←back to thread

IBM to acquire Confluent

(www.confluent.io)
443 points abd12 | 4 comments | 08 Dec 25 13:43 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
notepad0x90 ◴[08 Dec 25 15:01 UTC] No.46192971[source]▶
This is so fascinating to me. I mean how IBM keeps taking over other companies, but they consistently deliver low quality/bottom-tier services and products. Why do they keep doing the same thing again and again? How are they generating actual revenue this way?

Ok, so does anyone remember 'Watson'? It was the chatgpt before chatgpt. they built it in house. Why didn't they compete with OpenAI like Google and Anthropic are doing, with in-house tools? They have a mature PowerPC (Power9+? now?)setup, lots of talent to make ML/LLMs work and lots of existing investment in datacenters and getting GPU-intense workloads going.

I don't disagree that this acquisition is good strategy, I'm just fascinated (Schadenfreude?) to witness the demise of confluent now. I think economists should study this, it might help avert larger problems.

replies(20): >>46193157 #>>46193166 #>>46193230 #>>46193283 #>>46193377 #>>46193425 #>>46193477 #>>46193667 #>>46194024 #>>46195332 #>>46197840 #>>46197983 #>>46198495 #>>46198575 #>>46199548 #>>46199797 #>>46200151 #>>46200251 #>>46201636 #>>46203121 #
1. paxys ◴[08 Dec 25 16:12 UTC] No.46194024[source]▶
Everything will make sense when you realize that IBM is a consulting company. They don't care about building great products. In fact building self-serve products will directly take away from their consulting revenue. They instead need to be good at marketing and selling their services. Watson was exactly that - a marketing demo that got them in the news cycle and helped them sell a giant wave of contracts under a single brand to unsuspecting CIOs of legacy non-tech companies. Every acquisition helps with this goal. Red Hat - locking companies into licenses and support contracts for the OS. HashiCorp & Confluent - locking companies into support contracts for their cloud infra.
replies(2): >>46195752 #>>46199035 #
2. signatoremo ◴[08 Dec 25 18:21 UTC] No.46195752[source]▶
The service part you are likely referring to is now Kyldryl, a separate company. IBM now focus on software and cloud. There are still services but are much less prominent.
replies(1): >>46197857 #
3. drewda ◴[08 Dec 25 21:25 UTC] No.46197857[source]▶
FWIW, both of your comments can have some truth:

- the pure consultancy is another company now - the IBM portfolio of software "products" are being packaged in ways that emphasize professional services and elaborate licensing schemes (rather than turnkey software)

4. ethbr1 ◴[08 Dec 25 23:17 UTC] No.46199035[source]▶
>> Ok, so does anyone remember 'Watson'? [...] Why didn't they compete with OpenAI like Google and Anthropic are doing, with in-house tools?

> Everything will make sense when you realize that IBM is a consulting company.

This and.

The 'and' being that consulting companies, in their DNA, build solutions for their customers.

Which is a very different business than building products for all users.

Not least because the former is guided by understanding a customer's requirements, while the later is having a strong intuition (backed up by market fit) about what all users want.

I'm pretty sure there might not be a full end user capable (in the sense of design-build-iterate) product team in IBM at this point.

Mostly because I don't think they've any middle/upper management that can think that way. They've got the engineers!