Google has made a key move to give its cloud platform more appeal to ISVs, MSPs and consulting companies with the purchase of Orbitera, which makes a platform for buying and selling software. Its move was revealed in an official Google blog post:
The current model for the deploying, managing and billing of cloud-based software does not easily fit the way today’s modern enterprises operate. Orbitera automates many of the processes associated with billing, packaging and pricing optimization for leading businesses and ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) supporting customers running in the cloud. More than 60,000 enterprise stacks have been launched on Orbitera.
At Google, we partner closely with our enterprise customers and software providers to ensure their transition to the cloud is as simple and seamless as possible. We recognize that both enterprise customers and ISVs want to be able to use more than one cloud provider and have a way to conduct product trials and proofs of concept before building a full production deployment, all using their trusted SIs (System Integrators), resellers and normal sales cycles.
Orbitera has built a strong ecosystem of enterprise software vendors delivering software to multiple clouds. This acquisition will not only improve the support of software vendors on Google Cloud Platform, but reinforces Google’s support for the multi-cloud world.
Looking to the future, we're committed to maintaining Orbitera’s neutrality as a platform supporting multi-cloud commerce.
While Orbitera's capabilities could also conceivably be used by enterprise IT shops as part of an internal delivery, billing and cost tracking service, it appears that to date ISVs and SIs have been its dominant customer base.
There are four main components to Orbitera's technology. First, it provides packaging and provisioning modules for third-party infrastructure providers. Currently Amazon Web Services and Azure are supported integrations, with tie-ins to CenturyLink and Rackspace "coming soon," according to Orbitera's website. (Presumably, a first order of engineering business will be to add support for Google's own infrastructure offering.)
Orbitera also offers capabilities for billing and margin optimization, with the latter featuring live tie-ins to third-party vendors' price books.
Third, Orbitera customers have access to a marketplace builder for creating custom stores. End customers can shop for solutions, request proof-of-concepts and conduct trials through the stores.
Finally, Orbitera offers the ability to tie into "virtually any" CRM or marketing automation system that can handle forms.
Google is also getting some notable talent as part of the deal. Orbitera's CEO Marcin Kurc previously served as head of business development for AWS's enterprise marketplace unit.
"It's obvious Google needs more of a marketplace and billing capability," says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Holger Mueller. "In general, Google Cloud Platform is trying to become easier to consume, more enterprise-friendly and to push a B2B marketplace."
The deal for Orbitera has the fingerprints of VMWare founder Diane Greene, who now leads Google's enterprise business, all over it as a go-to-market strategy, Mueller adds. Orbitera's billing capabilities could also help Google overall, he notes.
Despite Google's pledge for vendor-neutrality, "the question is how much openness can Orbitera bring going forward as being part of Google," Mueller adds.
Beyond its core goal of helping Google develop an enterprise software marketplace, the Orbitera deal provides a high-level symbol of what the company is becoming in the industry.
"You have to look at Google now as a go-to-market partner, Google as a tech platform, and Google as a competitor at times," says Constellation Research founder R "Ray" Wang.
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