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1) $GOOGL, $AMZN and takeaways from CloudNext. Overall positive, especially around the embrace of open source infrastructure sw & retail vertical focus. Marc Benioff likes to tell the African parable of the scorpion and the elephant to describe AWS & every other software co.
2) The scorpion says “It’s in my nature” to the elephant as they both die after the scorpion stings the elephant during a river crossing where the scorpion is riding the elephant. AWS being the scorpion – their nature is to offer their own products & compete at every layer.
3) And in this light, it was brilliant of $GOOGL to offer managed services on GCP for $MDB, $ESTC, Confluent, etc.. Especially after AWS just announced competing products to $MDB, $ESTC in March. Startups should be careful when AWS asks to do due diligence!
4) Becoming the preferred partner for infrastructure sw co's would help GCP with their go to market and support issues. Being the dominant supplier of primitives & ML solutions while partnering at other layers is smart for GCP given state of play.
5) Retail vertical focus is a first from $GOOGL and shows Kurian’s influence. And while playing nice in the sandbox with infrastructure software, GCP is slowly moving up the stack into applications with inventory mgmt. and contact center AI solutions (all AI/ML driven).
6) Interesting to read in $ULTA’s last earnings transcript that they had chosen $GOOGL for their new personalization platform given the intense focus by every MarTech SaaS company on personalization.
7) Logical to slowly segment the software mkt this way. Partner with infrastructure software co’s who can be an effective channel while gradually competing with application software co’s who are unlikely to be an effective channel & where $GOOGL’s AI advantages could be decisive
8) Smart CEO of infrastructure software co. told me several weeks ago that he doubted the IaaS co's could ever effectively compete at the application layer given the importance of go to market, specific sales motions, support, etc.
9) He saw the application layer as low tech, but with a powerful moat around distribution. Agree with his points, but in my experience better, faster and cheaper wins in technology over time & the IT svc. co's like $ACN can help with distribution, packaging and support.
10) Anthos is an acknowledgement that they are a distant third and unlikely to ever be #1 – analysts seem excited but unsure it really moves needle. Also looks like $GOOGL has decided against buying Slack given the Currents release (a mistake IMHO). Overall, impressive event.
