Episode 145: Redis be like “I just stepped into a big pile of…SaaSy!”

Software Defined Talk

This week, we discuss Redis’ license changing move, open source business models in general (of course), SUSE revenue, and some VMworld selections.

Relevant to your interests

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• 10 AWS Lambda Use Cases to Start Your Serverless Journey.
• Announcing resource-based pricing for Google Compute Engine.
• DevOps Report 2018 released. Will talk about it next week. Until then, enjoy 78 pages of landscape PDF glory. Spoiler alert: elite high performers are elite high performers. Pivotal has a webinar on Oct 11th about it.
• Community management is a career cul-de-sac. See interview next week.
• Good example of corpdev thinking, in the US (legal) drugs market.
• “Google today announced that it is providing the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) with $9 million in Google Cloud credits to help further its work on the Kubernetes container orchestrator and that it is handing over operational control of the project to the community.”
• Armory lands $10M Series A to bring continuous delivery to enterprise masses.

VMworld NA 2018

• VMware acquires CloudHealth Technologies for multi-cloud management -
  • Carl@451: “Primarily a cost management and analysis platform, it has roughly 3,500 users and has also grown to cover automation, security and governance with a broad, API-based management platform for the major public clouds: AWS, Azure and GCP. CloudHealth mainly operates in the US, meaning VMware will have to square overseas operations and data management with other jurisdictions – primarily the EU GDPR regulations – going forward.”
  • Est. $500m valuation. They monitor your cloud costs. Cf. Dr. Cloud Pricing Guy at 451. Still that MoM in the Clouds vision.
  • “With CloudHealth, VMware not only gets the multi-cloud management solution, it gains its 3000 customers which include Yelp, Dow Jones, Zendesk and Pinterest.”
• VMware CEO: A Virtual Machine Is Still the Best Place to Run Kubernetes. Cameo from the Hill Country’s favorite systems management (former) analyst.
• VMware's Software-Defined Vision.
• Coté remember when he met with Kit Colbert at DockerCon EU 2014, and Coté had no idea what this “cloud native” stuff was. Now, it seems like it’s slowly moving to be the new word for PaaS, but more like the under-girding of PaaS. Also, went back to the NEMO recently. They no longer have the closet of dead things, sadly.
• Project Dimension - on-demand private clouds, driven by SDDC stuff.
• Pat’s Pillars: ‘“Superpowers” that are unlocking game-changing opportunities on a global scale – Cloud, Mobile, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things.’

Redis stinkup - the mysteries of making money by actually selling something

• Coté: now, what’s the deal here? They closed source some stuff that maybe others had contributed to, taking advantage of good will, and/or they’re just now charging for what used to be free? (Are there other open source scandal scenarios?)
• Joab and Lawrence at The New Stack: “While the core of Redis itself remains under the permissive BSD license, the company has reworded the licensing for some of its add-on modules, in effect blocking their use by third parties offering commercial Redis-based services — most notably cloud providers. Redis Labs was able to make this change because it retains the copyright to the open source code.”
• Commons Clause, Redis Labs.
• Adam Jacob Twitter thread on commons clause.

SUSE Revenue Watch

• Somehow, this has become a bit in the show. Blame Coté.
• Something like ~$360m based on trailing 6 months runrat’ed to 12 trailing. Also, likely non-GAAP reporting (not clear if it’s ACV vs. TCV), but whatever.
• Grind and stack: “EBITDA for that period was $56 million, nearly 23 percent year-over-year growth.” So: ~$112m profit, ~31% margins.
• That’s the kind of stable (they claim to run 70% of SAP apps), growing cash-throw-off that should make PE people drool on their Patagonia puffy vests: “Following last week's shareholder approval of Micro Focus' proposed sale of SUSE to EQT Partners for $2.535 billion, the transaction is expected to complete in the first quarter of calendar 2019, subject to customary regulatory approvals.”
• If my math is right (it’s established that I don’t know how numbers work), clawing in all profits would pay that $2.5bn off by 2026: 8 or 10 years of holding growth and profit %. Of course, you’d sell it off before that.

Conferences, et. al.

• Sep 24th to 27th - SpringOne Platform, in DC/Maryland (crabs!) get $200 off registration with the code S1P200_Cote. Also, check out the Spring One Tour - coming to a city near you!
• DevOpsDays Berlin, September 12th to 13th.
• DevOpsDays Paris, October 16th.
• Cloud Expo Asia October 10-11. Matt’s presenting!
• DevOps Days Singapore October 11-12. Matt’s presenting!
• DevOps Days Newcastle October 24-25.
• DevOps Days Wellington November 5-6.
• Devoxx Belgium, Antwerp, November 12th to 16th.
• SpringOne Tour - all over the earth!

Listener Feedback

• Bryan wants you to know about DevOps Days Galway November 18-20th
• DevOps Days Singapore wanted us to let folks know it’s October 11-12!
• Camille sent us some feedback and really liked Matt’s Red Atlas recommendation because she lives near a missile site.
• Joshua built a service that creates an RSS feed of podcasts based on keywords. Here’s an example: https://prod.mypod.online/feed?q=kubernetes Try it out.
• Soon to be Honey Ninja subscribes to SDT, citing host “wit” as driver.

SDT news & hype

• Join us in Slack.
• Subscribe to Software Defined Interviews Podcast
  • Dustin on Linux and Google Cloud
  • Rachel Stephens from RedMonk on Numbers
• Buy some t-shirts! DISCOUNT CODE: SDTFSG (40% off)
• Send your postal address to [e-mail] and we will send you a sticker.
• Brandon built the Quick Concall iPhone App and he wants you to buy it for $0.99.

Recommendations

• Brandon: Acquired Podcast.
• Matt: Blindsight by Peter Watts; The Good Fight.
• Coté: Friendly Fire podcast, the intros. Ikea knives.