31–40 of 113 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
25k customers paying into this cloud is also pretty valuable for IBM
IBM had 104 billion in revenue and 16 billion in earnings last year. I'm not sure I see 25,000 SL customers, most of whom are quite small, as substantially more than noise on IBM's books.
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…
Interested in your opinion as to why you don't think this acquisition will help gain market share on AWS.
SoftLayer and everyone not named Google or Amazon can't drop their prices 40+ times every 5 years because this managed hosting is their core business. 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.
When all you have is hosting, you can't lose money on hosting. Amazon and Google can lose money on infrastructure because its not their core business. The same cant be said about SoftLayer, and I don't think their ability to execute will increase as a result of this acquisition. If anything it's akin to Zynga's FUD middle management practices and the resulting layoffs yesterday.
I'm super bearish on IBM doing anything meaningful with SoftLayer. It's a pure revenue play from my perspective.
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…
Meredith Whitney's book is about exactly this, that U.S. economic gravity is shifting "away from the coasts" for a bit. (It just came out today, so I can't say I've read it, just that I've really been looking forward to it.) For those who aren't from the world of finance: Meredith Whitney was one of the first people on wall street to predict the mortgage crisis. The book: (not an affiliate link) http://www.amazon.com…
Then she said munis were effed... went on 60 Minutes and scared a lot of people into losing a lot of money since there have been few defaults, bonds have performed well, and taxes have gone up.
A genius is someone who makes the right call in the right media at the right time.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-03/meredith-whitney-of...
http://blogs.reuters.com/muniland/2013/06/04/meredith-whitne...
[1] and not even the first - Ivy Zelman made a great case and got herself fired from Credit Suisse in 2007
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2007/06/ivy-zelman-departs...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
SoftLayer is in Dallas because The Planet, a company dating back to the late 90s, was in Dallas and SL was founded by TP's stupidly-fired COO Lance Crosby. SL ultimately merged with/took over TP after TP had merged with EV1 (another company dating to the late 90s), Crosby continuing as CEO. None of these were startups in the ordinary Silicon Valley sense. They were, fundamentally, managed datacenters (something their…
You say that as like turning a profit is a bad thing. Are only lottery exit aspires allowed to call themselves startups?
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…
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 lot of people fast, you wouldn't want to be in any other place.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've used SL in the past and have had business associates use them as well. I experienced nothing but problems, and regularly hear complaints from those who still use it. This may just be a case of IBM needing to acquire companies to add revenue to their financial statements.
I had the opposite experience. I used them for years and received prompt support, even getting direct to a sysadmin over the phone. I also regularly received up to 50% off their advertised prices just by doing a little negotiating. Of course I say all this as an AWS customer, as the value flexibility far outweighed the value of support to me. Also, the last time I checked, You had to go through a standard server orde…
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…
The Dallas startup scene is exploding right now, especially for B2B companies. Geographic convenience to both coasts, low taxes, low living costs, high concentration of Fortune 500s and a lot of good talent itching to leave their cubicles. http://launchdfw.com/
Fun stuff. Remember that IBM got its start by renting you a mainframe with software on it. I've always been struck by how similar IaaS/PaaS type companies are similar to that model. In many ways a data center becomes just a really big mainframe that you're renting out.
Good, maybe it's time for me to do something useful with this personalmainframe.com domain I've been sitting on.
We just need to get Matt Smith (of Doctor Who fame) to be our spokesperson... I can just picture him standing there, adjusting his bow-tie and saying "Mainframes are cool."