I can't help feel like this will be rolled into GCP and quickly lose support for Azure and AWS and then just die. That's a lot of money to spend to kill off a business.
I rolled out their "workloads for AWS" stuff recently, it was pretty slick to be able to have AWS IAM roles just translate to GCP roles. You don't have to run your own CA like you do for AWS Anywhere.
I'm slightly baffled by this acquisition but arguing against you actually helps me make some sense of it.
If Google wants to be "the best of the best" at security and some set of potential customers use Wiz as their "best of the best" security, then this is a way to convert those customers to Google.
Consider some org that prioritizes security, like at the board level. They maybe don't really care about the nickel and dime cost of AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP since it comes out to 10s or 100s of millions of opex in the end. What they do care about is the cleanest record possible with respect to security. And Wiz is a key component to their position on security that is communicated to investors - it is a social proof that they are taking security very seriously.
This now becomes a tool for Google when trying to win their business. By degrading the value of Wiz on AWS/Azure/Oracle/Salesforce they are taking away that bullet point on security for a subset of competitors customers. And that may entice some of them to move their entire cloud service to GCP. So whatever revenue they lose on the Wiz side from a dozen or so cancellations they would hope to make up with a few 100 million dollar whales.
I just find it hard to believe that enough whale level cloud compute business will be generated in this way to justify $32b. This is really the best take I have on the acquisition and it feels unsatisfying, as if there is some other decisive information that would provide a justification for such a valuation.
Maybe there is some government mandate coming down the pipeline that isn't very public yet? Some kind of legislation that will force companies to adopt stricter security policies? That could precipitate the kind of changes that would justify this kind of massive valuation.
Customers will not start using GCP more instead of AWS for example just because Google owns Wiz.
Degrading Wiz capabilities on AWS/Azure/etc will not drive more customers to Googke. CSPM and cloud workloads don’t go hand in hand. What will happen is that other companies will capture the market share left by Google. Will the offerings be less then Wiz quality-wise? Sure, but it will be way cheaper than moving to GCP.
The best option will be to leave Wiz as it is - standalone.
That hasn't stopped them before. Fitbit and Nest, for example. Granted, this is an order of magnitude more money to waste. Maybe they'll come up with a better strategy this time.
Google doesn't have a strong record keeping enterprise products around either. I would expect them to absorb this product, release a similar product based on the technology but fully integrated, then sunset Wiz asap.
it's obviously from their own quotes but you can get most of the names in their various customers use cases, joint PRs and the likes (and those required the customers' direct approval )
I don't think that makes much sense in business. They want to move customers from competitors and as an underdog you need to provide some migration path. You don't get these kind of system integration freely. Provide your service in competitors to smooth their transition path but keep the latest and best features in GCP. This was the idea of k8s.
