Comment by Timothee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Timothee | Hacker News Reader

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(now part of Pivotal Labs)

Ok, I'm now very confused. When I saw the title I thought "Pivotal Labs" for a second and then "oh no, the 'other' Pivotal that is not Pivotal Labs and which I have no idea what they're doing". I got confused and the past and realized (or thought at least) they were two different entities.

But now, you, as well as an investor quoted in the OP[0], say "Pivotal Labs". Are these two the same thing? Are these two different but related entities? A cursory look at each sites don't seem to mark them linked, though it does show that the OP is about Pivotal as in http://www.gopivotal.com/

Thanks for the clarification!

[0] Actually he's quoted like so: "Palihapitiya even noted that Xtreme had built a “Pivotal Labs for mobile.”", which in itself doesn't mean the buyer is Pivotal Labs, but, in the context, is confusing. It almost sounds like the post's author get the two confused as well. (unless, they're the same thing obviously)

To hopefully clarify a little, Pivotal is the "joint venture" of EMC and VMware to which the article refers. Big data in the cloud is the idea behind the business.

Pivotal Labs was purchased by EMC, though, and is thus a part of Pivotal. I can't say for sure, but I'm betting that's where the name comes from.

Source: Pivotal Labs employee.

I never heard of Pivotal having big data experience before the acquisition announcement.

Their bread-and-butter was providing pairs of Rails programmers and best practices at $500/hr.

You're thinking of Pivotal Labs.

Same thing, nit picking and even they refer to themselves as Pivotal.

"Mee oversaw Pivotal Labs’ acquisition by EMC Corporation in March 2012, and continues to lead and guide the vision for Pivotal Labs as vice president of the Cloud Application Platform Group at Pivotal."

http://pivotallabs.com/team/executives/

It's not the same thing. Labs is part of the greater Pivotal umbrella which includes SpringSource, Cloud Foundry and others.

There is no Cloud Application Platform Group at Pivotal Labs. This is also part of the greater Pivotal umbrella. Rob oversees that group and Pivotal Labs, which he founded.

I'll admit that we do sometimes colloquially refer to Labs as just "Pivotal," but that's not what the name Pivotal is referring to in what you're quoting. It's referring specifically to the company named Pivotal (http://gopivotal.com/)

To my knowledge, Pivotal has a small mobile division called Pivotal Labs. That is the division that Xtreme Labs is most relevant to, as XL is a mobile company. This will increase Pivotal's presence in the mobile scene, which was nowhere near the size of Xtreme Labs.

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