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It's confirmed then. Absolutely nobody wants to buy Puppet. Anyone know why that fell through?

schoolornot 6y ago
They made some serious missteps imho re: strategy. releasing and then not marketing razor server when everyone was shifting to VMs, halting development of the open source dashboard, not really investing in containerized environments, kubernetes, etc.
- thspimpolds 6y ago
  I actually miss using Razor. That was the best Pxeboot based system I have run into
- stevekemp 6y ago
  Halting development of the open source dashboard really hurt me, so I setup my own little alternative: https://github.com/skx/puppet-summary/ https://github.com/skx/puppet-summary/ Simple to deploy, configure, and use. Although I always felt I should perhaps have based my work against the puppetdb to get a more dynamic "dashboard" it certainly replaced the old dashboard, and being only a single binary it is simple to install & manage.
  - Riverheart 6y ago
    Foreman too heavy for the use case? https://www.theforeman.org/ https://www.theforeman.org/
    - stevekemp 6y ago
      I suspect that I didn't know about that project back in 2017 when I started my own hasty reimplementation. (Though I don't know if it supported puppet at that time.)
broeng 6y ago
I only casually follow puppet, but is it a surprise after their streak of CVEs? Some have been pretty damning in my view. Again, only casual observer, so my impression may be overly negative.
TheCraiggers 6y ago
From my viewpoint, Puppet's portfolio is comprised of mostly half-baked stuff. You have Puppet itself, which is decent, and then an almost Google-level of weird stuff. They keep announcing new products but so far nothing seems to be sticking and they're all ludicrously expensive IMHO. Meanwhile, their core technology is kind of a dead end. More and more people are looking to manage containers and other serverless type things, rather than managing fleets of VMs. They're not in the same boat as companies like VmWare, but they're in the same flotilla. If somebody does buy them, it'll probably be an act of dinosaurs mating and not much else.
- dharmab 6y ago
  Even for those of us still managing VM fleets, containerization means that we can run a single OS image for everything, eliminating most of the need for a dedicated CM tool.
- Lightbody 6y ago
  Being a Portland techie, I pay a tiny bit of attention to Puppet and I’d say I agree with your comment re: product portfolio, until about a year ago. They have actually killed off a number of things in recognition of this critique and are trying to bring back focus on a sane portfolio strategy.
- xorcist 6y ago
  Puppet is a great tool for managing containers, and so is Chef. There is nothing inherently good about YAML. There is less buzz around those tools now however, and people tend to gravitate to other tools which are easier to get started with. They may end up "silent heroes" (much like Ruby itself, I would say) or they may end up replaced by other tools. The concept of state as text in version control is a timeless concept and continue to exist in one form or another. One of the problems with configurations management systems is that they are conceptually easy, everyone has opinions of them, and they really need to control your whole world in order to shine. There was never really room for one clear standard to emerge. Puppet Inc.'s problem was that they kept chasing shiny stuff (agentless you say? we have that too!) in order to woo enterprise customers. Their customers should have been developers and sysadmins, not their bosses. There is only room for so many VMware in the world.
user5994461 6y ago
Puppet raised $40M last month in debt. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/puppet-labs/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/puppet-labs/company_... In total over 12 years, Chef raised around 105M and puppet raised around 189M in funding. They're both doing pretty bad in the end and are on a (steep?) downward trend. They'll never be a billion dollar business. They probably won't recoup their valuation. Chef sold out. Puppet tries to survive. From my perspective Chef users were actively fleeing so I guess it was sold for scrap, puppet might be downward but maybe not as steep so maybe puppet is trying to continue to operate as a small medium company. Also Puppet might be a fairly harder sell because it has both a higher valuation and debt, doesn't look like a great buying opportunity.
Fost_Power 6y ago
I was surprised when I saw the Chef numbers, ouch. I think they must have been simply running out of money and options. If they had a strong balance sheet, you would have expected them to at least be picked up by a reputable PE firm. I hadn’t even come across Progress As a software co till this announcement. On Puppet, I think they are a different beast to Chef at this point. They seem hyper focused on the larger enterprises rather than SMB or startup land. I came across them at both of the banks I recently contracted for, for example. Whilst I wasn’t hands on myself, there was a big project to roll out Puppet’s impact analysis and CD product at the last place. I also ‘think’ Puppet are about double the size of Chef and saw their BlackRock debt round announced. You don’t get money from someone like that unless your at scale and you don’t get debt (especially at a time like this) unless you can afford the payments+interest. So, they must be at least growing if not profitable as well.

