IBM properly gravitated away from attempting to be a pure cloud infrastructure vendor years in the past, recognizing that it might by no means compete with the large three – Amazon, Microsoft and Google. It has since moved onto serving to IT departments handle advanced hybrid environments, utilizing its monetary clout to amass a portfolio of excessive profile firms.
It started with the $34 billion Red Hat acquisition in 2018, continued with the Apptio acquisition final yr, and it saved it occurring Wednesday when the corporate introduced that it could be buying cloud administration vendor, HashiCorp, for $6.4 billion.
With HashiCorp, Massive Blue will get a set of cloud lifecycle administration and safety instruments, and an organization that’s rising significantly sooner than any of IBM’s different companies. Though the income is small by IBM requirements – $155 million final quarter, up 15% over the prior yr. That also makes it a wholesome and rising enterprise for IBM so as to add to its rising steady of hybrid cloud instruments.
HashiCorp made headlines final yr when it modified the license on its open supply Terraform software to be extra pleasant to the corporate. The neighborhood that helped construct Terraform wasn’t pleased and responded by launching a brand new open source alternative known as OpenTofu. HashiCorp not too long ago accused the brand new neighborhood of misusing Terraform’s open source code when it created the OpenTofu fork. Now that the corporate is a part of IBM, it will likely be fascinating to see in the event that they proceed to pursue this line of considering.
It’s value noting that Purple Hat additionally made headlines final yr when it modified its open source licensing terms, additionally inflicting consternation within the open supply neighborhood. Maybe these firms will match effectively collectively, each from a software program perspective and their shifting views on open supply.
Simply this week, the corporate launched a brand new platform idea with the discharge of the Infrastructure Cloud, an idea that ought to match properly inside IBM’s hybrid cloud product catalog. Whereas they didn’t add a lot when it comes to performance, it did unify the choices below a single umbrella making it simpler for gross sales and advertising to current to prospects.
If the corporate treats HashiCorp in the same technique to Purple Hat, the corporate would preserve its independence contained in the IBM household of merchandise. However AVOA, a analysis agency run by former CIO Tim Crawford, says the corporate can be smart to maintain it impartial.
“My reservation would be if IBM moves away from Hashicorp’s neutral stance in working with multiple cloud providers and focuses on IBM Cloud. I suspect that would not be the case as IBM has recently shown how they are more open with other cloud providers,” Crawford wrote in a recent blog post.
