The latest offering from the house of Google could make a big difference to businesses, and potentially disrupt the cloud applications landscape.
The company is launching a digital store for cloud-based software, in partnership with MobileIron. A venture-backed company that saw an IPO back in 2014, MobileIron specializes in mobile device management – an interesting choice for the move.
Google is also tapping into Orbitera, a software marketplace it had acquired in 2016, for about $100 million.
“At Google Cloud, the aim of our Orbitera commerce platform has always been to build an ecosystem that makes it easier for enterprises to buy and sell apps in the cloud. That’s why we’re thrilled to be working with MobileIron,” the company said in a blog post. The new store is a combination of Orbitera’s existing features and MobileIron’s expertise in app distribution and security.
Using the new digital store, businesses can quickly design a marketplace where customers, partners, and vendors can interact. This would make application management, billing, and authentication processes far easier – with the added advantage of Google’s own cloud platform to handle backend and storage.
The Google ecosystem is vast and powerful. With this move, the company hopes to enter the enterprise segment, where it is yet to gain a firm foothold.
The post further outlined their motives: “Through this collaboration, resellers, enterprises, OEMs and ISVs will get a scalable, flexible way to secure management, delivery and mobile app procurement through an integrated platform that supports multiple operating systems and devices.”
The space is already well-populated and highly competitive. AWS, Microsoft, and Salesforce, all offer enterprise services on the cloud – and they have been doing it for a while. The question is whether Google is late to the party or joins the race at just the right time.
“Now more than ever, businesses are relying on enterprise applications as a critical step towards employee and customer engagement. But this ecosystem of enterprise apps can come with its own challenges,” says Google – these include sourcing apps from multiple publishers, navigating security and ownership, and gaining trusted payment gateways.
Here’s what Google’s solution has in store:
- Customized service bundles according to customer groups
- Unique branding and identity across the marketplace
- Unified billing for ever customer, collating all devices, data, voice, and third-party cloud service usage in a single monthly invoice
- Fortified access to the cloud ensuring only trusted customers can log in
- Complete visibility of usage metrics and application analytics
