Breaking my Twitter hiatus to announce Runtime, a new enterprise technology newsletter and publication that will launch in May and continue the work we did at Protocol Enterprise within a brand-new company. All the details here: runtime.news/meet-runtime-ne…

I share this story with founders of enterprise software companies, it's one of my favorite sales experiences and I think highlights some of the important non-technical aspects of sales: I had just concluded a sales meeting with Very Large Company. This company had just publicly announced a huge commitment to Microsoft Azure. The year is 2015 or so, and Azure is still very much an up-and-comer, so as the meeting concludes I ask the executive that was present "I'm curious, why Azure?" (As someone selling cloud agnostic tooling, I don't care one way or the other, but I was curious) He says he'll show me on the way to the elevators. I consider that an odd answer to my question but go along with it. As we near the turn to the elevators, we reach a hallway "intersection", and he points the opposite direction and says: "you see this hallway?" It was a standard corporate office hallway with small private offices flanking both sides as far as the building went. He continues, "Every single person in this hallway is a Microsoft paid employee." And that's why they chose Azure. Because when something goes wrong, they don't have to submit a ticket or even call a phone number. They can literally knock on someone's door and get official, high tier support. That's how Microsoft closed the 9 or 10 figure deal (multi-year, can't remember exact) to get this large company to go 100% into their cloud. There's a lot of points to this story, but I think fundamentally the important thing is understanding the level of non-technical factors that lead to large enterprise deals.

NEW: HashiCorp will adopt the Business Source License with the next releases of its various open-source projects. In an exclusive interview, @armon explains the thinking, another sign that the role of open-source software in enterprise tech is changing: runtime.news/as-hashicorp-ad…

extremely happy to get to cover this news! tom is super talented & i can't wait to see what he'll do with his own thing: niemanlab.org/2023/04/a-form…

Got this news on vacation at the Grand Canyon, which is at least a pretty place to be reminded once again of how ridiculous the modern media business is. Proud to have built the best enterprise tech-media team in the business, hire them if you can.

In 20 years of doing this I'm pretty sure I've never read an angrier piece of corporate communication. Blaming the organizers of the pressure campaign for causing Kiwi Farms users to do what they've always done, only to a wider group of people, was a choice.

Google has always had world-class infrastructure and technical talent, but had a very hard time getting enterprise customers to take it seriously until Thomas Kurian took over as CEO in 2019. @DGoodison takes a deep look at how Google Cloud changed course: protocol.com/enterprise/goog…

Breaking, from @DGoodison: After years of debate, Google Cloud is ready to submit Istio to the CNCF At one point, Google seemed unsure whether it would cede control of the service-mesh project, but things have changed. protocol.com/enterprise/goog…

Some meta Protocol | Enterprise newsletter news today: Starting on Monday, we're coming atcha five times a week, arriving in your inbox each weekday afternoon. Plus, some redesigned sections and regular contributions from our growing team. Tell a friend! protocol.com/newsletters/pro…

Big news in today's Protocol | Enterprise: @aishacounts is our new enterprise SaaS reporter, starting today! protocol.com/newsletters/pro… We're still hiring for an enterprise infrastructure reporter and a cybersecurity reporter, more details here: protocol.com/careers/

How Google Cloud plans to kill its ‘Killed By Google’ reputation: Under the new Google Enterprise APIs policy, the company is making a promise that its services will remain available and stable far into the future. protocol.com/enterprise/goog…

New: I spoke with @cassidoo @QuinnyPig @amandaksilver and @ianjnnngs about why developer experience will be one of the most important competitive factors over the next few years of enterprise tech: protocol.com/enterprise/deve…

New: Richard Stallman's costly return to the Free Software Foundation has put the future of the organization in doubt after board members, contributors, and other supporters recoiled at the idea of reinstalling someone so toxic in a leadership position. protocol.com/enterprise/rich…

Area Cloud CEO Gets Promotion