Google Acquires Orbitera, Pledges 'Support For The Multi-Cloud World'

Google’s announced acquisition Monday of cloud commerce platform vendor Orbitera positions the Internet giant to assist its partners in deploying rival cloud products in addition to its own Google Cloud Platform.

In revealing the deal, Google acknowledged that enterprise customers often want to run an assortment of cloud services across the software stack on multiple infrastructure providers. The Mountain View, Calif.-based cloud operator affirmed its comfort in facilitating the kind of heterogeneous infrastructure that Orbitera’s platform enables.

Nade Boden, head of global technology partners at Google, wrote in a Google Cloud Platform blog that the Orbitera deal ’reinforces Google’s support for the multi-cloud world.’

[Related: Orbitera Focused On Enabling ’The Cross-Cloud Experience’]

Orbitera, founded in 2011 in West Hollywood, Calif., offers a multi-tier cloud services marketplace and billing platform that empowers channel partners to help enterprises pursue multi-cloud strategies.

’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,’ Boden said.

The Orbitera Cloud Commerce Platform allows ISVs, distributors, resellers and MSPs to define a set of cloud products, from infrastructure to software, and bundle them into a catalog they can present to a broad set of customers through multiple tiers of accounts, Brian Singer, the company's co-founder, told CRN in March.

’When we first started Orbitera, our mission was to enable frictionless sales of cloud-based enterprise software and services,’ CEO Marcin Kurc wrote in an Orbitera blog post. ’Becoming part of the Google Cloud Platform team allows us to continue and accelerate toward this goal.’

Kurc said Google’s cloud team shares Orbitera’s vision ’for seamless purchase and deployment of IT services across heterogeneous cloud infrastructure.’

Over the last few years, Orbitera has built an ecosystem consisting of many ISVs looking to deliver enterprise solutions on multiple cloud platforms from different vendors.

Orbitera’s technology will help Google Cloud Platform better support those third-party solutions, according to Boden.

’We're providing customers with more choice and flexibility when it comes to running their cloud environment,’ Boden said.

Simon Margolis, director of cloud platform at Los Angeles-based Google partner SADA Systems, told CRN that Orbitera’s platform can protect Google Cloud Platform customers running mission-critical applications. A multi-cloud strategy ensures near-zero downtime, Margolis said.

Margolis said most cloud professionals still remember Netflix’s Christmas Eve outage of 2012 as a cautionary tale of what can happen when a sole cloud provider has a problem—in that case with an Amazon Web Services load balancing service.

’With their acquisition of Orbitera, Google is proving that their goals are to provide the absolute best cloud computing experience to their customers, which in some cases may include the ability to failover to other cloud providers or on-premise hardware in the event of a catastrophe,’ Margolis told CRN.