Alphabet has announced its plans to acquire AppBridge, a Canadian tech firm that specializes in helping companies move their data to G Suite on Google’s cloud servers. While details of the deal were not disclosed, this is a very significant in light of Google’s relatively recent focus on acquiring more cloud customers to its fold.
Over the past week, Alphabet announced several upgrades, improvements and new additions to its portfolio of products, mainly focused on G Suite, their enterprise productivity and collaboration suite of cloud-delivered software products, or SaaS.
We reported earlier that Google had launched Hangouts Meet and Chat to compete with enterprise productivity players like Slack and Microsoft Office 365 (which now includes Microsoft Teams), and it is now very evident that Google is fully committed to growing its cloud business after being ‘dormant’ for several years.
Google was one of the earliest proponents of cloud, with deep experience serving software on the cloud with applications like Gmail and Drive. However, Google was late to the cloud race, which saw Amazon zoom past its tech giant competitors Microsoft and IBM on the cloud infrastructure (IaaS) front.
After years of watching cloud leaders fortify their positions in various segments, such as public cloud (AWS), hybrid cloud (IBM) and SaaS (Microsoft), Alphabet has finally woken up to the fact that it has the potential to compete on level ground in various cloud computing segments.
But this year, Google is going all out on multiple cloud fronts, including cloud infrastructure (GCP), enterprise productivity and collaboration SaaS (G Suite), and even cloud-based hardware like Jamboard, a collaborative digital whiteboard that is releasing to the U.S. market this May at a price point of $5,000 and an annual service charge of $600.
Google is clearly after the enterprise market, now that it knows that consumers come in great numbers but are far less lucrative than corporate accounts. Microsoft has known this all along, and has, accordingly, focused its energies on the enterprise segment with nearly everything it does – ranging from Windows 10 to Surface devices to Office 365 and other parts of its business.
For Google, the enterprise market is a relatively new experience. It has neither the credibility nor the strong relationships it needs to succeed in that market. However, Google – or its parent, Alphabet – does have the technology, the talent and the resources to compete on a level playing field against even the biggest of software giants.
Can this pool of talent, technology and monetary muscle move the needle in Alphabet’s favor in the enterprise segment? We’ll have to wait and see, but everything points to a strong entry for the company into this highly coveted market segment ruled by the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce.
The new acquisition plans for AppBridge is, in a way, a validation of Alphabet’s vast resources finally being put to work to grow their cloud business.
ALSO SEE: Alphabet Doubles Down on New G Suite Features and Functionality. Finally.
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