Pivotal just announced it did over $270mm of revenue in 2016 from Cloud Foundry helping large companies with digital transformation. That’s some nice growth from the $115mm the year earlier.
The initial Pivotal Cloud Foundry sales pitch was that it gave big companies a way to build new applications that run in a public cloud (rented space on Amazon (AMZN, +0.47%) Web Services, Google (GOOG, +0.34%) Cloud Platform or Microsoft (MSFT, +0.62%) Azure) or private cloud (flexible infrastructure that runs in a company’s own data center.
The need for faster, better software deployment resonated with older companies facing competition from smaller, newer rivals that already use cloud computing. You could argue, for example, that Hilton (HLT, +0.05%) and Hyatt (H, -0.47%) hotels should worry more about Airbnb (AIRBNB) than about each other.
This is yet another sign how large companies are embracing cloud technologies and microservices to be more agile. At the end of the day, it’s not about buying Cloud Foundry because of infrastructure savings, its the ability to quickly and scalably deploy new applications quicker to meet business needs. That’s the bet Pivotal made many years ago, and it’s paying off.
Remember if you are selling infrastructure – stop, sell apps to the heads of business who have a huge sense of urgency to get things done. Most of them also have pretty sizable budgets as well. The byproduct of all of this is saving money but that is not what moves the needle.