Alphabet
Inc's Google said on Thursday it is acquiring cloud software company Apigee
Corp in a deal valued at about $625 million, the tech giant’s latest effort to
claim a greater share of the lucrative cloud business, according to reuters.com
report.
San
Jose-based Apigee's software helps companies' digital services interact with
apps used by customers and partners.
The
service is critical for businesses transitioning to the cloud, Diane Greene,
who runs Google's cloud computing division, said in an interview. "They
are a leader in this application programming interface area," she said.
Cloud
computing is the increasingly popular practise of using remote internet servers
to store, manage and process data.
Apigee
specializes in managing so-called application programming interfaces, or APIs,
the channels through which digital services connect when a company logs a
purchase for a customer or places an order with a supplier.
Google
will pay Apigee shareholders $17.40 for each share, a 6.5 percent premium to
the
stock's Wednesday close.
Apigee's
shares were slightly above the offer price at $17.43 on Nasdaq in afternoon
trading on Thursday.
The
company, whose customers include AT&T, Burberry Group Plc, Vodafone Group
Plc and the World Bank, went public in April last year at $17 per share.
Greene,
a former VMware CEO, has pushed to raise Google's profile in corporate
computing since she joined last year.
During
her tenure, Google has streamlined engineering efforts and appointed new
leadership for its cloud efforts, improving traction with clients, Google Chief
Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said during the company's latest earnings call.
Greene
predicted that the Apigee acquisition would redouble Google's momentum.
"Our
customer lists are extremely complimentary," she said. "There's some
overlap and some areas where we are going to be able to help each other once
[the deal] closes."
The
Apigee deal comes a day after Google and online storage company Box Inc said
they would partner to enable Box's corporate customers to integrate Google's
suite of word processing, spreadsheets and other productivity tools, known as
Google Docs.
Google,
Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp, IBM Corp and others are vying for a share of
the fast-growing corporate cloud computing business.
Apigee,
with high-profile clients in a strategically important area, will help Google
close in on the competition, said analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights
& Strategy.
“Google
has fallen behind both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services in enterprise
cloud computing, and this move is intended to strengthen that position,” he
wrote in an email.
No comments:
Post a Comment