Google Cloud Acquires Storage Start-Up Elastifile In Latest Buy

Google Cloud said on Tuesday it would buy storage start-up Elastifile, in Google Cloud chief executive Thomas Kurian’s latest effort to bolster the service against rivals.

Google Cloud did not disclose financial terms for its acquisition of the Tel Aviv-based start-up, which has raised some $65 million (£52m) in venture capital.  The deal is expected to close later this year.

Elastifile, which is already native to Google Cloud, provides file storage for enterprise-grade cloud applications, providing the ability to flexibly expand or reduce storage as needed.

The technology is to be integrated with Google’s own Cloud Filestore, providing added flexibility and cost-effectiveness in some use cases, the companies said.

Petabyte-scale file storage

“We believe this combination will empower businesses to build industry-specific, high performance applications that need petabyte-scale file storage more quickly and easily,” said Google Cloud’s Kurian in a blog post.

He said such capabilities were critical in industries including media, life sciences and manufacturing.

“We’re excited to join Google for the next part of our journey, building on the success we’ve had together over the past two and a half years,” said Elastifile chief executive Erwan Menard.

Competition

Kurian joined Google Cloud in November, succeeding former chief Diane Greene, as Google sought to enlarge its share of the cloud infrastructure market against rivals including Amazon and Microsoft.

At the end of last year Canalys said Amazon had 32 percent of the market, with Microsoft following at 13.7 percent and Google holding 7.6 percent.

Last month Google Cloud acquired business intelligence platform Looker for $2.6bn, following earlier acquisitions Alooma and Cask Data.

Also last month Google Cloud expanded its security portfolio with Chronicle, a start-up developed under Google parent Alphabet’s X experimental technologies division.