when do virtualization startups become viable contenders?

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Thuleman

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This isn't about any one particular vendor, but you can certainly pick a whole bunch of them on the storage, software, or hyperconverged side.

When do they actually become viable contenders for millions of dollars of infrastructure budgets per client?

One way to look at this would be to say that the startups have been validated once they are bought out. The BIG 4(?) or 5(?) don't care when there's some startup that has sold 1,000 units of something.

I remember reading that one of the newfangled storage vendors sold an array and displaced a Dell something or other. The Dell dudes were like "Huh? We have 73,000 customers globally ..."

I also remember reading that in order to become 5/9 certified you have to have at least 1k units in production.

Nevermind that picking the wrong technology will be a resume-generating event. Let's just talk about the responsibility of ensuring that the business is up and running.
 
Excellent question that comes up often. Also what happens to technology when they are bought out. Usually original staff stays around for a bit then leaves to do something else with newly minted millions and product lags in development.
Another question and its a big one for me is can the company provide mission critical support when needed. Most of the time these companies don't have resources to do that and i ran into it few times trying to get new products introduced.
 
I can remember when we were building the ESX 2.5 hosts and started doing P2Vs of workload using all kinds of crazy hacks and crap to get it done. That was on production workload! Perhaps, you have to ask, where did our balls go?

I don't know how to answer the question, especially with large buys. I think, just picking something at random, like a Tintri array we keep talking about in the forums... is you buy an entry level one and you do T&D and your crash and burn stuff on it and beat the tires on it for a year or more before you go all in. You have to justify some extra costs in there for the upside that it could pay off without losing your lunch or your job. The technologies between traditional, converged, hyper-converged, and then other things like all flash arrays and even containers have really spread the market a bit thin. No idea how all this stuff exploding in different directions is going to coalesce into sure fire bets. Doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

EDIT: I swear, this guy has a nerd radar with the power of no other: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2015/05/26/no-one-ever-got-fired-for-buying-ibm-hp-dell-emc-etc/
 
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making long story short - never :)

startups have another job which is established vendors motivation and pushing disruptive technologies into mass adoption <-- this cannot be done by any of the established vendors directly

ps some startups catch wave and get acquired by bigger vendors just to be eventually phased out and killed years later

Thuleman said:
This isn't about any one particular vendor, but you can certainly pick a whole bunch of them on the storage, software, or hyperconverged side.

When do they actually become viable contenders for millions of dollars of infrastructure budgets per client?

One way to look at this would be to say that the startups have been validated once they are bought out. The BIG 4(?) or 5(?) don't care when there's some startup that has sold 1,000 units of something.

I remember reading that one of the newfangled storage vendors sold an array and displaced a Dell something or other. The Dell dudes were like "Huh? We have 73,000 customers globally ..."

I also remember reading that in order to become 5/9 certified you have to have at least 1k units in production.

Nevermind that picking the wrong technology will be a resume-generating event. Let's just talk about the responsibility of ensuring that the business is up and running.
Click to expand...
 
defuseme2k said:
I can remember when we were building the ESX 2.5 hosts and started doing P2Vs of workload using all kinds of crazy hacks and crap to get it done. That was on production workload! Perhaps, you have to ask, where did our balls go?
Click to expand...

Ha! Good one. What happened to me is that I moved from an environment (edu) where downtime was seen as "meh, whatever" to an environment (healthcare) where downtime actually has an enormous impact, financial and otherwise.

defuseme2k said:
EDIT: I swear, this guy has a nerd radar with the power of no other: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2015/05/26/no-one-ever-got-fired-for-buying-ibm-hp-dell-emc-etc/
Click to expand...

Good find. The Pure marketing machine sure showed up en-force to pipe in, even with the most ridiculous statements such as "Pure is actively putting policy in place not to be acquired." Whomever wrote that has literally no idea how mergers and acquisitions work. You don't prevent being bought by policy. You can't actively prevent being bought at all. At some point the number offered will be big enough for the owners to say "Sure, I'll take it!"

Olga-SAN said:
startups have another job which is established vendors motivation and pushing disruptive technologies into mass adoption <-- this cannot be done by any of the established vendors directly
Click to expand...

This is a great observation.
 
Pure, not get acquired? From what I've seen of their books, they're 470 million into funding, and 500 million in debt, with revenue in the 140 million range. That's not "IPO" ranges... And someone's gonna want their money at some point.
 
defuseme2k said:
I can remember when we were building the ESX 2.5 hosts and started doing P2Vs of workload using all kinds of crazy hacks and crap to get it done. That was on production workload! Perhaps, you have to ask, where did our balls go?

