March 26, 2025 • 25 mins
When tech giants make moves, the entire industry feels the tremors. Google's staggering $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz signals just how valuable security platforms have become in today's digital landscape—especially those with visibility across multiple cloud providers. With a $3.2 billion breakup fee attached, Google clearly believes regulators will ultimately approve the deal despite potential competitive concerns about accessing data from rival cloud platforms.
Meanwhile, Cisco and NVIDIA are combining forces to create the "Cisco Secure AI Factory," a turnkey solution aimed at enterprises looking to deploy AI infrastructure without the complexity of building from scratch. This strategic partnership packages Cisco's networking equipment with NVIDIA's powerful AI chipsets, offering organizations a direct path to AI implementation. The question remains whether enterprises will adopt these solutions while still waiting for clear ROI from AI investments.
The cloud landscape continues to evolve in unexpected ways, with HPE announcing workforce reductions despite strong revenue growth, all while battling regulatory challenges to its Juniper Networks acquisition. And as smaller cloud providers like NetEase shutter their services, organizations are reminded of the importance of multi-cloud strategies that distribute risk and enhance resilience. These developments underscore a crucial reality: in today's technology ecosystem, consolidation presents both opportunities and significant challenges for businesses relying on digital infrastructure.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris Miles (00:13):
What's up and welcome back to another episode
of the Cables to Clouds podcast.
My name is Chris Miles.
I'll be your host for today aswe're diving into the Cables to
Clouds fortnightly news episode.
So for this week.
Typically what we do is we havea few news articles that we've
kind of brought together overthe last couple of weeks of news
that has happened that we foundinteresting.
(00:35):
We dive into each one of themone by one.
Joining me today, as always, ismy beloved co-host, my beloved
co-host, friendly face, timMcConaughey at Carpe DMVPN, on
Blue Sky as well.
How are you doing, tim?
Tim McConnaughy (00:52):
Good man Just excited to do the news.
I guess, as always, I didn'ttell Tim ahead of time I was
going to ask him how he was, sohe was very blindsided by that.
Chris Miles (01:02):
Sorry, Tim.
No one's ever asked me thatbefore, so I really had to
scramble.
Fair enough, all right.
Well, let's not waste any time,let's hop right in.
So, first up, we have anarticle from Reuters which, to
be honest, we could have kind oftaken our pick about which news
outlet we wanted to use tocover this.
Um.
So google has entered into anagreement, um, to buy the cloud
(01:28):
security company whiz, um for 32billion um, which is one of the
biggest deals we've uh seen.
Tim McConnaughy (01:35):
yeah, with a billion, with a b, with a pinky
to the mouth, you know, dr evilstyle.
Chris Miles (01:41):
Uh 32 billion, um, which is funny because this
comes like not even a year laterafter whiz rejected a uh an
offer.
And you know we kind ofspeculated at the time in 2024,
like, oh well, if they'rerejecting this, you know what's
it gonna?
What would it cost for whiz,what are they expecting to make?
And I think we've answered thatand it's an extra nine billion
(02:01):
uh so yeah, so last year's offerwas about 23 billion.
This one comes in at 32 um.
One thing very notable to sayis that there is a um what's it
called a breakup fee of 3.2billion.
So that means if, if for somereason, the deal does not get
approved, does not go through,whiz still comes out three
(02:21):
billion dollars richer at theend of the day.
So, that right there tells methat Google is hedging their
bets pretty hard that this isgoing to happen.
So, and probably, you know,compared to last year new
administration.
I'm sure that probably playsinto it, although, you know,
(02:43):
trump has said it's even notedin this article that they are
going to kind of crack down onbig tech in a way.
I don't know if either of ustechnically believe that, but
that is the claim that they'vemade and you know, I think it's
also noted here that Googlecurrently has about $23, $24
billion in cash and assets andthings like that as of last year
(03:06):
, so they're actually going tohave to do some financing for
this deal.
Man, this one is crazy for afacet of reasons, at least from
my perspective, like one is.
I really hope this gets thelevel of scrutiny that the HPE
Juniper deal is getting.
Tim McConnaughy (03:22):
Yeah, right Because.
Chris Miles (03:23):
I find this one to be a way bigger kind of
competitive issue than that.
One is because, you know, wizis very integrated into a
multi-cloud capacity, right?
So they're basically a CNAPplatform is kind of what they're
pushing very hard right now.
A cloud-native application ohmy gosh.
Tim McConnaughy (03:45):
Protection platform.
Chris Miles (03:46):
Protection platform , right, um, so that's kind of
what they're they're banking on,but obviously very strong
integrations into AWS, azure,who are their major competitors
in this space, and you know it.
I think we can make the prettyobvious argument there that
Google, having access to allthis information, this Intel,
about what's running in theseother cloud providers, is, uh,
(04:07):
that could be a problem.
Uh, that's um, they've, they've, they've said that you know
they are going to maintain thatmulti-cloud um product.
You know it's still going to bestrong integrations in AWS and
Azure.
I question how long that'sgoing to continue with AWS and
Azure beyond this deal, but yeah, so, yeah, how do you feel, tim
(04:32):
?
Tim McConnaughy (04:32):
So, this gives me like the same kind of feeling
as like the Splunk acquisitionby Cisco, which is to say, I
think we're seeing more and morecompanies that are being
acquired, that have a strongproduct, but you think that
there's more to the acquisitionthan the product itself.
Right, there's a lot of data,as the article, as you pointed
(04:54):
out, that comes over as part ofthis.
I mean, honestly, if Google didthis so they could pull in all
of the data about theircompetitors, that would be a
page right out of the AWSplaybook, actually, that would
actually be right in line, youknow.
And so what I find interestingis you know, google offered $23
(05:16):
billion last year.
We said no.
They said basically, we're arocket ship and we don't have to
settle.
We're a rocket ship and wedon't have to settle, you know,
for 23 billion.
A year later, they're settlingfor 32 billion, which you know
like.
You says $9 billion more, butthat's like a third of the
that's like.
