Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IBM to Acquire SoftLayer

www-03.ibm.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 113 posts

Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer

#41

Post by qwerta »

josh2600 wrote: post #32
blparker wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interested in your opinion as to why you don't think this acquisition will help gain market share on AWS.

IBM can't build a cloud of their own or they wouldn't have needed to buy SoftLayer. Since they don't have this expertise, they pay a ton of money for a company that their perceive as knowing "the cloud". This is doubly ironic because its IBM that introduced the mainframe to the world, but that's another story. SoftLayer and everyone not named Google or Amazon can't drop their prices 40+ times every 5 years because th…

> Google and Amazon are playing the ultra-thin margin long game and the result is that they hope to destroy the competition with an aggressive pricing floor.

Could you explain this a bit? I found Amazon and Google overpriced and slow compared to other hosting solutions.

Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer

#42

Post by thereallurch »

josh2600 wrote: post #32
blparker wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interested in your opinion as to why you don't think this acquisition will help gain market share on AWS.

IBM can't build a cloud of their own or they wouldn't have needed to buy SoftLayer. Since they don't have this expertise, they pay a ton of money for a company that their perceive as knowing "the cloud". This is doubly ironic because its IBM that introduced the mainframe to the world, but that's another story. SoftLayer and everyone not named Google or Amazon can't drop their prices 40+ times every 5 years because th…

IBM has had private clouds for a few years now. It's not like AWS where anyone can click and spin up an instance. It's geared towards very large companies. These companies have been reluctant to use AWS, or have specific requirements (hardware requirements, licensing issues, corporate policies). So it's incorrect to say IBM cant build a cloud. IBM's cloud isnt a public facing entity.

Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer

#43

Post by kmasters »

This really only strengthens AWS, a self service cloud that anyone can manage.

IBM is chasing a dying consulting model "we know best". But they dont.

You yourself with the knowledge can outscale IBM using AWS.

IBM's business is profiting from enterprise ignorance.

Your mileage may vary...or be nonexistent.

Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer

#44

Post by darkarmani »

forgotAgain wrote: post #11

Seems a bit on the desperate side for IBM. Softlayer customer profile (small to medium) seems the exact opposite of IBM (very large to huge). Does IBM take the Softlayer expertise and apply it to large accounts or do they try to service a class of customers they know nothing about. On one hand IBM is selling dev-ops services to its customers. On the other, it finds itself without sufficient in-house expertise to buil…

> Softlayer customer profile (small to medium) seems the exact opposite of IBM (very large to huge). Does IBM take the Softlayer expertise and apply it to large accounts or do they try to service a class of customers they know nothing about.

Doesn't that make sense though? They are trying to use the people and experience of SL to enter the market of small businesses. It didn't work for Cisco/linksys, but it does make sense to broaden your market if you think you can make it work.

Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer

#45

Post by xradionut »

jborden13 wrote: post #24
dewitt wrote: post #5

Worth 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…

Normally I would agree. But with regards to Dallas, we are a large corporation (and usually energy-focused) first town. The Dallas Morning News, our largest rag here locally, isn't even covering this acquisition: http://www.dallasnews.com/business/ Hard to unseat or even compete with SV if you can't even get local attention or coverage for a big tech/startup win.

DFW has much more than energy. Corporate HQs, semiconductor, banking, technology, etc... (Although the traffic is starting to suck worse than ever with all the folks from the coasts being lost and construction going on...)

There's a large number corporate data jobs in the area needing to be filled. (Analyst, programmer, DBA, warehouse, BIG DATA superstars, whatever...)

The Dallas Morning Snooze is not exactly a great source of any business info or news in North Texas. There's a variety of other sources that try to fill the voids.

Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer

#46

Post by pnathan »

ihsw wrote: post #14
josh2600 wrote: post #6

IBM 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…

> Personally I won't buy an IBM product because I know it's just like Oracle: software entrapment. Nobody buys IBM or Oracle products, they become 'partners' and negotiate license agreements. The entrapment is different in that your software (and hardware!) decisions now involve lawyers.

> Nobody buys IBM or Oracle products, they become 'partners' and negotiate license agreements.

A former employer bought IBM licenses without partnership. Boy, IBM software is lousy. :-/

Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer

#47

Post by vidarh »

jborden13 wrote: post #24
dewitt wrote: post #5

Worth 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…

Normally I would agree. But with regards to Dallas, we are a large corporation (and usually energy-focused) first town. The Dallas Morning News, our largest rag here locally, isn't even covering this acquisition: http://www.dallasnews.com/business/ Hard to unseat or even compete with SV if you can't even get local attention or coverage for a big tech/startup win.

They are covering it now.

Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer

#49

Post by harel »

I'm not sure if I should start worrying or not... We've just moved our infrastructure to SoftLayer. I'd hate it if they start to change for the worst and I'd hate it even more if I had to move to yet another data centre.

Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer

#50

Post by pionar »

danielrhodes wrote: post #36
dewitt wrote: post #5

Worth 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…

There is one major problem to starting what are to become big tech companies outside of the Bay Area: labor supply. Very few places in the world can feed the labor needs of a fast growing tech company. Even the largest companies in the Bay Area have to go to New York, LA, and elsewhere to hire more people. What that means is that you are welcome to start a company wherever you like, but when it comes time to hire a l…

But it's normally not a good idea to grow by "hiring a lot of people fast". Startups outside of SV aren't really interested in the rocket growth. What happens usually is that companies with that hockey-stick growth generally just have a lot of layoffs down the road, e.g. Zynga (if they're not bought out for way too much money before this can occur).

The navel-gazing doesn't really occur outside of that environment, and the "need to scale" is really just a pissing contest that amateurs crow about while the real men and women get shit done by growing organically, turning a solid profit quarter after quarter and not caring what SV hipsters that don't know what the word profit means say they need to do.

Post reply on HN