HashiCorp sees a rosy future and views the acquisition by IBM as an opportunity to teach the blue tech giant a few lessons.
During the first HashiDays conference since the IBM acquisition, HashiCorp unveils a focused vision for the future. Those who thought the company would lose its drive and pace are in for a surprise. Despite the new management, the mission remains the same: helping companies “do cloud right”. Now the focus is more than ever on hybrid cloud and, you guessed it, AI.
“It’s still the same HashiCorp,” assured co-founder and CTO Armon Dadgar during the opening keynote. The two companies just need to get used to each other’s way of working.
IBM Calls the Shots
The culture clash between the two companies is already noticeable. Dadgar readily admits that it’s not always easy to align two large companies. “We release four major updates a year. Some IBM teams take two years for one release,” Dadgar said with a proud smile.
There are also still points of improvement in terms of collaboration. “We use Zoom and Google, they use Teams and Office 365. Even logging into each other’s GitHub doesn’t work yet for now.”
Closer Collaboration
The acquisition by IBM does open new doors. For example, HashiCorp wants to improve collaboration between Terraform and Ansible. Until now, IT teams had to set up the integration between both tools themselves. Soon they will be able to communicate directly with each other and track changes. “So you no longer have to wonder which tool to start with,” according to Dadgar.
HashiCorp also remains loyal to its own software Terraform and Vault. Terraform is getting more security features. Sensitive data such as passwords can be marked as “ephemeral values”, so they can’t be accidentally saved. Additionally, Vault Radar can now detect things like API keys or SSH and store them in secure management.
It will take a while before we’re both fully aligned with each other.
Armon Dadgar, Co-founder HashiCorp
IBM is known for its wide range of hundreds of products. According to Dadgar, this can lead to choice paralysis for customers. HashiCorp wants to change that: “We prefer to give a clear roadmap rather than loose components. That’s what we’re trying to teach IBM now as well.”
HashiCorp thus continues to largely chart its own course. The acquisition by IBM should not change anything about the mission to “do cloud right”. “We continue to safeguard our independent DNA,” according to Dadgar.