According to CRN and other sources, iCloud will soon be partially powered by the Google Cloud Platform by way of a deal that could also be used as leverage to cut its cloud costs with Amazon and Microsoft. Such a move is a big win for Google’s burgeoning cloud enterprise business.
Past reports claim that Apple’s iCloud is powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. Apple is reportedly paying Google between $400 million and $600 million for the deal. While Apple is not dropping Amazon entirely, they are presumably cutting back their dependence in order to save costs.
Google is third in the enterprise cloud business, but recently hired former VMWare co-founder Dianne Greene to lead and grow their cloud business. The company has big plans to make have their cloud business more profitable than their current ads business within five years.
Since her appointment, Greene has been “aggressively forming partnerships and swinging deals to bring in large enterprise customers,” the CRN report says. Google has at least one advantage compared to competitors due to its extensive fiber networks that connect their data centers and help lowers bandwidth costs. Just last month, Spotify also announced they will be using Google’s Cloud Platform to power their music backend.
According to Amir Efrati of The Information, it will take a year for iCloud to be fully running on the Google Cloud Platform and it is unlikely to be very profitable for Google, as it was not for Amazon. However, it is a symbolic victory that shows Google is making headway into the enterprise cloud business.
It’s true, @iCloud to be partially powered by @googlecloud. But will take a year & unlikely to be profitable. @awscloud lost $ from iCloud.
— Amir Efrati (@amir) March 16, 2016
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