The year of COVID-19 has proven that cloud technology can save the day, enabling work from anywhere – and creating a lot of extra data to manage in the process. The upcoming Snowflake IPO intends to capitalize on that reality.

The data warehousing vendor soon will go public in what analysts expect will be a big, big deal. In the first part of this cloud news roundup, we explore what market experts are saying about the Snowflake IPO.

Then, get the latest on Oracle’s legal fight for a shot at the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract. Needless to say, the cloud vendor may be at an end with its attempts to get a piece of the $10 billion project. And finally, global consultancy Infosys has unveiled its cloud platform for digital transformation.

Snowflake IPO Has ‘Potential for Significant Upside’

The upcoming Snowflake IPO could mean a market cap of $35 billion on the first day of trading.

That’s according to an MKM analyst via SeekingAlpha. Rohit Kulkarni predicts that Snowflake, because of its cloud-based data warehousing specialty, could blow away Wall Street. Kulkarni projects a Snowflake IPO valuation between $20 billion and $21 billion. He cites “potential for significant upside, given Snowflake’s rare-air growth rate, secular tailwinds and emerging use cases.”

Snowflake could see that vaunted $35 billion market cap “on day one” if investors apply a combination of “premium multiples,” Kulkarni said.

Last month, Snowflake filed its intent to go public. It hopes to raise $100 million. Donovan Jones, a SeekingAlpha analyst, appears to see that threshold as no issue.

“As enterprises transition to the cloud, complexity has increased markedly, putting pressure on IT groups and providing an opening for companies like ‘SNOW’ to provide a suite of capabilities that both simplifies and removes data siloing limitations,” Jones wrote in a Sept. 3 blog.

Analysts over at The Motley Fool agree. Snowflake, said Brian Feroldi on a Sept. 1 podcast, is “going to be the second-fastest growing SaaS company ever to IPO.”

Plus, he added, “it’s the No. 3 fastest public SaaS company to reach [$500 million]in annualized revenue. Those are impressive metrics.”

The Snowflake IPO is based on a reported $264.7 million in revenue and $348.5 million in net losses as of the company’s fiscal year that ended Jan. 31. Snowflake holds $886 million in cash and boasts 3,000 customers, double the number from a year ago, The Motley Fool noted.

Snowflake has not yet announced its IPO pricing date. The cloud data warehousing provider last year started ramping up its channel program. By all accounts, partners will remain integral to Snowflake’s growth plans.

Appeals Court Shoots Down Oracle’s JEDI Arguments

A U.S. appeals court has put the full kibosh on Oracle’s efforts to get a piece of the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract.

The cloud vendor has argued since last year that it was wrongfully excluded from consideration for the project. It has insisted that the Department of Defense violated government rules by intending to award JEDI to just one contractor. Oracle also said the procurement process was flawed by …

… conflict of interest because a former Amazon employee helped write proposal criteria.

On Wednesday, however, the court stood with a federal judge who in 2019 rejected Oracle’s claims. Judges focused mostly on the question of the number of companies involve in JEDI.

“[E]ven if the department had opted for a multisource procurement, Oracle would not have been able to satisfy the requirements of Gate 1.2, which the department would have imposed regardless of whether the procurement was conducted on a single-source or multisource basis,” the court said this week, according to NextGov.

JEDI has been a source of contention in the public cloud vendor circle ever since the DoD said it will upgrade its systems to the cloud.

Amazon Web Services expected to win the JEDI deal, but earlier this year, the Pentagon declared Microsoft Azure the winner. That decision, of course, has led to legal entanglements and delays.

The appeals court’s move regarding Oracle does not affect the ongoing wrangling among the DoD, Amazon and Microsoft.

Infosys Debuts Cobalt Cloud Suite

Infosys, a global consultancy on par with Accenture and Deloitte, recently launched its Cobalt cloud suite for enterprises.

Cobalt moves existing infrastructure into the cloud. It also enables cloud-first development and apps delivery. Each aspect of Cobalt further contains regulatory and security compliance, as well as technical and financial governance, Infosys said.

The product comes as Infosys targets organizations undergoing digital transformation. The India-based company earlier this year found that companies come up against a “digital ceiling” when trying to mature their cloud efforts. Infosys Cobalt helps to address that problem.

Infosys’ Salil Parekh

“Our clients are building cloud capabilities to gain business advantage in increasingly competitive markets,” said Salil Parekh, CEO and managing director of Infosys. “The future of enterprise cloud strategy will be shaped by three key factors: speed to market, innovation at scale and security by design. This is the foundational construct of Infosys Cobalt. With Infosys Cobalt, we will set up a proven and optimal foundation for cloud-led transformation that will accelerate the next phase of growth and market leadership for businesses.”

Ravi Kumar, president at Infosys, agreed.

“Our clients operate in hybrid and multicloud environments,” he said. “They are taking full advantage of the public cloud from hyperscalers and are also building strong cloud capabilities on premises. Infosys Cobalt, together with its rich ecosystem of partners, is amplifying the enterprise cloud ecosystem, enabling them to find faster, more innovative and secure ways to respond to changing markets and drive business resilience.”