Google’s acquisition of the no-code platform AppSheet demonstrates that drawing enterprise customers to the cloud is central to sustaining its new trillion-dollar valuation on Wall Street.
The online search-engine, cloud-computing and advertising colossus – which recently joined Amazon, Apple and Microsoft among the 11 companies worldwide with trillion-dollar valuations by the Nasdaq exchange – declined to reveal how much it paid to add the Seattle-based start-up’s tools to its Google Cloud Platform.
But the acquisition speaks volumes – about customers, about competitors and about the future of app development in the cloud – as the number of tech firms with market capitalization that exceed the four-comma thresholdOpens a new window grows by one.
AppSheet lets workers with scant coding experience create their own apps, sparing resources and improving productivityOpens a new window for enterprise customers that would otherwise spend heavily on teams of developers and IT infrastructure.
Double-dealing
For a start, AppSheet promises to bind more customers both to Google and its cloud. It counts as customers some 6,000 enterprises that it charges as much as $10 per user per month for platform access. Its executives vowed in blog posts announcing the unionOpens a new window that they would strive together to democratize app development.
AppSheet tools let users create applications that perform operations ranging from simple email to applying logic on data sets. Those pools are user-defined and can handle image, positioning and sensory information, among others.
Already a natural fit with Google Maps, Google sees the acquisition dovetail with the company’s other recent purchase. Google shelled out a reported but unconfirmed $163 million for Pointy, a retail-focused Irish start-up,Opens a new window in a buying spree that coincided with its rise on the Nasdaq stock market.
With AppSheet, users can analyze data on dashboards and generate reports automatically. The platform’s engineers also have made room for emergent technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Sourcing from competitors
Apps built with AppSheet collect and synch source data and move it for processing. Those sources include cloud-hosted providers Dropbox, Salesforce and Microsoft’s Office 365.
The Alphabet subsidiary trails both Microsoft and Amazon in cloud services. The financial savings from no-code apps that workers can tailor to the specifics of their jobs look likely to help Google gain market share with buyers intending to transform digitally.
Microsoft credits its Power PlatformOpens a new window with bringing in tens of thousands of enterprise customers since its launch in 2015. The suite includes business intelligence tools geared for enterprise resource planning.
While a competing platform from Amazon Web Services is rumored to be near launch, Google had until now left the no-code marketplace to third-party vendors. Together, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google account for about two-thirds of the cloud computing market, though Google enjoys less than a tenth of Amazon’s market share.
5G growth
AppSheet also works for mobile, where Google’s Android operating system competes with Apple’s IoS for real estate on device motherboards.
The upcoming adoption of 5G telecom technology promises an explosion in wireless devicesOpens a new window , with more enterprise users shifting to cellphones and tablets to process data they collect over networks and sensors. Devices include template libraries for service managers in the field and clerks in the stockroom, as well as for package delivery and for managing vehicle fleets and property portfolios.
AppSheet execs say 18,000 users have created some 200,000 applications with its tech. They add that deep integration with G Suite productivity tools will help users build them across more industry verticals on the Google Cloud Platform.
They’d better. As regulators explore whether to exert more control over Google’s dominant position in internet advertising and Amazon readies its own no-code took kitOpens a new window , the market’s trillion-dollar valuation will hinge in part on Google making the most of the AppSheet acquisition.