You may have already seen the news today: CloudBees has acquired Electric Cloud in a move that marks a true market consolidation in the DevOps space. I had a chance to speak with CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey to discuss the acquisition. We discuss the motivation for the deal, what the combined entity may look like going forward and more. The video of our conversation is at the bottom of this article.
In my mind, this acquisition represents true consolidation of the DevOps tool vendors market. My reasons for this are as follows:
- Until now, many of the acquisitions in the DevOps space have been by large, established public companies such as CA, HP or IBM. Typically, these kinds of deals are not as much consolidation as they are large companies using M&A activity in place of R&D. CloudBees is not a large vendor—this isn’t R&D dressed in an acquisition.
- Electric Cloud is not your typical venture-backed startup that is looking for exit opportunities. The company has been around for many years. It has a large base of enterprise customers and an enterprise-tested product.
- With the recent changes in the DevOps vendor market involving CA (now Broadcom), HP(E) now Micro Focus and IBM preoccupied with Red Hat, there is a vacuum for enterprise leadership. The combination of these two vendors of scale is really a consolidation move.
Best of luck going forward and congratulations to our friends at CloudBees and Electric Cloud. It will be interesting to see what repercussions this deal brings to the rest of the DevOps market.
For more details on the acquisition, check out Mike Vizard’s article in DevOps.com today. In the meantime, enjoy the video and conversation with Sacha. Also, let us know what you think about the acquisition—and other M&A activity in the DevOps space—in the comments section below.