Google just announced that it plans to buy Xively for $50 million dollars. If they do buy Xively from LogMeIn, this would give Google a well-established IoT platform to add to their ever growing inventory.
Xively is a platform for building and managing connected products. Applications that Xively enabled use the platform to communicate with devices, manage users and access, provide service insights, and integrate an entire business with its intelligence system. From managing communication, enforcing security, and updating firmware, Xively is a powerful tool for real-time message, business logic, security, and integration.
How would Google use this technology? Xively would become a stepping stone for them. Xively would make Google a major player in the ever growing IoT marketplace by potentially connecting a projected 20 billion things together within the next two years.
Antony Passemard of Google wrote in a blog post, “This acquisition, subject to closing conditions, will complement Google Cloud’s effort to provide a fully managed IoT service that easily and securely connects, manages and ingests data from globally dispersed devices.”
Though device designers have already been building connectivity directly into the products they design through cloud-mobile connections between the app user and the connected item, Google could take this market to the next level through Xively’s technology.
What does this mean for LogMeIn? Bill Wagner, the President and CEO recently made the following announcement, “So the obvious question is, does this mean LogMeIn is exiting the IoT? Well, if you mean the IoT connectivity platform space, yes, we’re leaving it. We believe that Google Cloud, now armed with Xively’s team and great technology – and backed by their platform and developer heritage and reach – are a far better fit for the future of platform leadership.”
Wagner went on to add, “What we will continue to do is invest in our Support-of-Things initiatives for products like LogMeIn Rescue, Bold360, GoToAssist, Central, Rescue Lens and SeeIt – all offerings that will continue to help our customers support new types of connected products, as well as the connected consumers that use them.”
Moving forward, Google will give the cloud business a well-attested IoT platform that will enable even more growth for its already $1 billion per quarter cloud business. In competing with Microsoft, IBM, AWS, Google is making moves to compete with the top cloud market leaders.
Google’s Diane Greene recently told TechCrunch, “We are saying we crossed a billion a quarter in 2017 and according to publicly available numbers, we are the fastest growing cloud. If you step back and think about someone offering services and that’s revenue, that’s pretty darn impressive. Not too many companies can make a claim like that. It already puts you in the elite of companies.”
Expect even bigger and bolder moves for Google’s IoT plans in the future, with the decision to buy Xively as the first step of many.
