Amazon Goes All-in on Healthcare with $3.9 Billion One Medical Acquisition

Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets:

• Amazon caught both the tech and healthcare industries off guard when it announced it had reached an agreement with One Medical to acquire the tech-centric healthcare provider for $3.9 billion.

• The deal raised some regulatory red flags as critics questioned the data privacy implications of having a large retailer with a massive cloud platform having access to patient records.

Amazon’s planned One Medical acquisition stunned both the healthcare and technology industries. While the deal is not the retailer’s first foray into healthcare, the value of the deal and the pairing with Amazon’s other interests in both brick-and-mortar retail (Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh) and pharmaceuticals (PillPack) show just how serious the company is about pursuing an outsized role in the medical industry. One Medical, which operates just under 200 clinics, offers patients a subscription-based telehealth service, which dovetails with Amazon’s own Prime model.

Future Gazing: 6G for the Enterprise

Kathryn Weldon – Research Director, Business Network and IT Services – Americas

Summary Bullets:

• While 5G is positioned as a “near-term” game-changer, both pundits and telecom vendors debate network characteristics, performance expectations, and use cases that will be enabled by next-generation wireless technology: 6G.

• Compelling enterprise use cases in early trials, or are only hinted at today, will allegedly be widely available in the 2030s.

Analysts are busily digesting evolving information on the capabilities of 5G as they aim to come up with answers to burning questions such as:

Can North American IoT MVNOs Thrive in Difficult Times?

Kathryn Weldon – Research Director, Business Network and IT Services – Americas

Summary Bullets:

• Internet of Things (IoT) mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) had to overcome reliance on connectivity-led portfolios as they court global enterprises while competing with mobile operators focusing on IoT as a growth area.
• Those MVNOs that remain and thrive have re-vamped offerings to stay relevant, drawing customers with application enablement, vertical solutions, management platforms, and professional and managed services.

IoT MVNOs expand the reach of enterprises looking to connect IoT devices on a global basis, primarily via cellular technologies. They can expand mobile or fixed operators’ footprints as a partner or sell directly to OEMs and enterprises that need widespread, easy-to-use connectivity. They can also offer seamless connectivity in regions where a single carrier cannot provide service.

Executive Departure Adds More Uncertainty to Broadcom’s VMware Acquisition

S. Schuchart

Summary Bullets:

• Tom Krause is leaving Broadcom to become CEO of Citrix-Tibco, increasing tensions around the planned acquisition of VMware.
• Broadcom CEO Hock Tan is taking over the Broadcom Software division, but there may be a chance that VMware’s leadership team could run the division if the acquisition closes.

The latest chapter in the saga of Broadcom’s quest to buy VMware sees the architect and face of the deal, Broadcom Software President Tom Krause, leaving Broadcom to become CEO of Citrix-Tibco. For fans following along at home, Citrix was purchased by private equity firms Vista Equity Partners and Elliott Investment Management that plan to merge Citrix with Tibco. The merger of those two is much like the purchase of VMware by Broadcom – a move with very few synergies that leaves everyone scratching their heads and wondering why. It seems as if the thought process is that any software company can be merged with any other… because they are all software, right?

Vodafone Delivers Purpose in Action

R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• Vodafone is seeking to demonstrate how it uses technology to address connected education and connected health markets in both developed and developing countries.
• Propositions such as ‘school in a box’ and m-mama in Africa have helped in delivering the education sector and safer healthcare for pregnant women.

Vodafone recently presented examples of its Purpose initiative, whose goal is stated to be “we connect for a better future by enabling inclusive and sustainable digital societies.” The three pillars of this strategy are Digital Society (connecting people, places, and things and digitizing critical sectors); Inclusion For All (ensuring no one is left behind in a digital society); and Planet (tackling the climate crisis, reducing carbon emissions, and helping others reduce theirs). These all demonstrate practical implementations of the company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda, as well as demonstrating that offering socially useful applications can also be a commercial opportunity.

DevSecOps is Now Ops’ Greatest Digitization Challenge

C. Dunlap

Summary Bullets:

• DevSecOps’ barriers to adoption include culture clashes between teams and technical challenges.
• Emerging tools are beginning to appear among traditional platform providers and startups.

The move to microservices-based apps has unleashed a flood of new DevOps and GitOps platforms in recent months aimed at helping enterprise operations and developer teams create continuous integration and continuous development pipelines for streamlining the deployment of advanced apps within complex processes. Efforts to spin off new app architectures, including Kubernetes clusters, require configurations between networking, security, and provisioning of computing. This need involves the developer as part of a ‘shift left and GitOps’ movement taking place over the past 18 months, spurred by the need to automate continuous delivery and operations of apps and infrastructure. However, progress toward this effort has been slow.

MuleSoft Conference Touted Integration but Downplayed API Security

C. Dunlap

Summary Bullets:

• MuleSoft Connect delivered on Dreamforce promises made in late-2021.
• MuleSoft executives missed the opportunity to provide thought leadership on API security and DevSecOps.

Salesforce’s notable integration business, MuleSoft, used its annual conference this week to deliver on the general availability of its Dreamforce announcements made in late-2021. While this week’s recap around intelligent automation, robotic process automation (RPA), pre-built connectors/accelerators, low-code, and collaboration was short on new technical updates, the company achieved its purpose of highlighting the importance of MuleSoft’s highly coveted integration and application programming interface (API) management technology for helping global companies, big and small, accomplish digitization.