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IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says
- m1keil 2y agoBack when Mitchell left, I commented the following "I hope Hashicorp will manage to find its stride and not end up as some bullet point in a long "solutions" portfolio of some software conglomerate.". Hearing about the intention to sell and now IBM... well, that sucks.
- jrochkind1 2y agoNow announced publicly as finalized: https://newsroom.ibm.com/2024-04-24-IBM-to-Acquire-HashiCorp-Inc-Creating-a-Comprehensive-End-to-End-Hybrid-Cloud-Platform https://newsroom.ibm.com/2024-04-24-IBM-to-Acquire-HashiCorp...
- ginko 2y agoBeyond a certain size corporations shouldn't be allowed to acquire companies.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nasdaq-txn 2y agoWith what reasoning?
- ginko 2y agoWhat's the value to society of having large companies get larger? IBM is clearly running on fumes by now. Extending its life by pulling down more small companies with them only makes things worse for everyone.
- nosefurhairdo 2y agoIf society doesn't value what IBM produces then they'll go out of business. There are many factors to optimal organization size, and there are different ways of handling acquisitions that can preserve the acquired organization to varying extents. I work for an org that got acquired by IBM and my job (and org) has been remarkably unaffected. Just different folks enjoying the profits. Like all things, there is much more nuance than "big corporation bad."
- gunapologist99 2y agoWhat's the value to society of large companies not getting larger? What is even the relevance? Does everything have to be judged in terms of its value to society, and if so, why? Should we talk about your value to society? You're arguing for a draconian regulatory response (it sounds like) to what should be a market issue.
- internet101010 2y agoThey kill competition by bundling stuff together and increasing the price.
- thrwaway1337 2y agoWhy? There's nothing inherently bad about acquisitions In fact, strong (~free) capital markets in which acquisitions happen frequently allow for more efficient (~optimal) allocation of resources over the long run, even if any single acquisition may not be locally optimal
- inetknght 2y ago> In fact, strong (~free) capital markets in which acquisitions happen frequently allow for more efficient (~optimal) allocation of resources I argue that's an opinion. I also argue that allowing for does not mean ensures. I also argue that, in practice, acquisitions happening freely typically result in "more efficient" allocation of humans to the detriment of those humans. Also, "more efficient" allocation of resources often increases the cost of those resources to other humans consuming those resources. So yes, it's a valid opinion but in practice the stated results are infrequently achieved and come with significant costs that aren't accounted for in a purely free market situation.
- rilindo 2y agoI know at least one person who left Red Hat for HashiCorp. I could imagine how they feel to be back(ish)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cdchn 2y agoBeen there (not Red Hat) it sucks.
- gunapologist99 2y agoIBM was sure good to someone I know. Some people might not appreciate a great job surrounded by brilliant inventors, even if the company has seem better days, but IBM taught them a lot (such as an absolute commitment to backwards compatibility and long-term support) early in their career and they will be forever grateful to them for those things. Now, they have their own company and would never go back, but they still have respect for those who choose the steady paycheck, low-risk career, and great (actually pretty incredible) benefits.
- jerlam 2y agoFirst time I've heard the benefits at IBM described as incredible. They're constantly doing small layoffs if not spinning off entire divisions. Even if you aren't personally affected, it's disheartening to find out when people you work with are the target of a "resource action". Their headcount has dropped 150K from 2010. They did a weird sleight of hand a while ago where you only got a 401k match if you were employed at the end of the year. I see now that they've dropped all 401k matching and have shifted to some kind of small pension program instead.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI hope that's not true (or falls through). I have a good friend that works for HashiCorp. He's 42, and will undoubtedly be on the chopping block.
- laurels-marts 2y agoWhat does it have to do with him being 42?