You know.
That's a third more, if youwill, or 9 billion over right.
(05:39):
They offered 23 before, so it'slike 30% more.
I don't know how you do thatmath.
Uh, it's, it's late here, um,but yeah, I think it's more, or
at least as much about the datathey're going to pull in, I say
I I don't think that.
I think it's actually unlikelythat google will pull back on
the multi-club thing.
I think it makes a lot.
I think they're going to try tokeep wiz wherever they can have
(06:02):
it.
You, you know, to keep thatdata accessible.
Chris Miles (06:05):
Oh yeah, I agree, I don't.
I don't think, if there's anypullback, I don't think it's
going to be Google's choosing.
Yeah, I think it would be.
Tim McConnaughy (06:12):
Oh right, people that are, that are
running it now, that are likeGoogle competitors or or that
don't essentially, like you know, are concerned about Google
having access to this data,might rip them out.
That's a very good point,actually.
Yeah, I'm very curious to seewhat happens there, like if that
happens.
But yeah, no, this is probablythe biggest story for these last
(06:36):
two weeks and we're going tohave to, like I said, with a lot
of this stuff.
We're just going to have towait and see.
I agree with you that I thinkit's going to get.
I don't see them saying no, I,because the administration is
the administration and eventhough they are cracking down or
saying they're going to crackdown on big tech, it seemed that
seems more punitive thananything right, like, like trump
(06:57):
is very punitive a lot of youknow so.
So it's elon but, um, it's avery punitive thing, but I think
there's this kind of money onthe table.
I don't think they'll push backon it.
I guess we'll see.
Chris Miles (07:12):
I think probably what's going to happen is I
think currently the DOJ ispushing for Google to sell off
Chrome as well.
Tim McConnaughy (07:22):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah so.
Chris Miles (07:24):
I'm imagining that there will probably be some type
of agreement in place, anonverbal agreement probably,
like look, if you want this, yougot to get rid of Chrome and
you know, maybe they'll get tomake a trade off there, but I
don't know.
Yeah, we'll definitely have tosee how this one shakes down.
Yeah, good point.
Tim McConnaughy (07:43):
Okay, so the next article.
This one's pretty interesting.
So Cisco and NVIDIA are teamingup to build the Cisco NVIDIA AI
factory.
I think is what it's called.
Hold on, I wanted to bring upthe actual article, so I got the
name right.
Chris Miles (08:00):
Yeah, the Cisco.
Tim McConnaughy (08:01):
Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA.
So this is really interesting.
It actually reminds me a lot ofthe Vblock thing that they did
years ago when they tried tobuild a ready-made rack of
here's Cisco equipment, here'sEMC storage.
Like I forget what the thirdplayer in that one was.
(08:21):
Was it vmware?
It might have been vmware, uh,for compute, um, but this idea
of a kind of a ready-madeoff-the-shelf box solution that
they could sell to enterprises.
So the cisco secure ai factoryis essentially Cisco compute,
cisco hardware.
It says here Cisco 6,000, nexus6,000, or Nexus 9,000 switches
(08:49):
and UCS compute.
Of course, and under the hoodof course, the whole thing is
being powered by the new NVIDIAchipsets.
So that's the partnership anglethere, the new NVIDIA chipsets.
So that's the partnership anglethere, and the goal here is
that Cisco can wrap this thingup with a bow and sell it to
enterprises that are looking tocreate an AI data center,
(09:09):
basically like an AI workloadenvironment.
So how many times?
You know we've talked to Petera few times, peter Jones a few
times.
You know we've talked to Petera few times, Peter Jones a few
times and some others, and thequestion has always been you
know, how are enterprises goingto build their own AI data
centers out and Cisco, basically, is showing up with NVIDIA
(09:30):
under the hood and saying youknow, here's how we'll just, you
know, buy our SKU, essentially,and get every get as a, as a, a
block if you will, a rack fullof gear that is built to do this
.
So really interesting, not notan unusual play for Cisco.
Like I said, I will point outthat what V block kind of
(09:52):
failing as a, as a partnership,because of EMC getting got by
Dell and some other stuff andthere was always the worst part
about that whole thing was thatthere was always a, an issue of
who was responsible for what.
So when you have three vendorspackaging hardware together and
then selling one solution,there's always a who do you call
when the shit breaks thing.
That was never really figuredout.
(10:13):
So, yeah, I don't know thatthat's the case here.
It looks like here it's reallygoing to be Cisco, just with the
NVIDIA chipsets, you know, kindof under the hood powering the
thing.
So probably won't run into that.
Having said that, you know, hey,if this ends up being the way
that an enterprise can build outtheir own capacity, build out
(10:33):
their own AI workloads and AIdata centers without having to
think about it as much.
I think that's the goal.
I'm curious to see when Arista,you know, or Juniper or
somebody else, is going to,because this isn't like a
revolutionary idea, right Likeand I doubt, I don't know, but I
doubt seriously, and thisdoesn't specifically say it in
the article I doubt that NVIDIAhas, you know, gone in, you know
(10:57):
100% with Cisco on this, whereyou know nobody else could do
this.
So, yeah, I'm curious.
Yeah, what do you think aboutthis as a solution?
Chris Miles (11:06):
Yeah, I agree.
I think we've talked a lotabout on the show how you know,
the ROI moment for the AI hypehas not happened yet Still
hasn't happened, for the AI hypehas not happened yet, Still
hasn't happened.
But at least one thing that'salso been difficult is how to
make it consumable from anenterprise perspective and if
you can kind of prepackage thesethings and at least take care
(11:28):
of the hardware side of thethings, I'm sure that makes it
much easier to see a path towhere companies can use AI.
So, not a surprising offering tosee this on the table.
One of the first things thatwe're seeing, you know, use of
Cisco's Hyperfabric AI with.
Nexus, which I believe ispowered by HyperShield, which
(11:50):
we've talked a lot about on theshow.
