Platformonomics TGIF is a weekly roll-up of links, comments on those links, and perhaps a little too much tugging on my favorite threads.
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Oracle’s Data Center Difficulties
Most glorious company in universe report earnings next week. After missing their own (minuscule) CAPEX guidance last year, can database vampire and cloud laggard Oracle actually stand up some data centers? Given Oracle defines a couple racks as a region, we’re not talking about enormous buildings visible from orbit, so why has the company struggled so much with its quite modest data center build-out?
Last fiscal year Oracle guided to $8.5 billion in CAPEX, but ended up only spending $6.87 billion, and took down guidance every quarter, as they discovered CAPEX is not a faucet you can just turn on. Their guidance for this fiscal year is to double last year (so we’ll call it $13.74 billion). We look forward to hearing how Oracle will leap the 5+ year queue for grid interconnection, understanding why Elon dumped them, and generally watching the company start to climb the data center learning curve in public. And we’re especially excited to see if Oracle continues its pioneering work in non-GAAP CAPEX spending.
Meanwhile (I never miss an opportunity for the “Oracle is the x-axis” joke):
“Bronny” Ellison Named Chairman, CEO of Paramount
Still No Compression Algorithm for Experience
Still no update from Amazon on how many steps we are into the generative AI race.
Previous:
326 Features into a 10k Race, Existential Corner: How Many Steps into the 10K are We?, Team Primitives: What Sayest Thou?, Amazon Desperately Seeks Compression Algorithm for Experience, Most Greatest AI Company in Entire Universe Makes Major Strategy Pivot, SEC Embraces Platformonomics ClownWatch™, Warns Amazon and IBM, The AWS Generative AI Soap Opera, The Amazon AI Inferiority Complex
Software Migration Alert: SmartSheet
When private equity is sniffing around, it’s time to bound. Rather than wait for the actual announcement, just start your migration plans from any sub-scale SaaS company now.
Private Equity in Action: VMware Customer Sues Broadcom
Inquiring minds really want to see private equity idol Broadcom’s customer sat data. Imagine the discussions going on outside of a courtroom.
Previous:
Private Equity in Action: “How PE Keeps Planes in the Air”,
Private Equity in Action: OtterTune,Private Equity in Action: PluralSight, Private Equity in Action: Not Every VMware Customer Was Screwed, Private Equity in Action: The VMware Saga May Never End, Software Migration Alerts, Private Equity in Action: VMware “Unease” Continues, Perfidious Private Equity, Private Equity in Action: VMware Yet Again, Private Equity in Action: VMware (Continued), Private Equity in Action: VMware, Private Equity Will Buy and Ruin More Software Companies, Software Migration Alert: VMware (Continued), Software Migration Alert: VMware, Private Equity in Action: VMware Customer Complaints “Unwarranted”
Investors Put Over $500 Million into European IT Consultancy
Beginning of the end for sovereign LLMs?
The Hard Thing About “Hard Pivots”
A “hard pivot” at pseudo software company Salesforce can only mean one thing: a new marketing mascot is imminent.
The real test of whether this is a serious pivot is if they RIF any of the multitude of existing mascots. Or maybe RIF “the guardian of the entire lineup of Salesforce characters“?
Previous:
Thought Leadership (in Mascots), Salesforce Rallies Its Deep Bench of AI Experts (and Cartoon Characters), Bluster, Bombast and Bullshit: Just Another Day at Salesforce, Salesforce’s Shamelessness is Staggering, Salesforce Gonna Salesforce, The Spectacle that is Dreamforce, Antitrust Incoherence: Don’t Forget Microsoft
Media Self-Harm: Time Magazine Edition
Speaking of pseudo organizations run by Marc Benioff, Time magazine which 1.) evidently is still a thing and 2.) actually takes itself seriously, managed to top its previous pinnacle of embarrassment stemming from naming the Humane AI pin one of the best inventions of 2023 (disclosure: Marc Benioff was an investor) with a cover story on the top 100 people in AI.
