A man holds his smartphone which
displays the Google home page, in this picture illustration taken in
Bordeaux, Southwestern France, August 22, 2016.
REUTERS/Regis Duvignau.
Alphabet Inc's
Google said on Thursday it is acquiring software developer 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.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 programing interface
area," she said.
Cloud computing is the increasingly popular practice of using remote internet servers to store, manage and process data.
Apigee
specializes in managing so-called application programing 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.
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