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Red Hat to Acquire CoreOS

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Re: Red Hat to Acquire CoreOS

#161

Post by zapita »

bogomipz wrote: post #160
zapita wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got the number the same way journalists get any funding number: by talking to some of the many people involved in the deal. Funding terms are notoriously hard to keep secret in Silicon Valley, because everybody talks.

OK, so you didn't consult some resource online and see what the series B or whatever round was and use a formula based on what the raise was to derive the valuation? I see people throw these "valuation based on the last round" and I'm always interested at how they arrive at these numbers. Is there no rule of thumb then?

There are definitely rules of thumb but there is a lot of margin of error. You can triangulate based on different variables.

One variable is how much VC firms at a given stage typically need to own (below a certain ownership in the company, even a fantastic outcome will not cover the cost of the many failed investments that are characteristic of high-risk ventures). So that puts an upper bound on reasonable valuation for a given investment amount.

Then there is a similar variable for team dilution. Founders will only give away so much of their company before losing the feeling of ownership that is a big part of the motivation of entrepreneurs. So that puts a lower bound on reasonable valuation.

Then there is the trajectory of the company. How far are they from being IPO-ready? How many more rounds to get there? And if they don't get there, what are realistic acquisition prospects? If any similar company has been sold, what was the price?

None of this is an exact science. Sometimes people do unreasonable things, because they don't have a choice, or because they don't know any better. And many well-informed analysts also have biases or conflicts which twist their estimates.

Since you mention online resources - in my experience almost everything you read in professional ad-supported publications is biased, wrong, or blatantly one-sided.

Re: Red Hat to Acquire CoreOS

#162

Post by zaphar »

zapita wrote: post #96
politician wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that this is a good move by Red Hat to position themselves with rkt and Quay ahead of Docker going to Microsoft (who will pay a premium to try to put this genie back into the bottle) Given their self-inflicted XHR debacle that dethroned Office, I just don't see Microsoft passing up this opportunity. Google, on the other hand, doesn't need Docker to plug any holes in their go to market unless it's a blocking p…

> this is a good move by Red Hat to position themselves with rkt Red Hat does not give a damn about rkt. They care about Kubernetes, specifically establishing and consolidating a dominant position in upstream kubernetes development. CoreOS helps them do that. rkt on the other hand is a dead project and completely useless to Red Hat. > Google, on the other hand, doesn't need Docker to plug any holes in their go to mar…

    rkt on the other hand is a dead project and completely 
    useless to Red Hat.
What support do you have for this statement? The github project is still pretty active. The architecture appears to be far more sane. k8s supports it as well as docker for the runtime piece.

And just anecdotally docker hasn't been the greatest experience for me running in production. So much so that I've considered exploring rkt as a replacement. I would not at all be surprised if RedHat was hedging their bets re: docker with this coreos acquisition.

Re: Red Hat to Acquire CoreOS

#163

Post by dahidahi1 »

tiuPapa wrote: post #152

I started learning about containerization just this week. I didn't even know there were other popular alternatives to docker. So from what I gather, coreOS/rkt is an alternative to alpine/docker, with kubernetes instead of docker swarm as their primary orchestration solution?

Calling rkt a competitor to docker would be a stretch. Docker has undergone really vast improvements since its inception which is not really true for rkt.

Re: Red Hat to Acquire CoreOS

#165

Post by moderation »

sah2ed wrote: post #133
kakwa_ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I'm not sure why Google would acquire RedHat, SAP or Oracle. I'm not sure what will be gain from that. Google probably doesn't care about the softwares these companies provides as it has its own internal alternatives/derivative and Google is not really a software vendor, so it's a bit outside of their core business. What would make more sense in my opinion would be for Google to have a partnership with a big…

> What would make more sense in my opinion would be for Google to have a partnership with a big Enterprise player (or several in fact) and promote it loudly. They do: they have a Cisco partnership for Google Cloud. https://cloud.google.com/cisco/

Cisco's reach beyond the network silo is very small.

Re: Red Hat to Acquire CoreOS

#166

Post by zapita »

zaphar wrote: post #162
zapita wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is a good move by Red Hat to position themselves with rkt Red Hat does not give a damn about rkt. They care about Kubernetes, specifically establishing and consolidating a dominant position in upstream kubernetes development. CoreOS helps them do that. rkt on the other hand is a dead project and completely useless to Red Hat. > Google, on the other hand, doesn't need Docker to plug any holes in their go to mar…

rkt on the other hand is a dead project and completely useless to Red Hat. What support do you have for this statement? The github project is still pretty active. The architecture appears to be far more sane. k8s supports it as well as docker for the runtime piece. And just anecdotally docker hasn't been the greatest experience for me running in production. So much so that I've considered exploring rkt as a replaceme…

I'm sure rkt is well engineered (overall CoreOS has good open-source engineering). It just doesn't have much usage, and whatever advantages it has, evidently it wasn't enough to convince a meaningful number of Docker users to switch. I use Docker intensively and, like you, I've had my share of frustrating issues with it over the years. But at the end of the day, the bugs get fixed reasonably quickly, and Docker just gets the job done. Their code has so much mileage at this point, I just don't see the point in starting over with a competitor. Evidently I'm not the only one who feels that way.

