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IBM to buy HashiCorp in $6.4B deal

reuters.com

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Re: IBM to buy HashiCorp in $6.4B deal

#161
post #94
post #49

Well, it was nice while it lasted! HashiCorp always felt like a company made by actual engineers, not "bean counters". Now it will just be another cog in the IBM machine, slowly grinding it down, removing everything attractive, just like RedHat and CentOS. Hopefully this will create a new wave off innovation, and someone will create something to replace the monopoly on IaC that IBM now owns.

I don’t understand people’s beef with IBM. They have been responsible for incredible R&D within computing. I even LIKE redhat/fedora! HashiCorp had already been sold out since waaaay before this acquisition and I also don’t understand why their engineers are seen as “special”…

IBM has always been a punching bag.

I had been wondering who would buy HCP, I sort of figured it was either going to be AWS, Google, or Azure and then I figured the other vendor were going to have support removed (maybe gradually, maybe not.)

Re: IBM to buy HashiCorp in $6.4B deal

#162

Overpriced, haha.

12x multiple for a Cloud SaaS company is not overpriced typically. I was surprised at this low multiple. Could be due to the current economic situation. And also the licensing changes, lack of product moat contributing in the wrong time.

Re: IBM to buy HashiCorp in $6.4B deal

#163
post #90
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they bought Red Hat, and killed CentOS; I can say after 25 years in enterprise IT, I have zero trust in IBM to keep any open source licensing "open".

IBM didn't kill CentOS.

They where under IBM ownership at the time, so IBM did kill it. The software now branded as CentOS is basically Fedora, which is fine for desktops, but never felt good on servers. CentOS was perfect for a lot of us SysAdmins back in the day to use on our own servers etc, while using Red Hat at work. We also used it for anything PoC or servers that did not require support. These days licensing is easier using models like AWS Subscriptions, but we used to buy licenses in bulk, and if there where not enough licenses, we had to do the whole procurement dance.

Side note, in the 12 years that I used Red Hat at work, we used the support 2 times, and both times they forwarded some articles that we had already found and implemented. However, enterprise always demands some support contract behind critical systems to blame in case of disaster.

Honestly, who knows what would have happened if Red Hat was left as an independent entity, but we do know for sure that they did make the changes after the acquisition.

Re: IBM to buy HashiCorp in $6.4B deal

#164
post #49

Well, it was nice while it lasted! HashiCorp always felt like a company made by actual engineers, not "bean counters". Now it will just be another cog in the IBM machine, slowly grinding it down, removing everything attractive, just like RedHat and CentOS. Hopefully this will create a new wave off innovation, and someone will create something to replace the monopoly on IaC that IBM now owns.

Regarding Red Hat, I dearly hope someone will replace the slow complicated mess that is ansible. It's crazy that this seems to be the best there is...

Re: IBM to buy HashiCorp in $6.4B deal

#165
post #49

Well, it was nice while it lasted! HashiCorp always felt like a company made by actual engineers, not "bean counters". Now it will just be another cog in the IBM machine, slowly grinding it down, removing everything attractive, just like RedHat and CentOS. Hopefully this will create a new wave off innovation, and someone will create something to replace the monopoly on IaC that IBM now owns.

Regarding Red Hat, I dearly hope someone will replace the slow complicated mess that is ansible. It's crazy that this seems to be the best there is...

Why slow and complicated?

We're just starting to implement it and we've only heard good things about it.

Re: IBM to buy HashiCorp in $6.4B deal

#166
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering IBM sided with the fork, I suspect it'll be reverted for most or all of Hashicorp's projects.

I bet they'll organize it under Red Hat, and Red Hat will apply their open source policy to it, and that will involve reverting to OSI approved licenses

Red Hat is a shell of itself. There is no appetite for taking on Terraform when Ansible is their ugly baby.

Re: IBM to buy HashiCorp in $6.4B deal

#170

How is Red Hat doing?

I left Red Hat a bit after the IBM acquisition, and in my experience the management bullshittery was encroaching about a year after the deal closed. I hear their sales team are all frustrated and leaving due to IBM’s interference in Red Hat deals.
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