Google Cloud buys the ‘Navy Seals of cybersecurity’
Google is buying cybersecurity firm Mandiant, a move that strengthens its standing in the race for cloud computing dominance. It is Google’s largest acquisition since buying Motorola in 2011.
Google is paying $23 per share in cash for the company, which values the deal at $5.4 billion including Mandiant’s net cash reserves. Mandiant will be folded into Google Cloud.
As more companies move away from on-prem data centers into the cloud, cybersecurity safeguards in the cloud become paramount.
“Organizations around the world are facing unprecedented cybersecurity challenges as the sophistication and severity of attacks that were previously used to target major governments are now being used to target companies in every industry,” said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian in a statement.
Google Cloud has been a distant third in cloud computing. According to Statista, AWS is the leader with a 33% market share and Microsoft’s Azure is second with 21%. Google is third with 10%. The other players include Alibaba Cloud (6%), IBM Cloud (4%), Salesforce (3%), Tencent Cloud (3%), Oracle Cloud (2%) and others.
“This type of offering is what Google needs more of, but they must be integrated services and not just a collection of different advisory services,” said Roy Illsley, chief analyst of enterprise IT at sister research firm Omdia.
“Google is lagging on the high-touch side,” added Brad Shimmin, Omdia’s chief analyst of AI and IoT. “When you look at Google Cloud itself, it is on par with the other hyperscalars in terms of offering native security practices like multi-tier data encryption and external key management.”
“But they leave way too much to system integrators and technology partners to handle difficult security challenges. This acquisition seems able to help them do that in a more end-to-end manner.”
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