To your point, yeah, I don'tthink this is a very dangerous
offering because we're seeingthe top seller of uh, you know,
network infrastructure and thenthe top seller of gpu is coming
together, so it's I don't thinkanyone's going to get acquired
here to kind of cause anyroughage here.
Uh, in in the integration, I dosee that they are bringing in
(12:10):
some additional offers forstorage though, um, with like
pure storage, net app, vast data, etc.
So that that could be a thing.
But I mean, at the end of theday, I feel like that's probably
the easiest piece to beinterchangeable here, right?
So, yeah, very interestingoffering.
I don't know who's buying itjust yet, especially with the
(12:32):
kind of the.
I'm sure all this stuff waspre-planned well before, you
know, deepseek came to the tableRight.
All this stuff was pre-plannedwell before you know.
Deep seat came to the tableright, um, so, uh, I'm curious
who's?
Who's pulling the trigger onthis immediately?
Tim McConnaughy (12:45):
um, but you know, very interesting to say
the least yeah, there wassomething in here I forgot to
mention, which is, of course,though, like you said, the
hypershield thing is is kind ofuh part and parcel with this,
and they're mentioning that thisproduct I've only heard about
and not seen any actual data forwhich is the AI defense.
They're kind of building intothis idea of defense for AI,
(13:09):
which, again, I've only heard.
I'd love to see some whitepapers.
I'd love to see some detailsabout what AI defense actually
looks like.
What does that actually do?
But it's supposedly built intothis along with HyperShield.
The storage thing.
I forgot about that as well.
We were talking aboutthird-party storage, but yeah,
it's in the article.
Here Again and I think that'swhat initially tickled my brain
(13:31):
on the vBlock thing actually wasthis idea of having here we've
got other partners bringing instorage, but who do we call when
things break, and is thatpartnership going to continue?
So could this be vBlock 2.0with the AI?
I don't know.
I guess we'll have to wait andsee.
Chris Miles (13:48):
Yeah, it's very defined in that it has two
options.
It looks like option one has aset storage vendor VAST is
listed as the data storageoption there and then the other
option, which is looks likemaybe higher grade switches, and
, yeah, I think it's probablyjust the more expensive version.
Right, the more expensiveversion.
Basically, you have morecustomized custom custom ability
(14:10):
or whatever.
You I don't even know the wordcustomizable uh storage options
there.
How about that?
Um, but yeah, so we'll see whatwe'll see.
Uh, like you said, I'd like tosee some white papers on how
they're doing this kind of likeAI security piece with the with
hypersheet built in.
So, um, yeah, we'll have totake a look at that.
Tim McConnaughy (14:28):
All right.
Chris Miles (14:28):
Next up?
Uh, we have an article from STXcentral um.
Uh, yet in the news again wehave HPE and Juniper.
So basically, hpe, ahead ofgetting their court date from
the DOJ to kind of plead theircase about the acquisition of
Juniper Networks, they areannouncing that they are
(14:49):
slashing about 5% of theirworkforce.
So that's great.
Over the next 18 months theyplan to cut about 2,500 jobs,
like I said, equating to aboutuh 25% of the workforce, which
is a pretty sizable Um.
They in the in the article theycite um you know, kind of poor
performance on um sales andthings like that, and and um
(15:13):
aggressive competition in themarket, et cetera.
Um, and yeah, it looks likethey are entering into the um
the court date with the DOJaround mid July.
I think it was originally thatthey wanted to start earlier,
dog wanted to start later Um, sothey've kind of met in the
middle um, I think to uh July.
So still going to be a verylong time before we probably see
(15:34):
um any movement on this dealand uh, who knows what it would
actually close if it gets pushedthrough Um.
But yeah, so that's, that's thelatest, not much really to add.
Um, obviously we uh, if any ofthe listeners are out there
hearing about this.
Uh, you, uh if we can help inany way.
Let us know Um, hate to seethese layoffs coming, especially
when they're kind of plannedand, you know, kind of enter
(15:56):
into this panic state for a lotof people.
So, um, you know, we, uh, wedefinitely sympathize with you
and, um, yeah, what do you haveto add to him?
Tim McConnaughy (16:03):
What I think is interesting about this article?
There's a few things right.
One is that, uh, the vendorreported a near record, 17%
increase in overall revenuecompared to the same quarter
last year, and that it metgrowth expectations and the next
like but no, that's fine, let'sjust cut five percent of the
workforce anyway.
Basically, I mean, that's that'show companies do it.
(16:24):
Now, whenever you're you'reahead, you cut people so that
you can be even more ahead,right, yeah, um, yeah.
And and it mentioned somethingabout server inventory and, uh,
you know, basically having tocut prices on server inventory,
because now, I guess, becauseeverybody's trying to make shit
for AI, there's plenty ofinventory essentially, so they
have to cut pricing on it, butthey still again 17% near record
(16:48):
increases in revenues, butwhatever.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know if this is justseize the moment because we can
cut people.
We're going to cut people, thisis just the new normal.
Or if they're anticipatinghaving to essentially pay for
(17:08):
the court, like having to go tocourt, or the lost revenue from
not being able to realize theiracquisition, or something like
that, and that's part of whythey're thinking they have to
cut jobs.
But I mean honestly, like Isaid, any corporation that you
know, know, all corporations arelike well, I make 17 when we
can make 25 by cutting exactlymore people, uh, yeah, no, this
(17:32):
is what I think is interestingis that the doj is still pushing
forward this.
I honestly truly expected thisto kind of evaporate once the
new administration really gotunderway, but I guess they're
really really busy findinggovernment waste and firing
everybody in the government.
Maybe that's a problem.
Maybe the people that fired thepeople that would have actually
(17:53):
stopped this lawsuit.
So I don't know.
I guess we're just gonna haveto see how this one rolls out.
But um, I do think it'sinteresting that there's a rider
in the whole thing whereJuniper is going to make money
if HP can't close the deal byOctober.
Yeah, and of course I guessthat has nothing to do with.
(18:15):
There's no clause in thereabout what if the DOJ sues you
and stops it from happening.
