Their service is very expensive compared to Google, AWS and the rest. I wonder how they've managed to survive on their own for so long
Apollo Global is buying Rackspace for $4.3B
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Re: Apollo Global is buying Rackspace for $4.3B
#22Has there been any analysis on the upswing in acquisitions of cloud computing and storage companies? First EMC gets bought by Dell, now Rackspace is getting picked up. Is it just in response to growth on the part of Google and Amazon?
The Dell/EMC purchase may have been just to buy and then sell VMware, which EMC owned. If I recall correctly, EMC and VMware had both lost meaningful value after uniting and it was commonly held that VMWare was worth much more, so Dell is likely try to rip those two apart, pump VMware back up, sell it at a profit on the whole EMC purchase, and keep the EMC assets as gravy. One sign of this occurring is the aggressive…
I agree with your speculation; it seems likely, however, I don't understand why laying off staff at VMware would help make the company stronger - is it just supposed to make the balance sheet look good in the short term?
Short-term results oriented layoffs like this decimated HP under Carly Fiorina, and I don't have a good long-term outlook on VMware, if Dell decides to take a similar approach.
Re: Apollo Global is buying Rackspace for $4.3B
#23Their service is very expensive compared to Google, AWS and the rest. I wonder how they've managed to survive on their own for so long
Are you sure?
AWS was one of the most expensive ones, Rackspace was cheaper
Re: Apollo Global is buying Rackspace for $4.3B
#24Their service is very expensive compared to Google, AWS and the rest. I wonder how they've managed to survive on their own for so long
Great customer service.
Re: Apollo Global is buying Rackspace for $4.3B
#25Their service is very expensive compared to Google, AWS and the rest. I wonder how they've managed to survive on their own for so long
Very different set of customers. Rackspace's self-service cloud has always kind of sucked, and they knew it -- they'd much rather work upmarket with companies that want to outsource infrastructure engineering as part of their hosting bill.
Re: Apollo Global is buying Rackspace for $4.3B
#26Rackspace has been looking for a buyer for a while. I suspect that their business is not in terribly good shape. They even started consulting on AWS deployments a while back: "Need some help moving your servers over to AWS? We're here to help!"
Re: "Business not in terribly good shape" - there are 4.3 Billion reasons to suggest otherwise. This isn't the type of business that gets purchased without a lot of due diligence, and, we're not really in much of a tech bubble right now - so I thinks it's reasonable to asses that the underlying revenue/profit of Rackspace was sufficient to justify the (impressive) valuation.
This impressive (?) valuation is not so impressive compared to what it used to be. Fun fact: any current shareholder that bought the stock between June 2009 and August 2015 would have done better buying a S&P 500 tracker.
Re: Apollo Global is buying Rackspace for $4.3B
#27I guess it was only a matter of time before they got bought out. It's tough to compete against one of Google, Amazon or Microsoft, competing against all 3 at the same time in an area that all three consider to be core to their future must just be cut throat! It's never great for a companies employee's to be taken over by a private equity firm, if you actually find someone whose had a good experience then please let m…
I work for a relatively big European Network Provider and hoster who got privatized last year. Its not all horrible, but there is a lot of BS going around all the time. The worst are the rumors. You try not to listen to them, but when you are not sure if you have a job in 3 months, and you have spent at least a year more less in the same place, it does get to you. The word from above normally talks a lot of cost cutting and Sales! Sales! Sales!, which makes everyone else who is not part of Sales feel even more left out, as if their jobs are not important.
When people start saying things like: "I don't care, but just tell me if I have a job or not" things are bad. The job market is still bad here in Spain, so a good paying job is hard to get these days. That means a lot of people stick around just for the financials.
I have found some small personal opportunities as well, such as being able to work more from home, making changes in my area regarding things such as legacy products, but anything that costs money is normally out of the question.
Re: Apollo Global is buying Rackspace for $4.3B
#28I've been a loyal rackspace customer since 2011. I really hope that if this is indeed true, as I will wait until Rackspace officially announces it, that Appollo doesn't destroy the good things Rackspace has going for it. Mainly their wonderful customer support.
Re: Apollo Global is buying Rackspace for $4.3B
#29Interesting year so far for PE M&A in SaaS companies
Vista - Cvent $1.65B
Vista - Marketo $1.80B
Vista - Ping $600M
Apollo - Rackspace $4.3B (moreso IaaS)
Thoma Bravo - Qlik $3.0B (debatable SaaS)
Re: Apollo Global is buying Rackspace for $4.3B
#30Their service is very expensive compared to Google, AWS and the rest. I wonder how they've managed to survive on their own for so long
Are you sure? AWS was one of the most expensive ones, Rackspace was cheaper
Back in 2009/2010 when I was looking into it AWS was half the price for a roughly equivalent instance.