader in AI & analytics, helping Fortune 1000 companies solve their toughest challenges. We offer full-stack AI and analytics services and solutions to empower businesses to achieve real outcomes. Our team of 7000+ technologists and consultants is based across the globe, working closely with clients across multiple sectors. For more information, visit tigeranalytics.com 

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SOURCE Tiger Analytics

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Meta Wins CNCF End User Case Study Contest for Accelerating AI Infrastructure Deployments From Hours to Minutes

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Using Argo CD and Kargo, Meta is building a GitOps platform to streamline application delivery across 100 Kubernetes clusters supporting AI research and inference

Key Highlights

Meta’s Cloud Foundation team won the CNCF End User Case Study Contest for its GitOps platform, built with Argo CD and Kargo to streamline Kubernetes application delivery.The new platform cuts routine application deployment times from more than four hours to minutes, streamlining the small team’s workflow through a simplified application definition while adding more advanced features such as automated deployment configuration, independent release promotion, and health verification.By separating application delivery from infrastructure provisioning, Meta is enabling independent application rollouts while retaining Terraform for infrastructure management.

SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026 — The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, announced Meta as the winner of the CNCF End User Case Study Contest for its adoption of cloud native technologies to accelerate application delivery across its AI infrastructure. Through a GitOps platform built on Argo CD and Kargo, Meta’s Cloud Foundation team is transforming how applications are deployed and managed across approximately 100 Kubernetes clusters supporting AI research and inference, reducing routine deployment times from more than four hours to minutes.

“AI infrastructure is causing organizations to rethink how they manage applications across distributed environments,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO, CNCF. “Meta’s approach demonstrates how open source technologies like Argo can help teams automate their application delivery, reduce operational complexity and scale infrastructure without adding unnecessary overhead. It’s a powerful example of how cloud native technologies are supporting the operational demands of AI at scale.”

Meta’s Cloud Foundation team, composed of more than 15 engineers, supports approximately 100 Kubernetes clusters across multiple cloud providers and accelerator families. Previously, Terraform was used for both infrastructure provisioning and Kubernetes application deployment, tying even routine application updates to a lengthy infrastructure release process. The shared deployment model meant stalled rollouts could delay unrelated releases and lacked automated health checks to verify application status.

To address these challenges, Meta began building a GitOps platform that separates application delivery from infrastructure provisioning. Terraform continues to manage infrastructure, while Argo CD reconciles application deployments against configurations stored in Git. Kargo orchestrates release promotion across environments, enabling independent rollouts, automated health checks and versioned release records that improve deployment traceability and recovery.

“GitOps and Argo CD give our small team a great foundation, shaped by years of community experience in Kubernetes delivery,” said Phong Nguyen, Production Engineer, Meta. “We focus on connecting it to Meta’s systems and aim to share our own lessons along the way.”

Meta also simplified application delivery by allowing developers to specify deployment requirements through a short application definition. The platform automatically generates Argo CD and Kargo configurations, enabling independent release promotion, automated health verification and deployment consistency without requiring application teams to manage complex configurations.

Meta plans to expand adoption of its GitOps platform and transition to a centrally managed Argo CD service to reduce maintenance overhead across its Kubernetes fleet. The team is also exploring upstream contributions to improve container registry authentication and Argo CD performance in large clusters.

To learn more about Meta’s implementation and results, read the full GitOps at Meta: How We Went From Terraform on Cron to GitOps for AI Infra case study.

About Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Cloud native computing empowers organizations to build and run scalable applications with an open source software stack in public, private and hybrid clouds. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure, including Kubernetes, Prometheus and Envoy. CNCF brings together the industry’s top developers, end users and vendors and runs the largest open source developer conferences in the world. Supported by nearly 800 members, including the world’s largest cloud computing and software companies, as well as over 200 innovative startups, CNCF is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. For more information, please visit www.cncf.io.

Media Contact
The Linux Foundation
pr@cncf.io 

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SOURCE Cloud Native Computing Foundation

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