Arista, Google Cloud Make Big Announcements

January has been a bit of a slow month for cloud computing news but the pace seems to be picking up. As the week ended, news of interest to the channel came from Arista Networks, Google Cloud and in the form of some of the early earnings reports.

Arista Buys Big Switch But Gets Guidance Cut from Barclays

Arista Networks, which sells through VARs, systems integrators and some distributors, appears to be having an up and down week.

As the company has continued to transform itself into a cloud computing vendor, focused on private data centers for businesses, it has made its third acquisition since 2018. This week, Arista bought Big Switch Networks for an undisclosed amount. Arista bought Mojo Networks and Metamako two years ago.

According to several media outlets, Arista was just one of the suitors vying for Big Switch’s hand. Rivals Cisco, VMware, Dell Technologies, Juniper Networks and others reportedly wanted Big Switch, too.

But Arista won, and that’s a plus because Big Switch provides important security and performance monitoring for hybrid cloud capabilities that Arista did not previously have. The Big Monitoring Fabric platform supports the big three public cloud vendors: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

“Arista is trying to move into new territory in the cloud industry, specifically going after organizations that want to build their own private data center and cloud service for personal use,” Nicholas Rossolillo, analyst at The Motley Fool, wrote on Wednesday.

Rossolillo predicts Arista’s strategy will work, but may take time.

“Bridging big public cloud provider needs and smaller on-campus cloud needs will … be essential for Arista,” he wrote. “The bumpy results in 2019 demonstrate that as several big cloud customers adjusted their spending to adapt to slowing demand for new data center construction. Big Switch won’t solve the problem of getting in on campus cloud business all on its own, but it does underline the big changes that are starting to take place that should set up Arista for another decade of expansion.”

However, on the heels of the Big Switch news, Barclays Bank cut its guidance on Arista and lowered its estimates for the coming year. Analyst Tim Long cited market-share losses among some large customers and risks to the cloud business, according to SeekingAlpha.

Google Cloud Lands Another High-Profile Partnership

Google Cloud made another big partnership announcement this week, this time with Temenos, a banking software company headquartered in Geneva.

Channel partners working with financial services customers will want to take note.

Temenos will provide its software and applications on Anthos, which supports hybrid and multicloud, and is the first global banking software firm to do so.

Together the companies will target banks around the world with software and applications intended to generate profit and differentiate the customer experience.

“We see an explosive growth in cloud adoption in the banking industry,” Temenos CEO Max Chuard said. “We will enable banks to reduce their time to market and operational complexity, as well as elastically scale and deliver outstanding digital customer experiences.”

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, agreed.

Google Cloud’s Thomas Kurian

“Extending Temenos’ core capabilities to Google Cloud helps banks digitally transform their business and deliver entirely new customer experiences and offerings,” he said.

Google Cloud and Temenos started working together last year. This week’s news serves as an expansion of those efforts.

Earlier this week, Google Cloud made a similar announcement, but with professional services provider Accenture, and in the life sciences sector.

Cloud Computing Companies Starting to Report Earnings

Earnings season is about to flood the market, but two big names have already shared their numbers.

Microsoft this week reported better-than-expected results for the three months ending in December. Azure cloud business alone saw 62% growth, according to CNN. That’s a big coup for Microsoft as it seeks to surpass AWS as the largest public cloud provider.

Germany’s SAP, however, is suffering from a drop in cloud computing orders, and its stock is subsequently struggling.