Google flexes its Arm; Metronome runs the meter
Today: Google's first custom Arm server processor is now available, Metronome's new tool could help SaaS companies switch to usage-based pricing, and the quote of the week.
Today: why Cisco just made its biggest acquisition ever, the slot machines at MGM Resorts are once again ready to take your money, and this week's enterprise moves.
Welcome to Runtime! Today: why Cisco just made its biggest acquisition ever, the slot machines at MGM Resorts are once again ready to take your money, and this week's enterprise moves.
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After a tumultuous few years at Splunk — one of only a few enterprise software companies to see revenue decline in the first year of the pandemic — the company could get a new lease on life under Cisco, which has a large base of customers just starting to modernize their infrastructure.
Cisco paid $28 billion or $157 a share, a 31% premium over the closing price of Splunk's stock on Wednesday, in order to add new categories of software to a company most people still think of as a hardware giant. “Together, we will become one of the largest software companies globally,” said Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins on a call with financial analysts after the deal was announced.
Recently Splunk seemed to have turned its fortunes around after struggling through the early days of the pandemic.
With Cisco, Splunk becomes part of a broader portfolio of enterprise products and services that cater to those trailing the cutting edge of infrastructure trends.
MGM Resorts announced Wednesday that it is finally "operating normally" after more than a week of disruption thanks to a cybersecurity attack on its systems, but it's not clear what that actually entails.
You still can't book a hotel room online for the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, and the Associated Press reported that the rewards systems for the casino operator's most valuable customers is also still down. However, MGM said in an FAQ on its web site that "our casino floors are open and welcoming tens of thousands of guests each day" and that guests will be able to use paper tickets with the slot machines instead of cash unless you're at Excalibur, which is otherwise an underrated place to gamble on the Strip.
Now comes the messy part: MGM is still not ready to say whether or not customer data was compromised during the attack, or whether the attack on the largest private employer in Nevada also leaked personal information belonging to its employees. It will likely have to answer those questions sooner rather than later, given that its initial statement to the SEC was pretty limited.
Aaron Barfoot is the new CFO at Socure, which Bloomberg believes is the prelude to a future IPO for the identity management company.
Mike Mattacola is the new chief business officer at CoreWeave, joining the AI infrastructure startup from fierce rival Lambda Labs, where he was chief operating officer.
Salesforce had quite a week: It acquired Airkit.ai for an undisclosed amount, suffered a widespread hours-long outage on Wednesday across several of its services, and had its sustainability claims described as "marketing-led nonsense" by environmental experts.
The effort to fork HashiCorp's Terraform has a new name — OpenTofu — and the backing of the Linux Foundation.
Microsoft 365 Copilot will launch on November 1st, the first major test of its big generative AI push by normal business users.
HPE revamped its organizational structure and created a new Hybrid Cloud group, which will be the new home for its GreenLake infrastructure management software under CTO Fidelma Russo.
Luiz André Barroso, who changed enterprise tech forever with his innovative data-center designs for Google in the days before cloud computing, died at 59 last week, according to Wired.
Thanks for reading — see you Saturday!