So HP might just lose money onthis thing and not end up
getting Juniper at all, sointeresting.
Chris Miles (18:27):
Yeah, I mean, obviously they probably know
much more than we do.
Maybe they are stronglythinking that this might not
happen.
So maybe that's why the youknow kind of culling of the
workforce is happening.
That's me, you know, glass halffull kind of perspective, but I
highly doubt that's the case.
You know, um, I don't thinkthey necessarily always operate
with, uh, individuals um bestinterests.
Tim McConnaughy (18:49):
So yeah, it's unfortunate, yeah, yeah, all
right.
Uh, we got one more story thisevening, uh, and it is.
It's a article from info worldand it's a little bit of a
thought piece, but it's based onactual news, like something is
actually happening.
So the Chinese company, neteaseis and I didn't know they had
(19:11):
this, but apparently they had apublic cloud service as part of
all the things that they do.
So NetEase is like it's aChinese company, I think, like
ByteDance or one of those likesocial media type of companies.
This one does a lot of netties,does a lot of games, like so, if
anybody's seen the stuff orplayed marvel rivals recently,
like that's a netty net tonetty's published game.
(19:32):
Um, they're a quote-unquoteinternet gaming giant.
But I didn't know this.
They had a public cloud service, but they have now announced
they're going to close it andkind of focus on what they're
good at, like you know, closing.
So clients are being encouragedto migrate to other services.
So what's interesting aboutthis article is it kind of
examines the kind of it, kind ofdoes the what if, like you know
(19:55):
, obviously AWS, gcp, azure notgoing on, oci not going out of
business anytime soon, knock onwood, right, but there's a lot
of smaller cloud providers outthere and many of them have
already gone out of business,and so it's kind of a think
piece around.
Well, what do you do as acustomer if you're using the
(20:16):
hosting for one of theseservices?
And kind of what they suggestis don you know, don't put all
your eggs in one basket.
Rather than deal with an exitstrategy, deal with a
multi-cloud strategy where youtake your eggs and distribute
them among multiple baskets, andthen that, of course, protects
against this sort of behavior.
(20:36):
So I think most people that areusing small cloud providers
probably have a reason beyond.
You know like normally, if anenterprise is going to go into
the cloud, they're probably notlooking at a small cloud
provider unless there's aspecific thing they're trying to
do or a specific reason.
You know, whatever that is likesmall cloud providers, like
(20:59):
Linode, for example, before theygot acquired is like small,
small cloud providers, likeLinode, for example, before they
got acquired.
You know there were, you haveto.
Why would you choose that over,say, I don't know, aws or Azure
or whatever?
There's gotta be, there's gottabe some reason that you're
going with that, and it's gotta.
It can't just be a price, butthe the warning kind of this
article is, you know, small.
Any cloud provider reallypublic, public or private, you
(21:19):
know could go out of business,and so the suggestion here is
basically take your stuff, putit in multiple clouds, um, uh to
to, rather than having to worryabout an exit strategy, about
how do I get all my stuff out ofthis cloud when it's about to
go out of business, you know.
Then you can simply just spindown your operations in that
cloud.
Chris Miles (21:38):
So yeah, I think um , I think one important piece in
here that I liked from whowrote this article, David
Linthicum.
Yeah, so kind of like to yourpoint, Tim.
If you're going into one ofthese kind of, I'd say, cloud
providers outside of the topfour, you know, being AWS, Azure
, Google, OCI there's got to bea reason.
(22:00):
You say it can't just be price.
I would probably make theargument that that might be the
reason in a lot of thesescenarios, or maybe localities
is a good thing.
Tim McConnaughy (22:12):
It could be yeah.
Chris Miles (22:13):
So that makes sense .
But he does call out that oneof the things that enterprises
need to do is stay informedabout the cloud providers
financial health, business focusand strategic priorities, cause
I think that's ultimately goingto decide whether or not
they're going to succeed orstruggle to succeed, um, and
then you know you're going to beleft holding the bag.
If you know I mean he calls itout in here like cloud cloud
(22:36):
providers are a business andbusinesses can fail um, so you
need to be able to um do thatand and if you uh, like you said
, if you adopt a multi-cloudstrategy and kind of think of
that distribution of servicesand you know kind of using um,
I'd say we've had the discussionon here about cloud native
(22:57):
versus csp native things likethat use as many kind of maybe
like cloud native versus CSPnative things like that Use as
many kind of maybe like cloudnative and portable services as
possible.
That's not always feasible with.
You know the kind of where yourworkforce is.
You know I'll be honest with you, outside of the top four, I
don't know what the Kubernetesofferings look like in a lot of
these.
You know third party cloudproviders as well.
So that might just, it mightjust not be possible, but I
(23:20):
think that should also sway yourdecision about whether or not
you adopt them.
Obviously, we want this to be afree market.
We don't want there to just befour cloud providers.
But you know, I don't thinkwe're far off from probably that
being the case, like we've beentalking about how OCI is going
to be, you know, because theywere just like what was it?
(23:41):
Oci and Google were just like.
They literally just started toolate to where they can never be
the top dog or even top two.
Tim McConnaughy (23:51):
But yeah, it's Not unless the ball's dropped
right, Not unless.
Aws and Azure completelydropped the ball somehow,
exactly.
Chris Miles (23:56):
So, yeah, very interesting piece and yeah, I
like the read.
All right, and with that we'llwrap up for this week.
So thanks for joining us on theFortnightly Cables to Clouds
news podcast.
I've been Chris Miles with myhost or my co-host, tim
McConaughey.
If you have not purchased ourbook, please go out and do that.
(24:20):
If you are interested in takingthe hold on, I have an if after
this.
It's it's not just a blanket bythe book, it's if you're
interested in learning moreabout AWS networking and
specifically, if you're lookingto take the AWS certified
advanced networking specialtyexam.
I've gotten that down pat.
Tim McConnaughy (24:36):
That's a mouthful man.
I've never been used to thatone.
