EMC Buys Pivotal Labs

It's just that EMC and Pivotal Labs to me represents kind of opposites in the spectrum: EMC is the established old-school hardware company, while Pivotal Labs is the cool software consultancy that the cool startups hire for web-apps. So that pairing feels odd. I'm curious to know what is the goal behind that…

"Bringing agile methodologies to the enterprise" doesn't make much sense: would EMC be interested in making consulting money for agile training? That doesn't seem to be at the same scale of the rest of the business…

And "hardware as a service" sound like it would be more suited for veterans from the cloud providers they might want to compete with.

Surprising to say the least.

Re: EMC Buys Pivotal Labs

#5

Post by aaronblohowiak » Fri, Mar 16, 2012, 11:42 PM UTC

Timothee wrote: post #4

My first reaction was to say "wtf" out loud. It's just that EMC and Pivotal Labs to me represents kind of opposites in the spectrum: EMC is the established old-school hardware company, while Pivotal Labs is the cool software consultancy that the cool startups hire for web-apps. So that pairing feels odd. I'm curious to know what is the goal behind that… "Bringing agile methodologies to the enterprise" doesn't make mu…

IBM went through a transition from machines to services, it wouldn't surprise me if EMC were trying to get into services this way.

Re: EMC Buys Pivotal Labs

#6

Post by euroclydon » Fri, Mar 16, 2012, 11:44 PM UTC

Timothee wrote: post #4

My first reaction was to say "wtf" out loud. It's just that EMC and Pivotal Labs to me represents kind of opposites in the spectrum: EMC is the established old-school hardware company, while Pivotal Labs is the cool software consultancy that the cool startups hire for web-apps. So that pairing feels odd. I'm curious to know what is the goal behind that… "Bringing agile methodologies to the enterprise" doesn't make mu…

I've never heard of Pivotal Labs but perhaps they're competent in big data backed web apps. I work in the data center monitoring space (actually power systems simulations) and I've created a SVG based web app for power system simulation and monitoring visualization, and it's garnered interest from big traditional players in this space.

Re: EMC Buys Pivotal Labs

#7

Post by philaquilina » Fri, Mar 16, 2012, 11:45 PM UTC

Timothee wrote: post #4

My first reaction was to say "wtf" out loud. It's just that EMC and Pivotal Labs to me represents kind of opposites in the spectrum: EMC is the established old-school hardware company, while Pivotal Labs is the cool software consultancy that the cool startups hire for web-apps. So that pairing feels odd. I'm curious to know what is the goal behind that… "Bringing agile methodologies to the enterprise" doesn't make mu…

I was very surprised by this too. It sounds like EMC is trying to establish some kind of legitimacy in the startup world.

I feel like Pivotal gets a lot of respect from the hacker community. I wonder what kind of fallout this will have there.

Re: EMC Buys Pivotal Labs

#8

Post by mhartl » Fri, Mar 16, 2012, 11:45 PM UTC

This is a head-scratcher for me, but I know a bunch of current and former Pivotal Labs peeps (including CEO Rob Mee), and they're some of the smartest, savviest hackers around. I'm confident that this will end up making sense and will prove to be a good move for both parties. (I practically live inside Pivotal Tracker, so I certainly hope so.)

Re: EMC Buys Pivotal Labs

#9

Post by gojomo » Fri, Mar 16, 2012, 11:46 PM UTC

Timothee wrote: post #4

My first reaction was to say "wtf" out loud. It's just that EMC and Pivotal Labs to me represents kind of opposites in the spectrum: EMC is the established old-school hardware company, while Pivotal Labs is the cool software consultancy that the cool startups hire for web-apps. So that pairing feels odd. I'm curious to know what is the goal behind that… "Bringing agile methodologies to the enterprise" doesn't make mu…

My thought was also: "Would. Not. Have. Guessed. That."

But, in light of (EMC subsidiary) VMWare's acquisitions, it makes a bit more sense. They've been beefing up on all sorts of software-development teams and tools. They own SpringSource, and picked up a bunch of other companies last year:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/12/a-year-of-vmware-a...

Re: EMC Buys Pivotal Labs

#10

Post by Timothee » Fri, Mar 16, 2012, 11:47 PM UTC

sshconnection wrote: post #3

Any word on the future of Pivotal Tracker?

That's when open-sourcing vs. closing it down (if that were to happen) would be fantastic. (cf. one HN discussion from today about that)

If Pivotal Tracker were to disappear, that would be quite the disaster for a lot of people.