What Shifted · Ins7ghts Daily, Monday 2 November 2026
A data programme I worked on was tendered in parts, and each part went to a different consulting firm. The data architect came from one firm. The technology was implemented by another, a consortium of smaller firms that also competed among themselves, and they wanted to squeeze in their own team, billed on time and material. The client's stated reason for switching technology was to get the incumbent vendor out. I had a completely different vision from the architect, and when I defended a holistic approach to the board, that did not carry the weight it should have. The firms were competing with each other more than they were building the programme. The contract named suppliers. It did not describe who I was actually working with.
Three events from last week, each from a different desk, with the same shape.
A court. The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed that Verisk cannot terminate its $2.35 billion agreement to acquire AccuLynx, keeping the purchase alive pending FTC approval. Read it.
A provider. 11:11 Systems acquired a set of IBM's VMware Cloud Service Provider enterprise customers. Read it.
A founder. Thomas Dohmke, previously at GitHub, launched Entire, a platform for AI-generated code, with Buildkite and Depot wired into its build and test pipelines. Read it.
What the three share is what did not happen. No product changed behaviour last week. A court decided that a buyer who wanted out must complete anyway, a provider bought other people's customers, and a founder started a competitor for the place code lives. In each case the thing that moved was the counterparty, and in two of the three the customer had no vote in it.
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