Today, Google has announced its intention to acquire software developer Apigee in a deal that’s valued at roughly $625 million. Apigee’s software allows companies to better connect their digital services to apps used by customers or partners and the deal represents the search giant’s latest effort to increase its presence in the cloud business. According to Diane Greene, the person in charge of running Google’s cloud computing division, the software that Apigee develops is critical for businesses that are in the process of transitioning to the cloud or even for those that are simply planning a move. Apigee’s speciality is managing APIs through which digital services connect when a company logs a purchase or an order is placed by a customer or with a supplier.
The acquisition will see Google pay Apigee shareholders a total of $17.40 per share, which represents a premium of 6.5% over stock close from yesterday. Though after the announcement, the company’s stock is now trading slightly above the agreed price, at $17.43 per share. Along with the acquisition comes not only the company’s software but its long list of customers that includes AT&T, Burberry, Vodafone, Walgreens and Live Nation among others. Perhaps an extra bonus for Google is the fact that Apigee is a pretty big Amazon Web Services customer, meaning Amazon is sure to lose the company’s business once the acquisition is complete and the company has been moved over to Google’s web servers. It’s fair to say the deal could be considered a relief for the company which, since going public, has had its fair share of trouble. They launched at a share price of $17 but by February this year, that had dropped to a low of $5.45 a share, until steadily climbing again to $16.34 a share, still under the first-day trading price.
Diane Greene has been consistently pushing to raise Google’s profile in corporate computing and has streamlined the company’s engineering efforts, as well as appointed new leadership for its cloud efforts. Interestingly, the deal comes only one day after Google announced its partnership with online storage company Box, which they said would allow corporate customers to integrate Google’s suite of Google Docs, and is yet another example of the company’s efforts to increase its presence in cloud-based computing.