Cloud giant Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) is to acquire web-based hosting service GitHub Inc. (
GitHub). Microsoft has headquarters in Redmond, Washington, United States. Traditionally known as the makers of ‘Office’, the company’s ‘cloud-first, mobile-first’ philosophy has seen it successfully transition to a cloud giant with products like Office 365 and its Azure public cloud platform. Microsoft competes with the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and this acquisition is seen by many as a bid to bolster its position in the cloud arena. The acquisition of GitHub is reportedly costing Microsoft $7.5 billion in stock.
GitHub, which has headquarters in San Francisco, California, United States, was established in 2008. The company bills itself as “the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers” and “the world's leading software development platform”. It offers GitHub.com, which makes it easy for users - individuals and teams - to write code. The service offers version control and source code management functionality, and it also offers a range of collaborative features. There are 24 million GitHub users and 67 million code repositories. The acquisition is clearly intended to drive code developers towards Azure.
The acquisition underscores Microsoft’s move towards Open Source solutions, which it has traditionally been fiercely opposed to. Some in the GitHub community are concerned the acquisition will mean it now shows preference to Microsoft solutions. However, these concerns were addressed by Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, who has confirmed GitHub will remain an open platform that can be used for all public clouds. It is expected GitHub will be absorbed by Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud unit by the close of 2018. Nat Friedman, a Microsoft Corporate Vice President, will lead GitHub as CEO.
"Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation," explained Mr. Nadellain a press release. "We recognize the community responsibility we take on with this agreement and will do our best work to empower every developer to build, innovate and solve the world's most pressing challenges."
Do you know of any other companies involved in acquisitions? Let us know the details. Add your comments below.
