Tag: IBM

VMware Acquires Shavlik: Where Has The Innovation Gone?

VMware has agreed to acquire Shavlik Technologies; the terms of transaction were not disclosed.  Shavlik was founded in 1993, is headquartered in Minnesota, and offers a full suite of products to manage physical or virtual servers and laptops/desktops.  Shavlik is no stranger to VMware as the companies jointly developed VMware GO, a SaaS based IT management offering.

While Shavlik is an excellent acquisition for VMware as their technology is solid and they are sure to grow faster under VMware’s umbrella, the question is why?  VMware paints this acquisition as a way to increase their penetration within small and medium business (SMB).  Mark Shavlik, President and CEO, writes via his blog, “We will also be entering global markets much faster by working with Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Solution Providers. This enables more companies around the world to utilize our SaaS and On-Premise solutions.”  If Shavlik’s solution can scale to meet the needs of MSPs and Solution Providers, then is it really simply a SMB solution?

Perhaps it’s just me, but this whole thing seems a bit scripted for my taste.  From the press release to the blog post to the media coverage, it feels a bit like listening to politicians running through their talking points.   In an effort to shield themselves from the wrath of traditional IT management companies such as Symantec, HP, LANDesk, and IBM, Is VMware intentionally downplaying Shavlik’s capabilities?  After all, VMware has acquired a company that has full management capabilities including antivirus, patch management, configuration management, asset management, and power management.

At a time when VMware’s Enterprise dominance is being challenged by both Microsoft and Red Hat, Shavlik looks to be a defensive acquisition to protect the lower end of the market.  However, how many people have heard about VMware Go prior to this acquisition?  Will VMware roll Shavlik’s products into Ionix rationalizing the overlap with Configuresoft?   Does this help VMware with Hybrid Clouds?  Public Clouds?  Workloads?

More importantly, has VMware become so large that they have lost the ability to innovate and disrupt a market that they created?  This is not VMware’s first acquisition from their 3rd party partner ecosystem, and I suspect it is not their last.  VMworld 2011 is certainly going to be interesting!

Advertisement

Dell Avoids Aster and Dodges a 296 Million Dollar Mistake

Another one bites the dust as Teradata has acquired Aster Data for a reported $263 million.  This represents 89% of Aster Data shares as Teradata already owned 11% of Aster bringing the true acquisition cost to $296 million or $275 million after subtracting Aster’s $21 million in cash.  In any case, that’s a lot of money for a company of Aster’s age and size.

For Teradata this acquisition makes sense as they continue to compete against HP (Vertica), IBM (Netezza), EMC (Greenplum), Oracle, and SAP (HANA).  Teradata is faced with an age-old question for technology companies; hold on to their proprietary ways of the past or reach for the open and commoditized ways of the future.  It is not clear to me which direction Teradata will choose. However, it is clear to me that, unlike Dell, Teradata is the right company in the right industry to make such a gamble on Aster; the database guru’s at Aster, Tazo Argyros and Mayank Bawa, will find themselves at home within the halls of Teradata.

While I applaud Dell for continuing to blaze their own path, it seems others within the technical community are harder to please.  Per Gigaom’s Stacey Higginbotham’s article posted on March 3, 2011:

“So for Dell, and any other big data wannabes out there, the only proven options left to
start fulfilling this niche are ParAccel, Infobright, and Ingres’s VectorWise Platform.”

I’d hardly call Dell a “big data wannabe” and perhaps some have misconstrued their attempted acquisition of 3Par as a precursor to Dell entering this space.  In fact, Dell has been quite clear that any software acquisitions must have an impact on their strategic lines of business.  While Aster and other big data start-ups have the potential of driving Dell’s server and storage sales, their valuations and competitive landscapes make them a risky move for Dell.

Dell is quickly becoming the king of “Cloud Neutrality” as they are providing key pieces of the solution to their customers while working with various infrastructure providers such as Juniper, Cisco, and more. By purchasing disruptive Cloud software companies within the areas of management, orchestration, security, and monitoring, Dell could further their leadership in this market.  Think the completion of UEC; very exciting!

Since I’ve never started a billion dollar company from my dorm room, I’ll defer to Michael Dell to make the right moves for his company.  Perhaps they’ll enter the big data market with a smaller software acquisition and integrate it into other cloud offerings thereby indirectly attacking the market.  For now, Teradata has gotten a bit stronger while Dell has avoided a $296 million mistake.