Why Why Why?
After I recovered from the news this weekend on IBM and RedHat, did some research on why IBM had no choice but to acquire RedHat. Sharing some point of view and why what they do next is key to success.
#protectIBM - IBM products, which were heavily used in enterprise, were the cash cows and the backbone of IBM business. These products are legacy in terms of architecture, hence they had to move them to new cloud native architecture which can be easily de-coupled from only On Prem infrastructure. Last year they did it for IBM Websphere AppServer, Commerce etc. But there are a ton of products which needs to be re-architected. Redhat will be able to help them move into a container based architecture. This can now be replicated across the board. Microsoft did it themselves, AWS, Google did not have this problem and Oracle still figuring out. So to protect IBM business this was necessary.
#savingIBM - IBM's cloud offering was a knee jerk effort and were not #1, #2 choice of customers. This would enable them a seat at the table with OpenShift after adding IBM IoT, Watson (hype and concrete offering), Analytics, the industry specific solutions they have and more importantly have something concrete to be taken seriously. This is the big bet for IBM for growth into future.
I am sure there are more which they would benefit from for sure. I thought these are the top 2.
Now after the acquisition, what would they need to make sure its money well spent. In my view they would have some major issues.
#IBMlovesOpenSource - IBM has till now not shown that they are all in with OpenSource, this is a major push that they have to do to win the community and show IBM's mind and heart are with OpenSource, else they would have issues in retaining existing RedHat business and would see talent drain.
#RedHatRunsIBMCloud - IBM has to let the RedHat lead the cloud effort in all sense and provide them appropriate support, if it's the other way around then I think IBM would risk the investment.
#incentiveConsumption - IBM has to change the sales team culture to move away from a product push mindset to a consumption based sales mindset.
#bringIBMtoOpenShift - IBM has some great products which are aligned to industry verticals. IBM should align them as SaaS/PaaS offering as part of OpenShift which will be a key differentiator. Apart from this the IoT, BlockChain, Marketing, Commerce etc can be a game changer on OpenShift. Will they OpenSource some of these products to support #IBMlovesOpenSource? Only time will tell.
I guess a lot needs to be done now and we have to see what IBM does, we are always excited to take IBM to our customers aligning our propositions for a win win situations.
Note: Views are of my own and not of my organization.
Chief Architect & Sr. Director | Solutions Engineering | Strategy | Cloud Transformation | Trusted Advisor
6 年Great points Anubhav. I am still looking for a good answer on how does it help RedHat other than the big 34B$. After all is it just money. They are a profit making company with a decent 17% margins. Can they really make a difference with two coming together ?
Driving growth at the intersection of business and technology
6 年Good take! But I also think that open source products by themselves had no future unless otherwise bundled with Cloud services..is probably a win win situation from that perspective
Chief Technology Officer at Workplace Options
6 年It is very interesting as large companies are able to take high level of risks - especially in the era of business cases around relatively newer cutting-edge technologies. All recent acquisitions by companies demonstrate it, since common people are not able to make out a clear-cut business roadmap - let it be GitHub & LinkedIn by Microsoft, or RedHat in this case. Take risks, get rewarded!