In a monumental move, Cisco Systems, known for its networking equipment, has announced its intent to acquire Splunk for $28B USD ($157/share), the San Francisco-based company renowned for its software platform that monitors, searches, and analyzes big data along with a full suite of cyber security offerings. Both companies have significant histories in the tech industry, with Cisco having a footprint in network management and cybersecurity, while Splunk focuses on real-time data processing and analytics. The acquisition makes sense for Cisco as they have been reshaping their business from hardware-centric to higher margin software-centric. ...
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Introduction: Doing the same things and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity, at least according to Albert Einstein. Engaging with suppliers in 2023 requires a different approach otherwise, you can expect price increases by 20% or more on your annual renewals. The Rise of an Anti-Customer Profiteering: Historically, technology suppliers would at least try to align with their customers for mutual long-term benefit. In 2023, at the very time that their customers are in desperate need of relief on costs, technology suppliers have departed from their long term aligned stance. Instead, suppliers are forcing substantial ...
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Oracle's financials have generally been strong in recent years with their aggressive cloud push, reporting steady growth in revenues and earnings. However, Oracle faces increasing competition from other cloud providers, particularly in the areas of IaaS and PaaS. Additionally, Oracle has been shifting its focus towards cloud-based services and away from its traditional software licensing business, which could impact its financial performance in the long-term. Read our series related to this starting with The Top 5 Price Shock Phenomena of Cloud Costs. In the very short term however, they have missed earnings targets and indicated on their ...
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Salesforce has led the market for years. We have pointed to Salesforce as the culprit who broke the early promise of software as a service as (SaaS). SaaS was supposed to be elastic with demand allowing costs to go both up and down. Historically, we know that Salesforce is supportive of increases in their customers' cost but it has been punitive to reductions. With Salesforce’s fiscal year-end coming at the end of January 2023, now is a great time to re-evaluate your deployment and at the very least benchmark to see how your spend compares to the market. But first, more on Salesforce themselves…. Things 'they are a changin' in ...
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These days the whole world sometimes feels like a Snowflake… and by that we mean that growth is slowing, and stocks are generally down as reality sets in. Snowflake, the company, is still growing but nowhere near the breakneck speed of the good (?) old days. Macroeconomic factors may be contributing to that, but we believe that, like our clients, the market for Snowflake has figured out that deployments need to be actively managed so that the negotiated costs are not exceeded. Early Snowflake customers learned the hard way that their first agreement would ultimately set the floor for what they would spend, eventually understanding that their ...
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As we are well into calendar Q4, several tech companies have announced layoffs and cutbacks as they prepare to weather inflation and the impending recession storm. Despite all the great news coming out of Oracle from their Q1 2023 report (announced September 12, 2022), they have been laying off employees throughout the course of 2022 on the heels of their Cerner acquisition in their quest to cut $1B in cost in the name of synergy. Somewhat surprising to us; however, is that they are also laying off from their OCI group (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure). Given their claims of robust cloud growth that they talk about to Wall Street in their Q1 ...
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No question Oracle is one of the most dominant and financially successful tech companies in the world. In fact, almost everyone reading this probably directly or indirectly owns a small part of Oracle in their investment portfolio. However, through sales practices, audit actions, acquisitions and never-ending lawsuits, Oracle seems to be relying increasingly on legal tactics and maneuvers to shut down competition and show growth to Wall Street, rather than be a disruptive innovator. Some would say that Oracle’s core competency now is litigation, not innovation. Ongoing War with Rimini Street We have long advocated for seeking alternatives in ...
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Oracle spends more on marketing than it does on innovation, $7.6B to be exact. Knowing Oracle, they probably refer to their marketing efforts as innovative. Oracle’s licensing and cloud offers come in a dizzying array of offerings and by extension, complexity, but they are anything but innovative. We’ve observed over the last several months an uptick in sub-optimized Oracle deployments that are causing substantial pain around: PULA’s – Perpetual User License Agreements Cloud@Customer – Oracle public cloud apps in your data center PaaS – Platform as a Service and IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service What all these offerings share that is ...
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As we've been saying for months, post (hopefully) pandemic Market Conditions are ripe for you to act in driving business value into your company. If you've ever dreamed of being the budget hero, this is it. With the tumult in the supplier marketplace around M&As, shifts of products to the cloud, small company disruptions, the supplier competition has never been as robust. Once you digest the list below and want more, we're happy to talk. There's nothing we like better than chatting about how to get more value from technology suppliers - especially now. Big Software SAP Nearly 100% of SAP deals come due in December. This is driven by ...
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Like a party no one wanted to go to, the COVID pandemic dragged many IT Executives into (over) spending on technology that was not planned for. In the frenetic pace to ‘keep the lights on’, expenditures were made without the scrutiny they may have normally received pre-COVID. Supporting all the work from anywhere (WFA) initiatives including conferencing, PCs, and remote access software and hardware were all added to the mission critical initiatives already underway, like digital transformation and cloud migrations siphoning money away from those other priorities. As you start planning for your 2022 budgets, you may just now be realizing and ...
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