Google rains money on cloud computing with Orbitera acquisition

Google looks to turn software into a commodity with Orbitera

Google has indicated its renewed focus on cloud computing with the acquisition of Orbitera, a company that provides an e-commerce platform for buying and selling software.

The company's platform enables independent software vendors, service providers and IT channel organisations to sell their software more flexibly, without being tied to expensive app stores.

"The current model for the deploying, managing and billing of cloud-based software does not easily fit the way today's modern enterprises operate," claimed Google in a blog posting announcing the acquisition of the privately held company for an undisclosed sum.

It continued: "Orbitera automates many of the processes associated with billing, packaging and pricing optimization for leading businesses and ISVs (independent software vendors) supporting customers running in the cloud. More than 60,000 enterprise stacks have been launched on Orbitera...

"Orbitera has built a strong ecosystem of enterprise software vendors delivering software to multiple clouds. This acquisition will not only improve the support of software vendors on Google Cloud Platform, but reinforces Google's support for the multi-cloud world."

"When we first started Orbitera, our mission was to enable frictionless sales of cloud-based enterprise software and services. Becoming part of the Google Cloud Platform team allows us to continue and accelerate toward this goal.... We will continue to deliver the products and services our customers rely on with the added scale that Google provides," said Marcin Kurc, CEO of Orbitera, following the announcement.

Santa Monica, California-based Orbitera was founded by Firas Bushnaq, a serial entrepreneur and chief architect at the company, and Brian Singer, an enterprise software product marketing manager and chief operating officer at Orbitera.

The goal of the company was to try and overcome the rigid way in which enterprise software is sold and bought, with the aim of simplifying the process. The Orbitera Cloud Commerce Platform was developed in 2011. It provides packaging and provisioning, billing and a marketplace, among other features.

For Google, the company's technology is an opportunity, perhaps, to commoditise the software industry in a similar manner to the way that it has commoditised online advertising.

The most high-profile company that Bushnaq has been involved with is eEye Digital Security, which he co-founded in 1997 and left in 2006.