Google has acquired Alooma, a key move that could boost Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as a data warehousing system vs. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Aurora and AWS Redshift; Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Oracle Cloud Autonomous Data Warehouse. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The move could turn heads in the global systems integrator market, where large partners are helping customers to move open- and closed-source databases to public clouds. Smaller MSPs moving into the managed database services market may also be intrigued.
Alooma develops migration tools and integrations that allow customers to move their data from multiple sources to a single data warehouse. The company is well-known in the ETL market. ETL is short for extract, transform, load -- three database functions that are combined into one tool to pull data out of one database and place it into another database. The company launched in 2013 and had raised $15 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.
Alooma "enables teams to integrate, clean, enrich and stream data from any data source to any cloud data warehouse," the company says. Moreover, the startup claims to have SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, EU-US Privacy Shield, and GDPR compliance expertise.
Google Cloud Platform Acquires Alooma: Cloud Database Competition
The Alooma acquisition is especially timely. Indeed:
- Rival AWS has major momentum migrating on-premises Oracle databases to AWS Aurora.
- Oracle itself has been pushing customers to embrace database as a service.
- Microsoft Azure is an increasingly popular destination for running SQL Server and third-party databases.
- And many MSPs are introducing managed database services that extend from on-premises systems to multiple third-party clouds.
In a blog post about the deal, GCP VP of Engineering Amit Ganesh and Director of Product Management Dominic Preuss, described Alooma as:
"a natural fit that allows us to offer customers a streamlined, automated migration experience to Google Cloud, and give them access to our full range of database services, from managed open source database offerings to solutions like Cloud Spanner and Cloud Bigtable. This simplified migration path also opens the door for customers to take advantage of all the technologies we have to offer, including analytics, security, AI and machine learning."
In a separate blog about the deal, Alooma co-founders Yoni Broyde & Yair Weinberger wrote:
"This acquisition is the evolution of our long-standing partnership with Google Cloud. It follows several native integrations, over the years, from Google Ads and Analytics to Cloud Spanner and BigQuery."
Alooma's integrations extend across multiple databases and public clouds. We're checking to see if support for AWS and Azure, in particular, will remain in place under Google's ownership.
The deal also expands GCP's Israel, which already includes last year's Velostrata acquisition.
Google Cloud Platform: Learning From Oracle Database Veteran?
The acquisition comes after former Oracle Cloud leader Thomas Kurian recently succeeded former Google Cloud Platform CEO Diane Greene.
Some pundits have speculated that Google needs to make big cloud acquisitions to gain ground against AWS and Azure. The targets, some pundits say, could include names like ServiceNow, Atlassian, Splunk or perhaps Zayo. But the wiser move may involve multiple smaller, highly targeted, less costly deals that boost Google's data management, security, Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), ChannelE2E believes.
Either way, Google faces an uphill battle. The has not disclosed its cloud revenues in recent quarters, a potential indication that the business isn't keeping pace with record growth over at AWS and Azure, in particular.
Mergers & Acquisitions: Multi-Cloud Management, Migration Tools & MSPs
Surging demand for multi-cloud management and migration tools is driving considerable M&A activity. Example deals and product launches include:
