The Google Cloud Platform, perceived as trailing Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as a public cloud vendor, gained a huge boost in its business when it signed up massively popular music streaming service Spotify as a client last month.
It seems that Google Cloud's fortunes continue to be on the rise, as a new report reveals that it has landed an even bigger client.
According to a report by tech news website CRN, sources familiar with the matter revealed that Google signed up rival Apple as a client for the Google Cloud Platform late last year.
Since the deal was signed, Apple is also said to have been decreasing its reliance on Amazon Web Services for running parts of its iCloud and other offered services, according to the sources. Apple, however, has not completely abandoned AWS and still remains one of the service's clients.
The sources added that, according to Google executives, Apple is spending an amount ranging between $400 million and $600 million on the Google Cloud Platform. The amount, however, could not be confirmed, and is unclear if it represents investments over a year or investments for a certain capacity.
The public cloud model, which the Google Cloud Platform uses as well as AWS and Microsoft Azure, has one company buying and operating massive amounts of computing power, networking bandwidth and storage, and then rents out these systems to other companies that do not want to make investments in their own infrastructure.
However, given the notorious insular nature of Apple, it might not be relying on other companies for the long term, especially on rivals such as Amazon and Google. Apple is said to be making investments into its own data center infrastructure, last month Morgan Stanley analysts flagged Apple's planned capital spending of $3.9 billion this year as a sign that it will be developing its own data centers.
Nevertheless, Apple's move from AWS to the Google Cloud Platform is a win in the meantime for Google. Amazon, on the other hand, could not catch a break, as it was only recently reported that Dropbox has broken free from AWS and is now using its own in-house storage system.