- toomuchtodo 2y agoOlder, more expensive workers are targeted by IBM to be pushed out of the org. They run on cheap offshore, domestic visa, and younger labor, except near the top of the org. https://www.google.com/search?q=ibm+ageism https://www.google.com/search?q=ibm+ageism https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=ibm+&job=&city=&year=2023 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=ibm+&job=&city=&year=2023 https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/ https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-a... https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/15/ibm_ceo_pay_jumps_23/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/15/ibm_ceo_pay_jumps_23/
- dralley 2y agoIBM has a median age of 48 as of 2020. While it's true that they've repeatedly done stuff that smells a lot like age discrimination, it's still a pretty old company all things considered. Compare that to Google, Facebook, etc. I work for Red Hat, acquired by IBM. None of the older developers working for Red Hat have been laid off. Actually developers as a group were mostly left intact by the one layoff we did have.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoIBM doesn't like dinobabies.
- thrwaway1337 2y agoWhile I appreciate the sentiment, surely that is not the reason why we should wish acquisitions to happen or fall through? There's something to be said about solving for maximum societal welfare—which may or may not be the case here, but in any event doesn't depend on any specific individual
- riffic 2y agosynergy with Red Hat if this acquisition is done well
- matrix12 2y agoIt won't.
- mamonster 2y agoThe IBM stock being below where it was in 2013 probably means it won't be.
- ruraljuror 2y agoWhat do you mean? This seems to contradict https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IBM/ibm/stock-price-history https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IBM/ibm/stock-pric...
- stuff4ben 2y agoI fail to see how 2013 has anything to do with what the OP said. RH was acquired in 2019. Stock is up $50 since then.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cdchn 2y agoTerraform now part of Ansible Automation Platform
- SteveNuts 2y agoAAP is already $10,000 per 100 nodes per year, they'll absolutely milk Terraform as well.
- sneed_chucker 2y agoWasn't on my bingo card, that's for sure. Say what you will about big blue, they repeatedly seem to know who to acquire in order to buy themselves another 10 years of relevance.
- fishnchips 2y agoAren’t they always fighting the last war?
- Tuna-Fish 2y agoIBM is good at selling to large organizations. Large organizations are risk-averse, and prefer not to buy bleeding edge. IBM is pretty much institutionally specialized to sell what was hot last year (or last decade). People might make fun of this, but I'd like to note that there is a lot of very stable revenue in their business.
- fishnchips 2y agoMakes sense when you put it like this. In which case HCP may even be too new for them.
- ryandvm 2y agoI'd also point out that given just how bloody the bleeding edge of software development tooling is, only investing in things that have managed to stick around for a decade sounds pretty damn smart. Hell, React alone has been through 3 or 4 different paradigms in the last 10 years.
- ridruejo 2y agoGiven the stock price… it had to be someone. Same for Gitlab soon I guess
- apple4ever 2y agoI wonder if Microsoft grabs them. Sad, because GitLab was great for awhile. Then they stopped fixing bugs and started adding unneeded features, and made their pricing very expensive.
- matrix12 2y agoIBM is like a juicer that takes out all the delicious flavor out of a fruit. Leaving nothing but a dried beetle husk.
- fishnchips 2y agoIt’s not like they’re going after the best fruit, either.
- m463 2y agoCould say the same of many acquisitions. Cisco used to do the same thing. It is sad that ctrl labs got eaten by fb/meta. It used ML to sense your arm movements (and one employee figured out how to have a virtual 3rd arm). Collected by zuckerberg and disappeared. (and if it does come to something, you'll need to log in to use it)
- bpiche 2y agoReminding me of that really cool Regina Dugan f8 video from like 2017 or so. They were working on a haptic communication system so you could read texts with your skin and stuff
- skywhopper 2y agoIt's fine. HashiCorp has done a good job of pre-draining any flavor it once had.
- vram22 2y ago>fruit >beetle TIL that genetic scientists have successfully crossed plants and animals! ;) But, great comment. Upvoted.
- nodesocket 2y agoWell, not who I was hoping would acquire and not for the price. Still down 30% on my $HCP investment.
- neom 2y agoI'm underwater on it too, was hoping to at least only take a 10/20% haircut. Where'd you see the price?
- nodesocket 2y agoSorry, I don’t think price has been announced. I bought more shares today (basically gamble) that the deal goes through and it’s higher than $30 share. Not financial advice :-).
