Top 5 Cloud Industry Deals In Q1 2020

Cloud computing is picking up the pace in terms of adoption. Experts have also tagged cloud technologies to play a crucial role in digital transformation in 2020 and beyond. Certainly, it is happening as cloud continues to transform the complete IT landscape. Not only this, cloud also becomes crucial to other technologies like Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), 5G, Intenet of Things (IoT), etc. 

The cloud industry leaders are not missing any chance to be better than the best. Either the cloud providers are developing products on their own or closing deals to offer the services under their name. The deals open opportunities to cloud giants to expand their market reach and provide an in-depth service portfolio to customers. 

We are going to take a look at the most influential cloud deals that happened in the first quarter, Q1, of 2020. 

Microsoft Acquired 5G Specialist Affirmed Networks

Microsoft announced the acquisition of Affirmed Networks in the last week of March. Affirmed Networks specializes in fully virtualized, cloud-native networking solutions for telecom operators. 

Microsoft has started focusing on 5G and Edge Computing and recently launched Azure Edge to support these technologies. This makes Affirmed Networks an ideal choice for an influential cloud provider who wants to penetrate into the telecom business. Affirmed Network’s customer portfolio includes more than 100 customers including AT&T, Orange, Vodafone, Telus, STC, and Turkcell. This gives Microsoft another entry point into the telecom industry will help increase its cloud services adoption.

Suggested Reads: Top Six Cloud Computing News: April 2020

AWS Partnered with Kenya’s Safaricom on Cloud and Consulting Services

As per the TechCrunch reports, Amazon Web Services has partnered with Safaricom. This partnership is expected to spark more aggressive competition efforts between giant cloud providers in Africa. 

Safaricom will also become the first-ever Advanced Consulting Partner for the AWS partner network in East Africa. This partnership is a serious threat to Azure’s footfall in Africa’s markets. Since 2017, Microsoft has partnered with Liquid Telecom (a Southern African digital infrastructure company) to offer Azure’s services to the continent’s startups and other businesses. 

As per the statistics, Safaricom holds 80% of Kenya’s mobile agent network, 82% of the country’s active mobile money subscribers and transfers 80% of Kenya’s mobile. Safaricom holds this dominance by its M-Pesa mobile money service.

Google Closed Billion Dollar Looker Acquisition

Google announced the acquisition of the data analytics startup Looker for $2.6 billion last year. The partnership came into action when it closed the deal in mid-February this year.  

The acquisition is a big deal on different levels. First of all, $2.6 billion is a lot of money and it is the biggest deal under CEO Thomas Kurian, who joined Google Cloud last year in January. 

The partnership also firmed Google’s dominance in data analytics. Google Cloud has already justified as to how Locker fits in their “Smart Analytics Platform.” The smart analytics platform promises to provide ways to process, understand, analyze and visualize data. Looker is not limited to supporting services for Google Cloud but fills in a spot in the visualization stack for other clouds also.

Suggested Reads: Google acquires CloudSimple to simplify Cloud migration

HPE Acquired Cloud-Native Security Startup Scytale

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced the acquisition of Scytale. The acquired startup, Scytale, offers cloud-native security capabilities and the platform is based in the open-source Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone (SPIFFE) protocol.

Scytale is dedicated to application-to-application identity and access management. This becomes centric as the ever-increasing transactions take place between applications without any human intervention. It is compelling to achieve that the application knows it is perfectly OK to share information with another application. 

This area of advancement is what HPE wants to expand its product portfolio. This acquisition becomes more significant when every organization recognizes that operating in hybrid and multi-cloud environments require 100% secure and zero trust systems. The applications should be capable of dynamically identifying and authenticate data and applications in real-time.

Google Acquired AppSheet to Enhance Multi-Cloud Offerings

Google announced the acquisition of AppSheet in mid-January. AppSheet is an eight-year-old platform that is dedicated to building no-code mobile-applications.  

Google already integrated Google Cloud services Google Sheets and Google Forms. To maintain a firm position in the multi-cloud offerings; Google Cloud promises to continue offering AppSheet services to other cloud providers. The services from other cloud providers include AWS DynamoDB, Salesforce, Office 365, Box and others. 

This acquisition supports Google’s idea to give everyone a chance to develop mobile applications; even to the companies which are often left on backfoot due to a lack of traditional developer resources to build a mobile presence. AppSheet will also be able to achieve more platform and market reach under Google as compared to being an independent company. 

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