Chris Miles (24:39):
ANSC 01.
How about that?
So if you're interested inlearning more about AWS
networking or taking that exam,please check out the book for
sale on Amazoncom.
We'll put a link in the shownotes and with that we'll take
it away and we'll talk to younext week, Yep.
Tim McConnaughy (24:54):
Take care guys.
Chris Miles (24:54):
Bye.
Tim McConnaughy (24:56):
Hi everyone.
It's Tim and this has been theCables to Clouds podcast.
Thanks for tuning in today.
If you enjoyed our show, pleasesubscribe to us in your
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Follow us on socials at Cablesto Clouds.
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(25:19):
to Clouds dot com.
Thanks again for listening andsee you next time.
What's up and welcome back to another episode
of the Cables to Clouds podcast.
My name is Chris Miles.
I'll be your host for today aswe're diving into the Cables to
Clouds fortnightly news episode.
So for this week.
Typically what we do is we havea few news articles that we've
kind of brought together overthe last couple of weeks of news
that has happened that we foundinteresting.
(00:35):
We dive into each one of themone by one.
Joining me today, as always, ismy beloved co-host, my beloved
co-host, friendly face, timMcConaughey at Carpe DMVPN, on
Blue Sky as well.
How are you doing, tim?
Tim McConnaughy (00:52):
Good man Just excited to do the news.
I guess, as always, I didn'ttell Tim ahead of time I was
going to ask him how he was, sohe was very blindsided by that.
Chris Miles (01:02):
Sorry, Tim.
No one's ever asked me thatbefore, so I really had to
scramble.
Fair enough, all right.
Well, let's not waste any time,let's hop right in.
So, first up, we have anarticle from Reuters which, to
be honest, we could have kind oftaken our pick about which news
outlet we wanted to use tocover this.
Um.
So google has entered into anagreement, um, to buy the cloud
(01:28):
security company whiz, um for 32billion um, which is one of the
biggest deals we've uh seen.
Tim McConnaughy (01:35):
yeah, with a billion, with a b, with a pinky
to the mouth, you know, dr evilstyle.
Chris Miles (01:41):
Uh 32 billion, um, which is funny because this
comes like not even a year laterafter whiz rejected a uh an
offer.
And you know we kind ofspeculated at the time in 2024,
like, oh well, if they'rerejecting this, you know what's
it gonna?
What would it cost for whiz,what are they expecting to make?
And I think we've answered thatand it's an extra nine billion
(02:01):
uh so yeah, so last year's offerwas about 23 billion.
This one comes in at 32 um.
One thing very notable to sayis that there is a um what's it
called a breakup fee of 3.2billion.
So that means if, if for somereason, the deal does not get
approved, does not go through,whiz still comes out three
(02:21):
billion dollars richer at theend of the day.
So, that right there tells methat Google is hedging their
bets pretty hard that this isgoing to happen.
So, and probably, you know,compared to last year new
administration.
I'm sure that probably playsinto it, although, you know,
(02:43):
trump has said it's even notedin this article that they are
going to kind of crack down onbig tech in a way.
I don't know if either of ustechnically believe that, but
that is the claim that they'vemade and you know, I think it's
also noted here that Googlecurrently has about $23, $24
billion in cash and assets andthings like that as of last year
(03:06):
, so they're actually going tohave to do some financing for
this deal.
Man, this one is crazy for afacet of reasons, at least from
my perspective, like one is.
I really hope this gets thelevel of scrutiny that the HPE
Juniper deal is getting.
Tim McConnaughy (03:22):
Yeah, right Because.
Chris Miles (03:23):
I find this one to be a way bigger kind of
competitive issue than that.
One is because, you know, wizis very integrated into a
multi-cloud capacity, right?
So they're basically a CNAPplatform is kind of what they're
pushing very hard right now.
A cloud-native application ohmy gosh.
Tim McConnaughy (03:45):
Protection platform.
Chris Miles (03:46):
Protection platform , right, um, so that's kind of
what they're they're banking on,but obviously very strong
integrations into AWS, azure,who are their major competitors
in this space, and you know it.
I think we can make the prettyobvious argument there that
Google, having access to allthis information, this Intel,
about what's running in theseother cloud providers, is, uh,
(04:07):
that could be a problem.
Uh, that's um, they've, they've, they've said that you know
they are going to maintain thatmulti-cloud um product.
You know it's still going to bestrong integrations in AWS and
Azure.
I question how long that'sgoing to continue with AWS and
Azure beyond this deal, but yeah, so, yeah, how do you feel, tim
(04:32):
?
Tim McConnaughy (04:32):
So, this gives me like the same kind of feeling
as like the Splunk acquisitionby Cisco, which is to say, I
think we're seeing more and morecompanies that are being
acquired, that have a strongproduct, but you think that
there's more to the acquisitionthan the product itself.
Right, there's a lot of data,as the article, as you pointed
(04:54):
out, that comes over as part ofthis.
I mean, honestly, if Google didthis so they could pull in all
of the data about theircompetitors, that would be a
page right out of the AWSplaybook, actually, that would
actually be right in line, youknow.
And so what I find interestingis you know, google offered $23
(05:16):
billion last year.
We said no.
They said basically, we're arocket ship and we don't have to
settle.
We're a rocket ship and wedon't have to settle, you know,
for 23 billion.
A year later, they're settlingfor 32 billion, which you know
like.
You says $9 billion more, butthat's like a third of the
that's like.
You know.
That's a third more, if youwill, or 9 billion over right.
(05:39):
They offered 23 before, so it'slike 30% more.
I don't know how you do thatmath.
Uh, it's, it's late here, um,but yeah, I think it's more, or
at least as much about the datathey're going to pull in, I say
I I don't think that.
I think it's actually unlikelythat google will pull back on
the multi-club thing.
I think it makes a lot.
I think they're going to try tokeep wiz wherever they can have
(06:02):
it.
You, you know, to keep thatdata accessible.
Chris Miles (06:05):
Oh yeah, I agree, I don't.
