[recursv_thnkng]

Yeah this seems odd for a Fortune 500 company’s CEO asking specifically for Linux VMs.

There’s not enough hours in the day where these CEOs would be so far down in the weeds of the business that they’re making VM flavor decisions.

[kramerger]

I can actually see this happening.

Obviously a fortune 500 CEO does not know jack about IT. But someone has raised the alarm on the price hike and presented a few possible solutions, that have reached all the way to the board.

Given the high risk, tight schedule, and the amount of work something like this must be driven by the CEO (or at least directly sponsored by him) or it will not happen.

[olavgg]

This is not from a fortune 500 company, but I know the CEO in a BIG oil & gas company and that CEO do in fact know a lot about IT & computer science. He is in fact a big fan of Neo4j, and gets really frustrated when he talk to software architects/developers that have never heard about neo4j or graph databases.

He also knows about Linux and license free virtualization. But making a move requires people, and people with Linux knowledge are very rare.

[retcore]

Data science and tools are especially critical to oil and gas management. Including downstream: refineries are built for the qualities of available discovery and take as long to plan. Anticipating the availability, extraction costs and chemistry of a new deposit is a major advantage to anyone in the industry. I was given, cold, a six figure number of barrels of Kazakh crude to market, three years before the standard blend was assessed. That was fun...

[shiftpgdn]

I looked at your profile and was surprised to see we don't work for the same company!

[Brian_K_White]

That's why it's remarkable and worth well remarking about.

[iforgotpassword]

As VMware is getting considerably more expensive it's reasonable to assume some CEOs are aware of that. It would be enough if one or two of them for one reason for another googled "cheap virtualization" or talked to some "tech guy" and somehow "Linux is cheap/free and can do virtualization" is what stuck with them. Then they talk to their friends at the golf club and after a while the topic reaches critical mass in those circles and spreads across those companies, probably not without playing "Chinese whispers" along the way.

[spoonjim]

There are close to 0 Fortune 500 CEOs who would be DIRECTLY reaching out to Linux virtualization companies. There could easily be a CEO who convenes a meeting with the CIO and COO to "Find 10% savings on operational software costs" but the idea that they are directly reaching out to vendors is one of those "tell me you've never worked with a Fortune 500 C-suite without telling me that you've never worked with a Fortune 500 C-suite" memes.

[iforgotpassword]

Nowhere in my post did I suggest CEOs reaching out to "Linux virtualization companies" themselves. Even the linked reddit post doesn't. It's talking about CEOs ordering someone/some team from their company to contact a tech consulting company to figure out whether switching to Linux based virtualization would be feasible.

CEOs hearing about some stuff and immediately jumping on it and ordering someone to look into it is quite common.

[bluGill]

That depends on the company. Some companies spend a lot more on tech than others. CEOs tend to be aware of where the high costs are, so if your company spends a lot on Tech, I could see the CEO knowing at least something about it.

[ThePadawan]

I think you're underestimating how psychopathic CEOs are.

They might tell someone below them "we need Linux VMs, stat!" the same way they might say "We need to move everything onto the blockchain!", all depending on what they pick up at a conference or the golf course.