Re: Red Hat to Acquire CoreOS

#167

Post by jbronn »

zaphar wrote: post #162
zapita wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is a good move by Red Hat to position themselves with rkt Red Hat does not give a damn about rkt. They care about Kubernetes, specifically establishing and consolidating a dominant position in upstream kubernetes development. CoreOS helps them do that. rkt on the other hand is a dead project and completely useless to Red Hat. > Google, on the other hand, doesn't need Docker to plug any holes in their go to mar…

rkt on the other hand is a dead project and completely useless to Red Hat. What support do you have for this statement? The github project is still pretty active. The architecture appears to be far more sane. k8s supports it as well as docker for the runtime piece. And just anecdotally docker hasn't been the greatest experience for me running in production. So much so that I've considered exploring rkt as a replaceme…

I think it’s because RedHat has thrown its weight behind CRI-O instead of rkt:

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/introducing-cri-o-10

Re: Red Hat to Acquire CoreOS

#168

Post by qubex »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #144
kakwa_ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I'm not sure why Google would acquire RedHat, SAP or Oracle. I'm not sure what will be gain from that. Google probably doesn't care about the softwares these companies provides as it has its own internal alternatives/derivative and Google is not really a software vendor, so it's a bit outside of their core business. What would make more sense in my opinion would be for Google to have a partnership with a big…

SAP and Google do partner, exactly what you mentioned https://news.sap.com/flexibility-scalability-speed-sap-googl...

My company uses SAP as an ERP. They’ve been trying to push HANA on us for ages, promoting their cloud service as a manner of lessening the sticker-shock.

When news came through of Google and SAP ‘partnering’, upper management saw the writing on the way and went into full money-is-no-object mode and mandated the firm have a plan to switch away from SAP to alternative solutions (that I am not at liberty to discuss) within twelve months, with and that this plan must involve switching over within no more than ninety days including integration tests. Much preliminary work and change requests have been formulated and even implemented not even knowing if they will ever be needed (i.e. if data-sharing policies change and/or an actual acquisition becomes a real prospect).

Why? The reason is simple: the last thing a company that values its IT and operational profiles wants is to find itself in a situation where it can be data-mined by a publicity-driven juggernaut such as Google. Any expense is suitable to head off that threat.

No major corporation would be willing to shoulder this risk. It's the stuff upper-management's nightmare are made of. And decision-makers in positions of power within SAP and to a lesser extent Google are well aware of this. They won't precipitate a nuclear war with their own clients.

Re: Red Hat to Acquire CoreOS

#169

Post by abakker »

zapita wrote: post #158
thedevopsguy wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hadn't thought of it from this angle. Docker's only chance of survival is to have a cross platform container. Something that works on Windows and Linux. Perhaps Docker's only play is to fold into Microsoft to achieve a cross platform solution. Microsoft does have Brendan Burns now.

Didn't Docker announce Windows support years ago?

Yep = https://www.docker.com/docker-windows

Re: Red Hat to Acquire CoreOS

#170

Post by parasubvert »

zapita wrote: post #157
parasubvert wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have no clue how to sell to enterprises, and because of that they are falling behind AWS and Microsoft in the cloud market. One could argue the same about AWS for a long time. They’re still lumpy depending on the region. Google has gotten way better in this regard, and are hiring like mad. I wouldn’t presume the above is true any longer. Microsoft on the other hand can sell, but Azure is flaky. Google’s main l…

> One could argue the same about AWS for a long time Yes, and it took them years to get it right. Which means Google is years behind, and doesn't have the benefit of a forgiving early market. > Google has gotten way better in this regard, and are hiring like mad. I wouldn’t presume the above is true any longer. Let's hope so for their sake. Personally I'll believe it when I see it. You can hire all the sales reps you…

> Let's hope so for their sake. Personally I'll believe it when I see it. You can hire all the sales reps you want... If your top leadership doesn't understand or respect enterprise buyers, or know how to scale the entreprise distribution "machine", then it won't matter.

Diane Greene knows the enterprise... she has hired an experienced team on the product, sales, and marketing side.

> I've spoken to several enterprise IT buyers - commanding billions of dollars in aggregate budget - comparing the benefits of AWS and Azure. When I asked them "what about Google Cloud", the room burst out laughing. This happened several times.

I too can play the anecdote game - I have senior relationships with at least a few major international banks with aggregate budgets in the billions, and they are betting on GCP. I also know a very large bank betting on AWS, and a couple are straddling the fence with multi-cloud between their on-prem, Azure, and GCP. I see Azure commitments in a big way in insurance.

Of course, it depends what you're trying to do as to which cloud is the better fit. We saved a pile of money moving our AWS workloads to GCP and got better performance for it. I think laughing at Google is a mistake, but clearly they have work to do.

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