I don't think, if there's anypullback, I don't think it's
going to be Google's choosing.
Yeah, I think it would be.
Tim McConnaughy (06:12):
Oh right, people that are, that are
running it now, that are likeGoogle competitors or or that
don't essentially, like you know, are concerned about Google
having access to this data,might rip them out.
That's a very good point,actually.
Yeah, I'm very curious to seewhat happens there, like if that
happens.
But yeah, no, this is probablythe biggest story for these last
(06:36):
two weeks and we're going tohave to, like I said, with a lot
of this stuff.
We're just going to have towait and see.
I agree with you that I thinkit's going to get.
I don't see them saying no, I,because the administration is
the administration and eventhough they are cracking down or
saying they're going to crackdown on big tech, it seemed that
seems more punitive thananything right, like, like trump
(06:57):
is very punitive a lot of youknow so.
So it's elon but, um, it's avery punitive thing, but I think
there's this kind of money onthe table.
I don't think they'll push backon it.
I guess we'll see.
Chris Miles (07:12):
I think probably what's going to happen is I
think currently the DOJ ispushing for Google to sell off
Chrome as well.
Tim McConnaughy (07:22):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah so.
Chris Miles (07:24):
I'm imagining that there will probably be some type
of agreement in place, anonverbal agreement probably,
like look, if you want this, yougot to get rid of Chrome and
you know, maybe they'll get tomake a trade off there, but I
don't know.
Yeah, we'll definitely have tosee how this one shakes down.
Yeah, good point.
Tim McConnaughy (07:43):
Okay, so the next article.
This one's pretty interesting.
So Cisco and NVIDIA are teamingup to build the Cisco NVIDIA AI
factory.
I think is what it's called.
Hold on, I wanted to bring upthe actual article, so I got the
name right.
Chris Miles (08:00):
Yeah, the Cisco.
Tim McConnaughy (08:01):
Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA.
So this is really interesting.
It actually reminds me a lot ofthe Vblock thing that they did
years ago when they tried tobuild a ready-made rack of
here's Cisco equipment, here'sEMC storage.
Like I forget what the thirdplayer in that one was.
(08:21):
Was it vmware?
It might have been vmware, uh,for compute, um, but this idea
of a kind of a ready-madeoff-the-shelf box solution that
they could sell to enterprises.
So the cisco secure ai factoryis essentially Cisco compute,
cisco hardware.
It says here Cisco 6,000, nexus6,000, or Nexus 9,000 switches
(08:49):
and UCS compute.
Of course, and under the hoodof course, the whole thing is
being powered by the new NVIDIAchipsets.
So that's the partnership anglethere, the new NVIDIA chipsets.
So that's the partnership anglethere, and the goal here is
that Cisco can wrap this thingup with a bow and sell it to
enterprises that are looking tocreate an AI data center,
(09:09):
basically like an AI workloadenvironment.
So how many times?
You know we've talked to Petera few times, peter Jones a few
times.
You know we've talked to Petera few times, Peter Jones a few
times and some others, and thequestion has always been you
know, how are enterprises goingto build their own AI data
centers out and Cisco, basically, is showing up with NVIDIA
(09:30):
under the hood and saying youknow, here's how we'll just, you
know, buy our SKU, essentially,and get every get as a, as a, a
block if you will, a rack fullof gear that is built to do this
.
So really interesting, not notan unusual play for Cisco.
Like I said, I will point outthat what V block kind of
(09:52):
failing as a, as a partnership,because of EMC getting got by
Dell and some other stuff andthere was always the worst part
about that whole thing was thatthere was always a, an issue of
who was responsible for what.
So when you have three vendorspackaging hardware together and
then selling one solution,there's always a who do you call
when the shit breaks thing.
That was never really figuredout.
(10:13):
So, yeah, I don't know thatthat's the case here.
It looks like here it's reallygoing to be Cisco, just with the
NVIDIA chipsets, you know, kindof under the hood powering the
thing.
So probably won't run into that.
Having said that, you know, hey,if this ends up being the way
that an enterprise can build outtheir own capacity, build out
(10:33):
their own AI workloads and AIdata centers without having to
think about it as much.
I think that's the goal.
I'm curious to see when Arista,you know, or Juniper or
somebody else, is going to,because this isn't like a
revolutionary idea, right Likeand I doubt, I don't know, but I
doubt seriously, and thisdoesn't specifically say it in
the article I doubt that NVIDIAhas, you know, gone in, you know
(10:57):
100% with Cisco on this, whereyou know nobody else could do
this.
So, yeah, I'm curious.
Yeah, what do you think aboutthis as a solution?
Chris Miles (11:06):
Yeah, I agree.
I think we've talked a lotabout on the show how you know,
the ROI moment for the AI hypehas not happened yet Still
hasn't happened, for the AI hypehas not happened yet, Still
hasn't happened.
But at least one thing that'salso been difficult is how to
make it consumable from anenterprise perspective and if
you can kind of prepackage thesethings and at least take care
(11:28):
of the hardware side of thethings, I'm sure that makes it
much easier to see a path towhere companies can use AI.
So, not a surprising offering tosee this on the table.
One of the first things thatwe're seeing, you know, use of
Cisco's Hyperfabric AI with.
Nexus, which I believe ispowered by HyperShield, which
(11:50):
we've talked a lot about on theshow.
To your point, yeah, I don'tthink this is a very dangerous
offering because we're seeingthe top seller of uh, you know,
network infrastructure and thenthe top seller of gpu is coming
together, so it's I don't thinkanyone's going to get acquired
here to kind of cause anyroughage here.
Uh, in in the integration, I dosee that they are bringing in
(12:10):
some additional offers forstorage though, um, with like
pure storage, net app, vast data, etc.
So that that could be a thing.
But I mean, at the end of theday, I feel like that's probably
the easiest piece to beinterchangeable here, right?
So, yeah, very interestingoffering.
I don't know who's buying itjust yet, especially with the
(12:32):
kind of the.