I don't know how to answer the question, especially with large buys. I think, just picking something at random, like a Tintri array we keep talking about in the forums... is you buy an entry level one and you do T&D and your crash and burn stuff on it and beat the tires on it for a year or more before you go all in. You have to justify some extra costs in there for the upside that it could pay off without losing your lunch or your job. The technologies between traditional, converged, hyper-converged, and then other things like all flash arrays and even containers have really spread the market a bit thin. No idea how all this stuff exploding in different directions is going to coalesce into sure fire bets. Doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

EDIT: I swear, this guy has a nerd radar with the power of no other: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2015/05/26/no-one-ever-got-fired-for-buying-ibm-hp-dell-emc-etc/
Click to expand...

Bingo. I rode this out at VMware for 7 years - we were ~just~ getting folks to move real production exchange/SQL loads over when I started, back on 3.0.2 - now those are all regularly virtualized from the start!

It's all about doing research - references, who the founders are, and PoC/evals. Never buy something without a PoC - if it works, they'll be willing to do it. Any place that says "nope" or "you must sign that you'll buy this thing if you meet a goal that WE set" - be wary.
 
lopoetve said:
Pure, not get acquired? From what I've seen of their books, they're 470 million into funding, and 500 million in debt, with revenue in the 140 million range. That's not "IPO" ranges... And someone's gonna want their money at some point.
Click to expand...

Yep. Pure keeps saying they want to stay independent. That's just not sustainable with their funding and run rate. They are saying that because pretty much all the companies that could acquire them already have an AFA strategy. I'm very curious to see where they are at the end of this year.
 
where did you get pure financial statements from?

lopoetve said:
Pure, not get acquired? From what I've seen of their books, they're 470 million into funding, and 500 million in debt, with revenue in the 140 million range. That's not "IPO" ranges... And someone's gonna want their money at some point.
Click to expand...
 
lopoetve said:
Pure, not get acquired? From what I've seen of their books, they're 470 million into funding, and 500 million in debt, with revenue in the 140 million range. That's not "IPO" ranges... And someone's gonna want their money at some point.
Click to expand...

maybe's that's their policy. run up such a sh*tload of debt no one will want to buy them?
 
Olga-SAN said:
where did you get pure financial statements from?
Click to expand...

They filed them for once, as part of an IPO strategy (most likely). You have to make that stuff public to get to that point, but those are scary numbers.

NetJunkie said:
Yep. Pure keeps saying they want to stay independent. That's just not sustainable with their funding and run rate. They are saying that because pretty much all the companies that could acquire them already have an AFA strategy. I'm very curious to see where they are at the end of this year.
Click to expand...

My ~best~ guess is that they're hoping one of those larger vendors may not be happy with whatever their current strategy is, and pulls them in. As it is, I'm with you - I have no idea where else they'll be by EOY, but I'd bet money it'll be a rocky ride somewhere in there.
 
danswartz said:
maybe's that's their policy. run up such a sh*tload of debt no one will want to buy them?
Click to expand...

Sure, but you can't keep doing business like that. Eventually you have to make money, and the investors want to get paid... :(
 
lopoetve said:
They filed them for once, as part of an IPO strategy (most likely). You have to make that stuff public to get to that point, but those are scary numbers.



My ~best~ guess is that they're hoping one of those larger vendors may not be happy with whatever their current strategy is, and pulls them in. As it is, I'm with you - I have no idea where else they'll be by EOY, but I'd bet money it'll be a rocky ride somewhere in there.
Click to expand...

Cisco doesn't seem excited about Invicta much. It's been a total flop and they seem to like Pure. Perhaps there is a play there by Cisco. I can't back any of that up though.
 
QHalo said:
Cisco doesn't seem excited about Invicta much. It's been a total flop and they seem to like Pure. Perhaps there is a play there by Cisco. I can't back any of that up though.
Click to expand...

Invicta has been a complete disaster for Cisco. Cisco got mad at us for refusing to sell it. We killed our appliance in under an hour... I don't think they'll buy anyone. They are moving forward with Invicta and integrating it in to UCS. They rush the re-platform of Invicta and that was the main issue.

When we (Varrow) got bought a few of us joked about going to Cisco and offering to run their storage division. Wasn't a bad idea....
 
NetJunkie said:
Invicta has been a complete disaster for Cisco. Cisco got mad at us for refusing to sell it. We killed our appliance in under an hour... I don't think they'll buy anyone. They are moving forward with Invicta and integrating it in to UCS. They rush the re-platform of Invicta and that was the main issue.

When we (Varrow) got bought a few of us joked about going to Cisco and offering to run their storage division. Wasn't a bad idea....
Click to expand...

I saw what they were doing under NDA when my boss wanted me to investigate it. Definitely rushed for sure and they just keep coming with half-assed attempts. It'll be a long while before it's ready.
 
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