- neom 2y agoSold out of half my position today, fingers crossed for 40/50 deal price. Either way, I'll have lost a lot of money on this one. That said it was a pure emotional buy because I wanted to support Mitch and Armon, two dudes I'd consider friends and generally awesome dudes, so if I'm gonna lose money anywhere, may as well have been betting on some buddies. :) :)
- rvz 2y agoFirst Red Hat, Now HashiCorp. Oh dear. We all know what happens when the acquisition closes...
- thrwaway1337 2y agoI'm not sure which side I pity the most
- hipadev23 2y agovmware and ibm just killing off anything halfway cool
- iameli 2y agoSo... was this the cause of the whole Terraform licensing change kerfuffle?
- pizzafeelsright 2y agoYes. IBM was reselling Vault as a service. Hashi couldn't.
- fishnchips 2y agoPerhaps more importantly, Vault.
- CyanLite2 2y agoMicrosoft will buy Docker.
- tristan957 2y agoPodman is better.
- xyst 2y agoThey can have docker desktop. That thing is absolute trash
- riffic 2y agolet them
- paxys 2y agoRIP
- dblooman 2y agoThis seemed like an inevitability given the reliance on enterprise customers and the move to maximise the revenue from Terraform with the recent license change. They have made a round of layoffs, so at least some cost saving has already been done to make it more appealing for a sale. The main challenge from an acquisition like this will be maintaining the community around terraform providers, if that drops off, i'm not sure there will be as many developers coming into the hashicorp ecosystem.
- glenngillen 2y agoThe discussion here when the license change occurred, from people with throwaway accounts claiming to be from HashiCorp, was that Terraform revenue was not the motivator... it was because IBM was selling Vault.
- jrochkind1 2y ago> the move to maximise the revenue from Terraform with the recent license change In fact, it makes me wonder if the point of the recent license change to maximize revenue may have been to make them a more attractive acquisition.
- tedivm 2y agoThe Terraform providers, and the underlying library for building them, are still open source. This is why OpenTofu didn't have to fork them. Considering they're also used by Pulumi I don't see the provider community going away any time soon, but I definitely see them detaching themselves from Hashicorp.
- fishnchips 2y agoOr - IBM mends the rift with OpenTofu for their own good.
- oneplane 2y agoAt least we still have OpenTofu. I wonder how the rest is going to get forked.
- cipherboy 2y agoAnd OpenBao's fork of Vault. There are non-IBM companies on the TSC.
- fishnchips 2y agoIronically, IBM is behind the Vault fork (OpenBao). Way to negotiate!
- dang 2y agoUrl changed from https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/ibm-nears-deal-for-cloud-software-provider-cf146448 https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/ibm-nears-deal-for-cloud-...
- xyst 2y agoMitchell, one of the co founders, left HashiCorp in December 2023 [1] It’s either terrible timing (missed on more money?) or he knew about it and decided months in advance that it’s not worth the trouble of staying on (ie, look at the aftermath of the RedHat and IBM acquisition). [1] https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/mitchell-reflects-as-he-departs-hashicorp https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/mitchell-reflects-as-he-depar...
- nodesocket 2y agoI don't think Mitchell has any shares still. At least I could not find him listed on insider transactions. He made billion with B when it went IPO and most likely cashed out near the top which coincidentally is when I bought (facepalm).
- bonzini 2y agoWhat's the aftermath of the Red Hat and IBM acquisition? I've been at Red Hat since 2009 myself, and have hardly seen the difference over the last five years.
- eraser215 2y agoWe all know it's just made up stuff to feed the narrative of evil IBM making RH evil. Not even the plausible scenario of IBM changing the source code licencing of hashicorp software back to something genuinely open can change people's minds.
- fishnchips 2y agoOr possibly it’s completely unrelated and it’s just our brains looking for meaning where there’s none.
- bitvoid 2y agoIf his leaving is unrelated, that would fall under the first possibility of the parent comment, no?
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- nahikoa 2y agoIgnore
- stuff4ben 2y agoWhy would IBM buy Canonical when they have RedHat already???
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- drpossum 2y agoRIP This is why we can't have nice things.