I'm sure all this stuff waspre-planned well before, you
know, deepseek came to the tableRight.
All this stuff was pre-plannedwell before you know.
Deep seat came to the tableright, um, so, uh, I'm curious
who's?
Who's pulling the trigger onthis immediately?
Tim McConnaughy (12:45):
um, but you know, very interesting to say
the least yeah, there wassomething in here I forgot to
mention, which is, of course,though, like you said, the
hypershield thing is is kind ofuh part and parcel with this,
and they're mentioning that thisproduct I've only heard about
and not seen any actual data forwhich is the AI defense.
They're kind of building intothis idea of defense for AI,
(13:09):
which, again, I've only heard.
I'd love to see some whitepapers.
I'd love to see some detailsabout what AI defense actually
looks like.
What does that actually do?
But it's supposedly built intothis along with HyperShield.
The storage thing.
I forgot about that as well.
We were talking aboutthird-party storage, but yeah,
it's in the article.
Here Again and I think that'swhat initially tickled my brain
(13:31):
on the vBlock thing actually wasthis idea of having here we've
got other partners bringing instorage, but who do we call when
things break, and is thatpartnership going to continue?
So could this be vBlock 2.0with the AI?
I don't know.
I guess we'll have to wait andsee.
Chris Miles (13:48):
Yeah, it's very defined in that it has two
options.
It looks like option one has aset storage vendor VAST is
listed as the data storageoption there and then the other
option, which is looks likemaybe higher grade switches, and
, yeah, I think it's probablyjust the more expensive version.
Right, the more expensiveversion.
Basically, you have morecustomized custom custom ability
(14:10):
or whatever.
You I don't even know the wordcustomizable uh storage options
there.
How about that?
Um, but yeah, so we'll see whatwe'll see.
Uh, like you said, I'd like tosee some white papers on how
they're doing this kind of likeAI security piece with the with
hypersheet built in.
So, um, yeah, we'll have totake a look at that.
Tim McConnaughy (14:28):
All right.
Chris Miles (14:28):
Next up?
Uh, we have an article from STXcentral um.
Uh, yet in the news again wehave HPE and Juniper.
So basically, hpe, ahead ofgetting their court date from
the DOJ to kind of plead theircase about the acquisition of
Juniper Networks, they areannouncing that they are
(14:49):
slashing about 5% of theirworkforce.
So that's great.
Over the next 18 months theyplan to cut about 2,500 jobs,
like I said, equating to aboutuh 25% of the workforce, which
is a pretty sizable Um.
They in the in the article theycite um you know, kind of poor
performance on um sales andthings like that, and and um
(15:13):
aggressive competition in themarket, et cetera.
Um, and yeah, it looks likethey are entering into the um
the court date with the DOJaround mid July.
I think it was originally thatthey wanted to start earlier,
dog wanted to start later Um, sothey've kind of met in the
middle um, I think to uh July.
So still going to be a verylong time before we probably see
(15:34):
um any movement on this dealand uh, who knows what it would
actually close if it gets pushedthrough Um.
But yeah, so that's, that's thelatest, not much really to add.
Um, obviously we uh, if any ofthe listeners are out there
hearing about this.
Uh, you, uh if we can help inany way.
Let us know Um, hate to seethese layoffs coming, especially
when they're kind of plannedand, you know, kind of enter
(15:56):
into this panic state for a lotof people.
So, um, you know, we, uh, wedefinitely sympathize with you
and, um, yeah, what do you haveto add to him?
Tim McConnaughy (16:03):
What I think is interesting about this article?
There's a few things right.
One is that, uh, the vendorreported a near record, 17%
increase in overall revenuecompared to the same quarter
last year, and that it metgrowth expectations and the next
like but no, that's fine, let'sjust cut five percent of the
workforce anyway.
Basically, I mean, that's that'show companies do it.
(16:24):
Now, whenever you're you'reahead, you cut people so that
you can be even more ahead,right, yeah, um, yeah.
And and it mentioned somethingabout server inventory and, uh,
you know, basically having tocut prices on server inventory,
because now, I guess, becauseeverybody's trying to make shit
for AI, there's plenty ofinventory essentially, so they
have to cut pricing on it, butthey still again 17% near record
(16:48):
increases in revenues, butwhatever.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know if this is justseize the moment because we can
cut people.
We're going to cut people, thisis just the new normal.
Or if they're anticipatinghaving to essentially pay for
(17:08):
the court, like having to go tocourt, or the lost revenue from
not being able to realize theiracquisition, or something like
that, and that's part of whythey're thinking they have to
cut jobs.
But I mean honestly, like Isaid, any corporation that you
know, know, all corporations arelike well, I make 17 when we
can make 25 by cutting exactlymore people, uh, yeah, no, this
(17:32):
is what I think is interestingis that the doj is still pushing
forward this.
I honestly truly expected thisto kind of evaporate once the
new administration really gotunderway, but I guess they're
really really busy findinggovernment waste and firing
everybody in the government.
Maybe that's a problem.
Maybe the people that fired thepeople that would have actually
(17:53):
stopped this lawsuit.
So I don't know.
I guess we're just gonna haveto see how this one rolls out.
But um, I do think it'sinteresting that there's a rider
in the whole thing whereJuniper is going to make money
if HP can't close the deal byOctober.
Yeah, and of course I guessthat has nothing to do with.
(18:15):
There's no clause in thereabout what if the DOJ sues you
and stops it from happening.
So HP might just lose money onthis thing and not end up
getting Juniper at all, sointeresting.
Chris Miles (18:27):
Yeah, I mean, obviously they probably know
much more than we do.
Maybe they are stronglythinking that this might not
happen.
So maybe that's why the youknow kind of culling of the
workforce is happening.
That's me, you know, glass halffull kind of perspective, but I
highly doubt that's the case.
You know, um, I don't thinkthey necessarily always operate
with, uh, individuals um bestinterests.
Tim McConnaughy (18:49):
So yeah, it's unfortunate, yeah, yeah, all
right.
