Ash Ashatosh is the CEO of Actifio. He discusses why private tech companies no longer need to rush into public markets.
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Ashatosh: Azure and IBM will beat AWS in enterprise cloud within two years
“In fact, we predict that the number one enterprise cloud in the next two years is probably going to be Azure, and not AWS, just because they are sucking up a tremendous amount of footprint of applications. And number two actually might be IBM, and not AWS, as …”
Prediction Open · timeframe Oct 2020
Ashatosh: Dell will eventually be run by a CFO
“As far as that market is concerned, I think, you know, you will end up having a CFO be the leader of Dell.”
Opinion
Ashatosh: Startups should aim to be useful mules, not hyped unicorns
“It would rather be a mule that my customers love than a unicorn that some investor does, and I think my investors feel the same way too.”
Assertion Partly supported
Ashatosh: 2015 Gartner expo floor had virtually no hardware vendors present
“In fact, at the Gartner event, what is fascinating? Was the entire floor. There was not a single hardware vendor except a small booth by EMC, and even small booth by Pure Storage, because I guess they were going public and they had a token show that. There was…”
Insight
Ashatosh: Data differs from compute because it has a long lifecycle
“Well, we, the, unlike compute, unlike networking, data is a very different beast. Data has a life cycle. Data has a long tail. It doesn't just appear and then disappear.”
Insight
Ashatosh: Legacy sales organizations prevent incumbents from selling disruptive software
“It's the two thirds, the stuff under the iceberg, the water, the iceberg under the water, which is marketing it and selling it. They've got a, they became large because they have one of the phenomenal, most of the best marketing and sales organizations that ar…”