IBM would make more sense than Google. Despite the topic of TFA, almost all of GitLab's ARR comes from their on-prem offering not their SaaS offering. IBM is much better positioned to sell and support on-prem software than Google. IBM is also a long-time player in SCM, and despite being legacy their Rational products still have a big footprint in enterprise. With some integrations and migration tools an IBM-owned GitLab would have a huge installed base to go sell Git modernization to.
Another possibility would be Broadcom, as CA has a number of adjacent products for the software development lifecycle.
Re:Gitlab's Journey from Azure to GCP
by jacques_chester on Friday May 03, 2019 @07:42AM
(#19817482)
I'd put IBM and SAP as outside chances. The Red Hat purchase makes perfect sense for IBM: they're buying a competitor which has deep roots in the enterprise. Gitlab is less so.
On the other hand Google is in a struggle to catch up with even Azure, so Gitlab looks attractive as a foil against Github.
Seems like it would fit better with IBM's (now) RedHat portfolio, than it would fit with Google.
Maybe I'm just being hopeful...