Uh, we got one more story thisevening, uh, and it is.
It's a article from info worldand it's a little bit of a
thought piece, but it's based onactual news, like something is
actually happening.
So the Chinese company, neteaseis and I didn't know they had
(19:11):
this, but apparently they had apublic cloud service as part of
all the things that they do.
So NetEase is like it's aChinese company, I think, like
ByteDance or one of those likesocial media type of companies.
This one does a lot of netties,does a lot of games, like so, if
anybody's seen the stuff orplayed marvel rivals recently,
like that's a netty net tonetty's published game.
(19:32):
Um, they're a quote-unquoteinternet gaming giant.
But I didn't know this.
They had a public cloud service, but they have now announced
they're going to close it andkind of focus on what they're
good at, like you know, closing.
So clients are being encouragedto migrate to other services.
So what's interesting aboutthis article is it kind of
examines the kind of it, kind ofdoes the what if, like you know
(19:55):
, obviously AWS, gcp, azure notgoing on, oci not going out of
business anytime soon, knock onwood, right, but there's a lot
of smaller cloud providers outthere and many of them have
already gone out of business,and so it's kind of a think
piece around.
Well, what do you do as acustomer if you're using the
(20:16):
hosting for one of theseservices?
And kind of what they suggestis don you know, don't put all
your eggs in one basket.
Rather than deal with an exitstrategy, deal with a
multi-cloud strategy where youtake your eggs and distribute
them among multiple baskets, andthen that, of course, protects
against this sort of behavior.
(20:36):
So I think most people that areusing small cloud providers
probably have a reason beyond.
You know like normally, if anenterprise is going to go into
the cloud, they're probably notlooking at a small cloud
provider unless there's aspecific thing they're trying to
do or a specific reason.
You know, whatever that is likesmall cloud providers, like
(20:59):
Linode, for example, before theygot acquired is like small,
small cloud providers, likeLinode, for example, before they
got acquired.
You know there were, you haveto.
Why would you choose that over,say, I don't know, aws or Azure
or whatever?
There's gotta be, there's gottabe some reason that you're
going with that, and it's gotta.
It can't just be a price, butthe the warning kind of this
article is, you know, small.
Any cloud provider reallypublic, public or private, you
(21:19):
know could go out of business,and so the suggestion here is
basically take your stuff, putit in multiple clouds, um, uh to
to, rather than having to worryabout an exit strategy, about
how do I get all my stuff out ofthis cloud when it's about to
go out of business, you know.
Then you can simply just spindown your operations in that
cloud.
Chris Miles (21:38):
So yeah, I think um , I think one important piece in
here that I liked from whowrote this article, David
Linthicum.
Yeah, so kind of like to yourpoint, Tim.
If you're going into one ofthese kind of, I'd say, cloud
providers outside of the topfour, you know, being AWS, Azure
, Google, OCI there's got to bea reason.
(22:00):
You say it can't just be price.
I would probably make theargument that that might be the
reason in a lot of thesescenarios, or maybe localities
is a good thing.
Tim McConnaughy (22:12):
It could be yeah.
Chris Miles (22:13):
So that makes sense .
But he does call out that oneof the things that enterprises
need to do is stay informedabout the cloud providers
financial health, business focusand strategic priorities, cause
I think that's ultimately goingto decide whether or not
they're going to succeed orstruggle to succeed, um, and
then you know you're going to beleft holding the bag.
If you know I mean he calls itout in here like cloud cloud
(22:36):
providers are a business andbusinesses can fail um, so you
need to be able to um do thatand and if you uh, like you said
, if you adopt a multi-cloudstrategy and kind of think of
that distribution of servicesand you know kind of using um,
I'd say we've had the discussionon here about cloud native
(22:57):
versus csp native things likethat use as many kind of maybe
like cloud native versus CSPnative things like that Use as
many kind of maybe like cloudnative and portable services as
possible.
That's not always feasible with.
You know the kind of where yourworkforce is.
You know I'll be honest with you, outside of the top four, I
don't know what the Kubernetesofferings look like in a lot of
these.
You know third party cloudproviders as well.
So that might just, it mightjust not be possible, but I
(23:20):
think that should also sway yourdecision about whether or not
you adopt them.
Obviously, we want this to be afree market.
We don't want there to just befour cloud providers.
But you know, I don't thinkwe're far off from probably that
being the case, like we've beentalking about how OCI is going
to be, you know, because theywere just like what was it?
(23:41):
Oci and Google were just like.
They literally just started toolate to where they can never be
the top dog or even top two.
Tim McConnaughy (23:51):
But yeah, it's Not unless the ball's dropped
right, Not unless.
Aws and Azure completelydropped the ball somehow,
exactly.
Chris Miles (23:56):
So, yeah, very interesting piece and yeah, I
like the read.
All right, and with that we'llwrap up for this week.
So thanks for joining us on theFortnightly Cables to Clouds
news podcast.
I've been Chris Miles with myhost or my co-host, tim
McConaughey.
If you have not purchased ourbook, please go out and do that.
(24:20):
If you are interested in takingthe hold on, I have an if after
this.
It's it's not just a blanket bythe book, it's if you're
interested in learning moreabout AWS networking and
specifically, if you're lookingto take the AWS certified
advanced networking specialtyexam.
I've gotten that down pat.
Tim McConnaughy (24:36):
That's a mouthful man.
I've never been used to thatone.
Chris Miles (24:39):
ANSC 01.
How about that?
So if you're interested inlearning more about AWS
networking or taking that exam,please check out the book for
sale on Amazoncom.
We'll put a link in the shownotes and with that we'll take
it away and we'll talk to younext week, Yep.
Tim McConnaughy (24:54):
Take care guys.
Chris Miles (24:54):
Bye.
Tim McConnaughy (24:56):
Hi everyone.
It's Tim and this has been theCables to Clouds podcast.
Thanks for tuning in today.
If you enjoyed our show, pleasesubscribe to us in your
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(25:19):
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!