Azure Prices Drop and AWS Hike 🤯

And also: S&P + AWS // Deutsche Börse + Google Cloud // Shopify Product Launches...

February 13, 2023

Cloud ☁️

Liftr Insights data indicates that prices for AWS are going up by 23.0%, while Microsoft Azure prices are decreasing. Over the past three years, Azure has had higher average prices than AWS. By providing insight into what influences these changes, Liftr Insights allows market intelligence analysts to uncover potential surprises and learn valuable information.

S&P Global and AWS have announced a strategic collaboration to boost cloud infrastructure & engineer new innovations, moving Capital IQ and other core data platforms to AWS by 2025. This partnership will provide advanced, secure cloud-based services to over 100K customers in 43 countries. They are developing tech with AI/ML systems for risk & growth analysis and investing in 8K+ employees with technical training this year.

Deutsche Börse Group and Google Cloud have teamed up to accelerate the advancement of financial services. The two will utilize Google Cloud's secure infrastructure and data & analytics technology to create Deutsche Börse's digital securities platform D7, upgrade their digital asset market operations, and optimize their cloud-based data distribution & use cases. As a part of this collaboration, Deutsche Börse Group is set to construct a Digital Assets Business Platform that combines the centralized and decentralized financial infrastructure for spot & derivatives crypto products. Moreover, they will also deploy a data mesh for multiple cloud-based data distribution & use cases with an increased focus on cyber safety and compliance with existing regulations.

Public SaaS leaders 🚀

ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott recently sold a substantial amount of stock, worth approximately $25 million. Macquarie analyst Sarah Hindlian-Bowler said that this sale was for personal investment in property and had no bearing on the company's performance. ServiceNow spokesperson confirmed this information, highlighting that McDermott is very bullish on the company's future, given the majority of his compensation comes from stock options with them. VerityData's Ben Silverman called these sales "opportunistic", as McDermott hadn't been selling stocks for two years prior to this transaction and may have taken advantage of fourth-quarter price recovery last year. Other executives at ServiceNow also offloaded non-option holdings in January 2021; Silverman inferred that they were more interested in liquidating stock-based compensation than increasing equity exposure long-term.

Microsoft Corp.'s GitHub unit and rival GitLab Inc. have both revealed job cuts affecting 10% and 7% of their respective workforces, respectively. With 2,500 staffers at GitHub as of April 2021 and over 1,000 new employees added last year, the layoffs could amount to more than 300 employees at GitHub, while 114 are estimated to be impacted at GitLab.

Since its acquisition by Microsoft in 2018 for $7.5 billion, the platform has seen massive growth - increasing its user base from 28 million developers to 90 million, with annual recurring revenue also jumping to $1 billion+.

The layoffs in GitHub come as part of a wider cost-cutting initiative that involves closing offices and relocating operations remotely; parent company Microsoft also recently declared plans for 10K employee layoffs (5%).

Shopify has launched Shopify Editions, a semi-annual product showcase featuring 100+ new updates and launches to bring merchants into the future of commerce.

These releases include B2B on Shopify, Tokengated Commerce with NFTs, Twitter Shopping for U.S. merchants selling to U.S consumers, Tap To Pay on iPhone for offline retail experiences as well as Local Inventory on Google and Shopify Functions, which enables developers to extend or replace backend logic with custom code through the App Store platform.

Sumo Logic has entered into an agreement to be acquired by affiliates of Francisco Partners for a premium of 57%. Upon completion of the transaction, Sumo Logic will become a private company with an equity value of $1.7 billion. The deal was unanimously approved by the Board and is expected to be finalized in Q2 of 2023, subject to stockholder approval and regulatory processes

SaaS funding 💰

Jobber, a leader in operations management software for the home service industry, recently secured $100 million in primary capital from global growth equity investor General Atlantic.

The company's mission to help small home service businesses modernize their operations and increase earning potential will be supported by this funding. It will allow Jobber to invest in research and development, marketing and sales, and acquire new customers.

It has already seen success this year: since its last round of funding in January 2021, revenue is up 3X, while 200,000 professionals across 50 industries have served 27 million properties - leading to over $13 billion generated for customers. As part of the investment deal, Aaron Goldman from General Atlantic joined the Board of Directors. He believes that with an all-in-one platform tailored towards the home service industry, more value creation for customers can be made. Jobber currently has almost 600 employees located across Canada (and some based internationally). It is actively hiring across all areas, including sales/marketing/product/customer support & business ops teams.

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