- dkuntz2 2y agoopentofu now's your time to shine (also pick a better name)
- shagie 2y agoReuters references a WSJ article. That article (gift link) is IBM Nears Deal for Cloud-Software Provider -- https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/ibm-nears-deal-for-cloud-software-provider-cf146448?st=r4dbdpqje4o954f&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/ibm-nears-deal-for-cloud-...
- ThinkBeat 2y agoIt is hard to figure out what IBM is anymore and their profile /strategy is. They make totally awesome mainframes, which are spectacularly expensive and tends to be existing customers updating than new companies buying them. All the research and engineering that they put into the mainframes is astounding. They remain a critical part of a vast number of financial transactions in the world. I keep hoping companies will discover that they are really great for a few things But they are certainly not fashionable, and it does not appear that IBM has much interest in making them fashionable. They have the iSeries which I believe is the successor to the AS/400. That was one amazing and utterly reliable machine. But again, that was 20 years ago or more since I touched them. But they are certainly not fashionable, and it does not appear that IBM has much interest in making them fashionable. Then they have a research division that used to do great things. They may still be I just have not followed it much. I do know that they are investing a lot into research about Quantum chips. (or at least I think so) DB/2 used to be a great database system. It may still be, but I have had no exposure to it in over a decade. It does not show up often in DBMS comparisons. But it is certainly not fashionable, and it does not appear that IBM has much interest in making it fashionable. They have their cloud services But it is certainly not fashionable, and it does not appear that IBM has much interest in making it fashionable or ???? I know they are selling hybrid solutions for people with mainframe to run some things in the IBM cloud. They have at least 4 operating systems. z/OS, AIX and RedHat (well that one is quite different) and whatever the iSeries run these days. The must have a research park somewhere that invents new was to do licensing and making things even more expensive. Possibly some cooperating with Oracle :p They have whatever their consulting arms is called now. I have been terribly disappointed with the consultants i have interacted with from there but I may have been unlucky. They have RedHat and now (maybe) Hasicorp. RedHat+Hasicorp goes into the cloud? + adds leverage to their consulting business. What is the overall strategy though. They have so many different things but they dont seem to push them in a collective way into something new and wonderful.
- ruraljuror 2y ago“Red Hat goes into the cloud” sounds like something that hasn’t happened yet. IBM bought red hat (largest historical software acquisition at the time) due to its position in hybrid cloud.
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- vram22 2y agoSoon, from the acquired party: "Our incredible journey" ... https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ In earlier years, many of them literally had those words in their final blog posts or emails to their users. Now some of them seem to have got wise to the Tumblog above, so are changing their words, though not their meaning.
- sylens 2y agoIf you were looking to standardize on IaC today, after reading this news - would you go with Terraform or OpenTofu? I honestly can't get a good read on how this will affect the future of Terraform.
- resizeitplz 2y agoPulumi, cloudformation/arm-bicep, etc?
- tech_tuna 2y agoOpenTofu. Pulumi is cool especially if you want to run "code" code and not declarative code but Pulumi is in some ways the next Hashicorp. We'll see if they can manage to build a business and not become lame and evil like Hashicorp. OpenTofu is 100% open source. Honestly, if they built a real scripting engine into OpenTofu, I'd be overjoyed. As it stands though, the declarative code (HCL) isn't the ugliest.
- Coryodaniel 2y agoIm on team tofu. Come to the webinar tmrw, not quite a scripting engine but multilang no-custom-provider custom function support https://www.linkedin.com/posts/opentofuorg_native-lua-more-in-opentofu-170-activity-7188565082136604673-4H5g https://www.linkedin.com/posts/opentofuorg_native-lua-more-i... Apologies for the LI link I’m a startup CEO
- AaronFriel 2y agoPulumi is open source, and committed to Apache 2.0! We liken our model to git and GitHub, building the best service for the Pulumi engine and related tools. https://www.pulumi.com/blog/pulumi-hearts-opensource/ https://www.pulumi.com/blog/pulumi-hearts-opensource/
- camdenlock 2y ago[dead]
- bastard_op 2y agoI contacted IBM regarding looking RH services, I couldn't even get someone to setup a meeting to sell me something after weeks with a sales drone. Purely inept. Death to anything IBM.