They made some serious missteps imho re: strategy. releasing and then not marketing razor server when everyone was shifting to VMs, halting development of the open source dashboard, not really investing in containerized environments, kubernetes, etc.

thspimpolds 6y ago
I actually miss using Razor. That was the best Pxeboot based system I have run into
stevekemp 6y ago
Halting development of the open source dashboard really hurt me, so I setup my own little alternative: https://github.com/skx/puppet-summary/ https://github.com/skx/puppet-summary/ Simple to deploy, configure, and use. Although I always felt I should perhaps have based my work against the puppetdb to get a more dynamic "dashboard" it certainly replaced the old dashboard, and being only a single binary it is simple to install & manage.
- Riverheart 6y ago
  Foreman too heavy for the use case? https://www.theforeman.org/ https://www.theforeman.org/
  - stevekemp 6y ago
    I suspect that I didn't know about that project back in 2017 when I started my own hasty reimplementation. (Though I don't know if it supported puppet at that time.)

broeng 6y ago

I only casually follow puppet, but is it a surprise after their streak of CVEs? Some have been pretty damning in my view. Again, only casual observer, so my impression may be overly negative.

TheCraiggers 6y ago

From my viewpoint, Puppet's portfolio is comprised of mostly half-baked stuff. You have Puppet itself, which is decent, and then an almost Google-level of weird stuff. They keep announcing new products but so far nothing seems to be sticking and they're all ludicrously expensive IMHO. Meanwhile, their core technology is kind of a dead end. More and more people are looking to manage containers and other serverless type things, rather than managing fleets of VMs. They're not in the same boat as companies like VmWare, but they're in the same flotilla. If somebody does buy them, it'll probably be an act of dinosaurs mating and not much else.

dharmab 6y ago
Even for those of us still managing VM fleets, containerization means that we can run a single OS image for everything, eliminating most of the need for a dedicated CM tool.
Lightbody 6y ago
Being a Portland techie, I pay a tiny bit of attention to Puppet and I’d say I agree with your comment re: product portfolio, until about a year ago. They have actually killed off a number of things in recognition of this critique and are trying to bring back focus on a sane portfolio strategy.
xorcist 6y ago
Puppet is a great tool for managing containers, and so is Chef. There is nothing inherently good about YAML. There is less buzz around those tools now however, and people tend to gravitate to other tools which are easier to get started with. They may end up "silent heroes" (much like Ruby itself, I would say) or they may end up replaced by other tools. The concept of state as text in version control is a timeless concept and continue to exist in one form or another. One of the problems with configurations management systems is that they are conceptually easy, everyone has opinions of them, and they really need to control your whole world in order to shine. There was never really room for one clear standard to emerge. Puppet Inc.'s problem was that they kept chasing shiny stuff (agentless you say? we have that too!) in order to woo enterprise customers. Their customers should have been developers and sysadmins, not their bosses. There is only room for so many VMware in the world.

user5994461 6y ago

Puppet raised $40M last month in debt. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/puppet-labs/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/puppet-labs/company_... In total over 12 years, Chef raised around 105M and puppet raised around 189M in funding. They're both doing pretty bad in the end and are on a (steep?) downward trend. They'll never be a billion dollar business. They probably won't recoup their valuation. Chef sold out. Puppet tries to survive. From my perspective Chef users were actively fleeing so I guess it was sold for scrap, puppet might be downward but maybe not as steep so maybe puppet is trying to continue to operate as a small medium company. Also Puppet might be a fairly harder sell because it has both a higher valuation and debt, doesn't look like a great buying opportunity.

Fost_Power 6y ago

I was surprised when I saw the Chef numbers, ouch. I think they must have been simply running out of money and options. If they had a strong balance sheet, you would have expected them to at least be picked up by a reputable PE firm. I hadn’t even come across Progress As a software co till this announcement. On Puppet, I think they are a different beast to Chef at this point. They seem hyper focused on the larger enterprises rather than SMB or startup land. I came across them at both of the banks I recently contracted for, for example. Whilst I wasn’t hands on myself, there was a big project to roll out Puppet’s impact analysis and CD product at the last place. I also ‘think’ Puppet are about double the size of Chef and saw their BlackRock debt round announced. You don’t get money from someone like that unless your at scale and you don’t get debt (especially at a time like this) unless you can afford the payments+interest. So, they must be at least growing if not profitable as well.