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Am I the only one that thinks IBM's acquisition of Softlayer did more to help Amazon than it did to help IBM? (or, more specifically, their mishandling of the a

by latch 8y ago

Am I the only one that thinks IBM's acquisition of Softlayer did more to help Amazon than it did to help IBM? (or, more specifically, their mishandling of the acquisition) Cloud isn't the big market, traditional hosting is. But cloud continues to grow. I thought the idea behind the Softlayer acquisition was going to be to try to funnel the much larger group of people who aren't ALL IN on cloud into some hybrid/cloud option.

toast0 8y ago
As a customer of Softlayer, I haven't noticed very much from the acquisition. Support has gotten a bit worse, but our account has also gotten smaller, so I'm not sure if we were getting special treatment before. I still think the old portal was faster, and login via IBMid is dumb, but the servers still work, the network still pretty much works, and it feels like their networking monitoring got somewhat better. Their pricing got kind of weird though. And they expanded their locations significantly. We're leaving Softlayer, but to an acquirer's infrastructure, not to Amazon.
- latch 8y ago
  I didn't mean to imply that it got worse for existing customers. But I feel like by killing the Softlayer brand (softlayer.com is just a landing page where everything redirect to IBM cloud) and making "cloud" the focus, they're missing out on new business (including winning back people to baremetal who are tired of AWS' poor price/performance). Maybe they still are and I'm just not paying enough attention, but Softlayer was essentially the _top_ choice for dedicated hosting for the large number of customers that wanted something more reliable than OVH without having to go to Rackspace. I feel like they just walked about from that. Or, more to my point, that they're neglecting driving business to it to a point where it's actually helping AWS grow.
fierro 8y ago
"cloud isn't the big market" sorry lost me there
- dragandj 8y ago
  Not a native speaker, but it seems to me that they are not saying that cloud is not a big market, but that the cloud is not THE big market, since THE big market is something else (bare metal?).
  - latch 8y ago
    That's exactly what I was saying. Thank you. I think I'd agree that it's the fastest growing market. And maybe the one with the highest profit margins though.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I’m all in on AWS, but $6.68 billion in revenue is not huge in the grand scheme of things and if AWS has two thirds of the market, that’s still only about $10 billion. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/25/aws-q3-results.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/25/aws-q3-results.html
- latch 8y ago
  I'm not sure if you're up for not being dismissive, but I'd honestly like to be corrected if I'm wrong. When I think of this I first think of Digital Realty Trust (DLR), Global Switch, China Telecom, AT&T, Equinix, NTT, Tata Communication, China Unicom, Telefonica, .... True, a lot of their customers must be cloud vendors. At one point, I'm pretty sure AWS was a customer of Equinix in some parts of the world (and they might still be). But still, who's bigger? AWS or the folks who consider AWS another (although no doubt important) client? No one is giving out detailed data, but DLR has 200+ data centers and 30+ million sqft of space. And while it is probably the biggest, they're just one of many. And I think they and their customers are mostly into more traditional hosting. Then you have more direct to consumer companies that run their own data centers. OVH, Hetzner, Softlayer, PhoenixNap, HE, Rackspace, ... Worldwide? Hundreds of these. Maybe thousands. Gartner once wrote that AWS was 10x larger than the next 14 cloud providers combined (2015). I don't know how true that was (or still is). But if "the cloud" is essentially "AWS", then it's probably safe to assume that most of DLR or OVH's or XYZ should be counted as "traditional" and not "cloud". If it's mostly just AWS + 14 other _much_ smaller companies vs thousands of companies worlwide, some of which are bigger than AWS, many of which are in the same ballpark, is the cloud even 1% of hosting market? (I worked at a large bank, we had our own datacenters (not buildings, not cages, but floors). I don't know if we actually owned everything though. If we did, this would probably add up to be quite a lot. If we didn't, then this capacity is already included in the above providers). Now, if you're talking about where the money is at, I have no preconceptions. You might be right. There's no doubt cloud margins are higher.

by latch 8y ago

toast0 8y ago

As a customer of Softlayer, I haven't noticed very much from the acquisition. Support has gotten a bit worse, but our account has also gotten smaller, so I'm not sure if we were getting special treatment before. I still think the old portal was faster, and login via IBMid is dumb, but the servers still work, the network still pretty much works, and it feels like their networking monitoring got somewhat better. Their pricing got kind of weird though. And they expanded their locations significantly. We're leaving Softlayer, but to an acquirer's infrastructure, not to Amazon.

latch 8y ago
I didn't mean to imply that it got worse for existing customers. But I feel like by killing the Softlayer brand (softlayer.com is just a landing page where everything redirect to IBM cloud) and making "cloud" the focus, they're missing out on new business (including winning back people to baremetal who are tired of AWS' poor price/performance). Maybe they still are and I'm just not paying enough attention, but Softlayer was essentially the _top_ choice for dedicated hosting for the large number of customers that wanted something more reliable than OVH without having to go to Rackspace. I feel like they just walked about from that. Or, more to my point, that they're neglecting driving business to it to a point where it's actually helping AWS grow.

fierro 8y ago

"cloud isn't the big market" sorry lost me there

dragandj 8y ago
Not a native speaker, but it seems to me that they are not saying that cloud is not a big market, but that the cloud is not THE big market, since THE big market is something else (bare metal?).
- latch 8y ago
  That's exactly what I was saying. Thank you. I think I'd agree that it's the fastest growing market. And maybe the one with the highest profit margins though.
scarface74 8y ago
I’m all in on AWS, but $6.68 billion in revenue is not huge in the grand scheme of things and if AWS has two thirds of the market, that’s still only about $10 billion. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/25/aws-q3-results.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/25/aws-q3-results.html
latch 8y ago
I'm not sure if you're up for not being dismissive, but I'd honestly like to be corrected if I'm wrong. When I think of this I first think of Digital Realty Trust (DLR), Global Switch, China Telecom, AT&T, Equinix, NTT, Tata Communication, China Unicom, Telefonica, .... True, a lot of their customers must be cloud vendors. At one point, I'm pretty sure AWS was a customer of Equinix in some parts of the world (and they might still be). But still, who's bigger? AWS or the folks who consider AWS another (although no doubt important) client? No one is giving out detailed data, but DLR has 200+ data centers and 30+ million sqft of space. And while it is probably the biggest, they're just one of many. And I think they and their customers are mostly into more traditional hosting. Then you have more direct to consumer companies that run their own data centers. OVH, Hetzner, Softlayer, PhoenixNap, HE, Rackspace, ... Worldwide? Hundreds of these. Maybe thousands. Gartner once wrote that AWS was 10x larger than the next 14 cloud providers combined (2015). I don't know how true that was (or still is). But if "the cloud" is essentially "AWS", then it's probably safe to assume that most of DLR or OVH's or XYZ should be counted as "traditional" and not "cloud". If it's mostly just AWS + 14 other _much_ smaller companies vs thousands of companies worlwide, some of which are bigger than AWS, many of which are in the same ballpark, is the cloud even 1% of hosting market? (I worked at a large bank, we had our own datacenters (not buildings, not cages, but floors). I don't know if we actually owned everything though. If we did, this would probably add up to be quite a lot. If we didn't, then this capacity is already included in the above providers). Now, if you're talking about where the money is at, I have no preconceptions. You might be right. There's no doubt cloud margins are higher.