IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
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IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
1–10 of 113 posts
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#2The purchase makes sense, though I would have thought they have all the cloud parts they need in house.
Is this more of an application play?
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#3Well done a Reuters reporter back in March :)
"Exclusive: EMC, IBM eye web hosting company SoftLayer- sources", suggests a $2 billion valuation.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/15/us-softlayer-sale-...
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#4The purchase makes sense, though I would have thought they have all the cloud parts they need in house. Is this more of an application play?
25k customers paying into this cloud is also pretty valuable for IBM
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#5Worth observing that for all the excitement about the recent crop of billion-dollar Silicon Valley startups, SoftLayer is based in Dallas, TX (and founded only in 2005).
I suspect, and this will be easy enough to prove one way or the other after a few years so feel free to call me on it, that we'll see a disproportionate number of successful exits come from /outside/ the valley.
My gut tells me that high-cost of living and inter-company cannibalization are going to make it difficult for companies to sustain long-term growth in the Bay Area (once the data-skewing, one-off, billion-dollar Instagram-esque deals are factored out over time).
Whereas talent will tend to stick to the one or two success stories in less saturated geographies, adding a natural doubling down effect when something is working out well. Sort of a healthy survivorship bias, in a good way.
Edit: And while two anecdotes are still hardly data, I just now noticed that Indianapolis, Indiana based ExactTarget sold today for $2.5B.
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#6IBM is buying SoftLayer to try to go head up with AWS. It's not going to work.
Personally I won't buy an IBM product because I know it's just like Oracle: software entrapment. Nothing wrong with that business model it's just not one I want to be involved with.
In other news, great job by SoftLayer to exit as pricing pressure from AWS and GoogleAppEngine was going to steadily erode their margins over time. I feel the same way about Rackspace which I think has to be in the sights for Oracle now.
So my opinion is: great job SoftLayer; questionable play by IBM.
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#7I've been a customer of... +5 years of Softlayer. Their service has been always good/great, even on odd hours. Congrats to them.
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#8Worth observing that for all the excitement about the recent crop of billion-dollar Silicon Valley startups, SoftLayer is based in Dallas, TX (and founded only in 2005). I suspect, and this will be easy enough to prove one way or the other after a few years so feel free to call me on it, that we'll see a disproportionate number of successful exits come from /outside/ the valley. My gut tells me that high-cost of livi…
If you take a worldview of the last five minutes, this is true, but if you look at silicon valley over time, it is demonstrable that many companies in the Bay Area have built holistic and scalable enterprises. Look no further than box.com for a recent example or Intel for an old one.
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#9Coming soon to a managed hosting environment near you:
"Call now to arrange a visit from our team of consultants to allow you to launch and configure your new server".
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#10IBM is buying SoftLayer to try to go head up with AWS. It's not going to work. Personally I won't buy an IBM product because I know it's just like Oracle: software entrapment. Nothing wrong with that business model it's just not one I want to be involved with. In other news, great job by SoftLayer to exit as pricing pressure from AWS and GoogleAppEngine was going to steadily erode their margins over time. I feel the…
Interested in your opinion as to why you don't think this acquisition will help gain market share on AWS.