Episode 97: The novel strategy of making money, and investing to do so - Amazon + Whole Foods

Looks like we’ll be getting cheaper organic food what with Amazon buying Whole Foods. What exactly is the strategy at play here, though? Other than the obvious thing of doing online groceries, how is Amazon advantaged here such that others (like Wal-mart), can’t simply do this themselves. We go over these questions and how they related to M&A in general. Plus recommendations and some podcast meta talk.

Mid-roll

• This episode is sponsored by Casper, who’s looking for some good senior SREs. If you’re into building out and managing infrastructure that keeps code running and makes sure you can sleep soundly at night, check out the job listing, apply, and be sure to mention that you heard about it on Software Defined Talk. According to Glassdoor reviews, it’s a damn fine place to work. You can also just email jobs@casper.com and browse all their openings at casper.com/jobs.
• LOOK, MA! I PUT IN DATES! DevOpsDays Minneapolis, July 25 to 26th: get 20% off registration with the code SDT (Thanks, Bridget!).
• SpringDays - Atlanta (July 18th to 19th)
• Matt will be at:
  • DevSecOps at RSA Conf APJ
  • Sydney Chef Meetup August 1st
  • Auckland AWS User Community August 3rd
  • Brisbane Azure User Group October 11

Podcast meta-talk

• Podcasts.app to be able to track what you listen to.
• Just paying for podcasts.
• $220m+ estimated TAM.
• We have a Casper ad!

Amazon Buys Whole Foods

• This was not covered in the Mary Meeker slide-fest.
• Coté’s notebook on the topic.
• Stratechery on WF Acquisition
• Exponent Podcast
• What exactly are the barriers to entry here for other grocery stores.
• The business: online, and just the grocery store on it’s own...plus the 460+ physical stores for other goods?
• Barriers to entry, Amazon buyers (Whole Foods looks good now?), culture clash?, HEB love, private label

BONUS LINKS! Not covered in episode. Gartner Magic Quadrant for IAAS is Here!

• Larry D.
• Once again, what a change from way back when:
• CRN
• The Register
• Johnny Leadgen can get a copy.
• On Oracle: “Gartner warns potential customers to be cautious of high-pressure sales tactics.”

How Microsoft Is Shifting Focus to Open Source

• Link
• “Chef is used to manage thousands of nodes internally across Azure, Office 365 and Bing.”

Amazon Eyeing Slack?

• Link
• “Buying Slack would help Seattle-based Amazon bolster its enterprise services as it seeks to compete with rivals like Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.”

Walmart Buys Bonobo

• I’ve got a Bonobo suit I really like.
• They had ModCloth and some others. Their M&A strategy has really shifted of late.

Walmart Sez Get Off the AWS

• Finally a reason for multi-cloud
• BigCo’s gonna bully that supply-chain.

What’s Wrong with Jenkins?

• Jenkins is the Nagios of CI/CD
• “No toolchain is perfect, but you can achieve software delivery perfection (or something close to it, at least) when you implement the right culture.” Tools don’t substitute culture.

Oracle’s Swinging For the Fences (and missing)

• Link
• “He was also unwilling for Specsavers to become a guinea pig for Oracle's cloud.”

Ubuntu Mobile Post Mortem

• Not much strategy…

Serverless and the Death of DevOps

• Link
• Spoiler: “DevOps is the ultimate reactive, or event-driven, tech use case. It’s not going anywhere”

State of DevOps 2017 Report

• Johnny Leadgen to the rescue!

Commercial Open Source Software Companies

• Link
• A bit of sourcing on the numbers would be valuable
• Glad Chef’s not on the list, wouldn’t want to comment on the numbers

Cloud Foundry Summit

• A whole mess of videos! 121 of them.

Heptio Out of Stealth Mode with K8s Management Tool

• TheNewStack covere
• Official page
• File under “It didn’t already do that. I see.”
• Not sure this qualifies as “coming out of stealth”, everyone knows they work on open source K8s. I’m not seeing a monetization strategy yet beyond support & training. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but they raised $8.5 for their A-round

BMC Software Exploring Merging with CA

• STOP THE PRESSES! TERRIBLE MEETS TERRIBLE?
• So far, no confirmation, but:
• “While the two companies were once dominant in the systems management industry, the analyst notes that CA and BMC have 7.5% and 8% share respectively as of FY16 which combined would put them on a near even footing with IBM, the largest vendor, at 15%.”
• “There are also many other vendors in the market including MSFT (7%) and NOW (5%) so anti trust concerns should not be an issue.”

High Level Kubernetes Overview

• Link
• “Basically Kubernetes is a distributed system that runs programs (well, containers) on computers. You tell it what to run, and it schedules it onto your machines.”

More on Service Meshes

• From James Governor, RedMonk

Recommendations

• Brandon: The Scholar and the Drop Out podcast; Coté’s add-on: Karl Lagerfella’s day, no exercise and long night-shirts.
• Matt: Commando: Johnny Ramone’s Autobiography
• Coté: Gulf Shores, Alabama; Hillbilly Elegy and “The Dead Pig Collector.”