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I was not, and for that matter, am not really participating in this one either except as an observer. I wonder if there's a difference based on how many of tho

I was not, and for that matter, am not really participating in this one either except as an observer. I wonder if there's a difference based on how many of those companies were selling mostly actual hardware infrastructure, which has just gotten cheaper and more commoditized over time, versus those which had actual differentiated software. Both still got hit hard of course, a bubble's a bubble, but I wonder who did substantially worse?

infinite8s 12y ago
This time around the software is getting commoditized (with open source).
- firebones 12y ago
  There were some open source software players back then [1]. VA Linux (now Geeknet) was near a $10 billion market cap [2] in trading immediately following its IPO. After several pivots and renames, it's market cap now is just $50 million. RedHat went public at about a $1 billion valuation (raising $100 million), hit about $3 billion in trading after the IPO open, and has steadily grown to about a $10 billion cap over the last 15 years. Meanwhile, today Hortonworks ends the day with a cap over $1 billion, and a couple of competitors in the wings that may also be doing IPOs at some point. It's not that Hadoop and Linux are even comparable, but it's really hard to see from a 2014 vantage point that the Hadoop market will be as disruptive over the next 15 years as it would have been to see Linux disrupting in 1999. So Hortonworks and its ilk fall more in the space of advanced enterprise software--a more comparable relative temporary winner from that era was BEA Systems (which also had a spectacular rise and dramatic fall--amplified because they were a company that was disrupted by free software, and suffered due to unsustainable expectations). [3] [1] http://www.cnet.com/news/10-years-gone-the-va-linux-systems-ipo/ http://www.cnet.com/news/10-years-gone-the-va-linux-systems-... [2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/12/10/ipo_makes_va_linux_instant/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/12/10/ipo_makes_va_linux_i... [3] http://online.barrons.com/articles/SB998410322172345858?tesla=y http://online.barrons.com/articles/SB998410322172345858?tesl...

infinite8s 12y ago

This time around the software is getting commoditized (with open source).

firebones 12y ago
There were some open source software players back then [1]. VA Linux (now Geeknet) was near a $10 billion market cap [2] in trading immediately following its IPO. After several pivots and renames, it's market cap now is just $50 million. RedHat went public at about a $1 billion valuation (raising $100 million), hit about $3 billion in trading after the IPO open, and has steadily grown to about a $10 billion cap over the last 15 years. Meanwhile, today Hortonworks ends the day with a cap over $1 billion, and a couple of competitors in the wings that may also be doing IPOs at some point. It's not that Hadoop and Linux are even comparable, but it's really hard to see from a 2014 vantage point that the Hadoop market will be as disruptive over the next 15 years as it would have been to see Linux disrupting in 1999. So Hortonworks and its ilk fall more in the space of advanced enterprise software--a more comparable relative temporary winner from that era was BEA Systems (which also had a spectacular rise and dramatic fall--amplified because they were a company that was disrupted by free software, and suffered due to unsustainable expectations). [3] [1] http://www.cnet.com/news/10-years-gone-the-va-linux-systems-ipo/ http://www.cnet.com/news/10-years-gone-the-va-linux-systems-... [2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/12/10/ipo_makes_va_linux_instant/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/12/10/ipo_makes_va_linux_i... [3] http://online.barrons.com/articles/SB998410322172345858?tesla=y http://online.barrons.com/articles/SB998410322172345858?tesl...