Keerti Melkote is stepping down at Aruba, Cloudera is going private in $5.3 billion acquisition and US beef product has been impacted by Ransomware. We discuss these stories and more on this week’s Rundown.
Intel Says Chip Shortages Could Last Years
During Computex this week, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger reiterated that the exploding in work-from-home during the pandemic has led to a massive supply shortage for semiconductors that could last for a “couple of years”. This follows similar comments to the Washington Post in April related to a chip shortage for US car manufacturers. Intel has recently invested $20 billion in opening new chip facilities and offering their fabs for third-party manufacturing for outsiders.
ZScaler Going After Ransomware with Smokescreen
With the recent explosion of ransomware infections, security giant ZScaler wants to make sure they’re not blinded. In their Q3 earnings call yesterday they announced they’re picking up India-based Smokescreen Technologies for an undisclosed amount. The addition of the zero-trust network access startup will bolster the way that security professionals can defend against potential career-ending events. Tom, is there fire here for ZScaler? Or just smoke and mirrors?
Exagrid Pays To Remove Ransomware
Exagrid found themselves in a bit of a tough spot last week. According to reporting from LeMagIT, the backup vendor was forced to pay a ransom of 50 bitcoin to unlock their files. The attackers has been in the Exagrid network since the beginning of May and had initially offered a demand of around $7.5 million. After negotiation back and forth, the agreement was brought down t around $2.6 million. However, Exagrid reportedly deleted the decryption tool “on accident” and needed another copy in order to unlock their files. The situation is particularly egregious as Exagrid has been touting their ransomware recovery tools in the industry since late 2020.
QUIC Proposed as Internet Standard
Faster that a speeding bullet, it’s QUIC! The Quick UDP Internet Connections protocol is now on track to be a full Internet standard thanks to RFC 9000, released on May 27th. Back in 2013, Google introduced QUIC, which was proposed as a replacement for TCP. The idea is that QUIC has less overhead, which results in less traffic and faster connections. QUIC has many proponents, from Cloudflare to Microsoft using it for SMB traffic. Around 12% of traffic on the Internet uses QUIC today with adoption poised for growth with the new standard status.
Revenue Numbers Released for Storage Players
The IT dinosaurs (and some of the little mammals too) are recovering from the pandemic, with numbers recently reported by HPE, Dell Technologies, Pure Storage, Nutanix, and Snowflake. Now that we’ve seen their first-quarter revenue, what can we say about the recovery of the enterprise IT market in general and storage in particular?
Keerti Melkote Stepping Down at Aruba
Huge news coming out of the Aruba earnings announcement yesterday. Keerti Melkote, CEO of Aruba and VP at parent HPE, is retiring. He will be staying on as an advisor until the end of the HPE fiscal year on October 31, 2021. Also departing are long-time Aruba execs Partha Narasimhan, former CTO, and Pradeep Iyer, former Chief Architect. Alongside the announcement is the appointment of HPE Communications Technology Group head Phil Mottram to the role of President and General Manager of Aruba. Joining him in the role of Chief Product and Technology Architect is David Hughes, who was formerly the CEO of Silver Peak which was acquired by HPE in 2020 and integrated into Aruba. Tom, what’s your take on this news and where is Aruba headed from here?
Cloudera Going Private in $5.3 Billion Acquisition
Cloudera appears to be headed back into the land of private equity. The company announced yesterday that it has accepted an offer by KKR and Clayton, Dubilier, & Rice (CD&R) to be acquired from around $16 per share for a total selling price of $5.3 billion. The Cloudera board has approved the sale and has recommended that shareholders do the same, which has already been indicated by the Icahn Group, which has an 18% ownership stake and is voting to approve the sale. Rob Bearden, CEO of Cloudera, released a statement saying this is good for the shareholders and also provides a path for hybrid cloud leadership. Cloudera also announced the purchase of two SaaS companies, Datacoral and Cazena, along with the buyout announcement.
US Beef Product Impacted by Ransomware
It wouldn’t be a Rundown without another ransomware story, right? This time it’s bad news for beef lovers. JBS, the largest meat processing company in the world, was hit by ransomware. The firm detected the infection on May 30 and warned that it will cause beef prices to rise sharply. A fifth of the meat processing capabilities of the US are from JBS and their associated partner companies. The US federal government has already reached out to the Russian government due to the nature of the attack being believed to have originated in the country known to be friendly to ransomware crews. Coming quickly on the heels of the Colonial pipeline attack, this latest incursion has raised calls for the global community to step in and protect critical industries from attack.
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