Welcome back to the SnapShots!
Weekly insights from RedSnap's perspective about what happened in the past week. We share our three key takeaways and update you on the progress at RedSnap. Hope you enjoy our selection this week. Happy reading!
Angela Merkel is stepping down and it could hurt Europe
This week, Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, announced that she will not seek re-election.
RedSnap regrets that Merkel has decided to leave. There are many uncertainties coming, and this could be a new challenge for the future of Europe. She is one of the pillars of a strong Europe and its economy. Merkel’s exit will be Germany and Europe’s loss. Will Europe be able to keep a united front? We are strongly in favour of keeping Europe together and we are worried about the impact this decision will have.
Resetting the cloud landscape, for real?
IBM is acquiring Red Hat, a major distributor of open-source software and technology, in a deal valued around $34 billion. RedSnap’s takeaway on this acquisition is that IBM believes and argues that the reduction of cloud computing to three centralised providers makes businesses reluctant to commit to any one of them. IBM is betting it can once again (as with its e-business campaign in the ’90) provide the solution for the problem. That, in combination with Red Hat, it can build products that will seamlessly bridge private data centres and all of the public clouds. The best thing going for this strategy is its honesty towards the market: IBM gave up its potential to compete in the public cloud a decade ago, faked it for the last five years, and now is finally admitting its best option is to build on top of everyone else’s clouds.
Our questions would be, firstly, if clients don’t want to have a ‘lock-in‘ with the three big cloud vendors, why would they want to have this lock in with IBM? (please: if the answer is “Redhat is open” at what point do increasingly sophisticated businesses build it themselves?) Secondly, if you have a proven failed cloud business model in the last decade….why would this suddenly become a success?
RedSnap hopes that the above analyses will turn out wrongly because IBM is a company with a rich history. However, investing $ 34 billion in a market that is already lost with such a shaky strategy.
Wake-up call for Gartner
RedSnap’s gaze was drawn to Chris Skinner’s recent blog post about a publication by Gartner. He was mad that Gartner claimed that within 12 years’ time, 80% of financial firms would either go out of business or be rendered irrelevant by new competition, changing customer behaviour and advances in technology. Chris Skinner shared his thoughts that the forecast is complete rubbish.
Chris’s thoughts caught our attention because nobody until now, or at least no one from the industry has spoken in such clear terms about an ‘old school’ institution like Gartner, and sent all of us a wake-up call about Gartner. Ten years ago, Gartner was one of the leading analysts and now Skinner thinks it looks like they are losing their charm.
Is Chris Skinner right?
Is this the end of the old world?
Or do you think Gartner has a point?
