The newest incentive Google Inc. is offering for companies to jump aboard its infrastructure-as-a-service platform is a complimentary migration service aimed at smoothing the transfer of existing workloads, a notoriously complicated, and by extension expensive, process. The search giant is outsourcing the logistics to a company called called CloudEndure Inc. through a freshly announced agreement that underscores its growing reliance on partners for competitive advantage.

While Amazon Inc. has been slowly cannibalizing its ecosystem with a constant stream of new services that often compete directly with partners and even some customers, Google is only increasing the participation of outside vendors in its growth plans. The push appears to place a particular emphasis on hybrid cloud use cases. The company teamed up with AppScale Systems Inc. earlier this year to give users the ability to move applications built on its platform behind the firewall and more recently tapped Avere Systems Inc. to enable workloads moving the other way around to access information left behind. 

Google’s latest partnership will see CloudEndure let customers use its migration software at no cost to migrate workloads from outside environments, including both their private data centers as well as rivaling infrastructure-as-a-service platforms. The Israeli startup enables administrators to create a full copy of the workload they wish to move complete with all of its data and local configuration parameters, automatically convert the settings to a form recognized by the search giant and then test the clone to ensure it’s working as intended. The vendors promise that the whole process can be carried out without having to take the application offline and disrupt the work of end-users.

The decision to foot CloudEndure licensing fees is reminiscent of the strategy Google is pursuing in the collaboration segment: The company last month announced a program that enables organizations already committed to Microsoft Office use its rivaling suite at no cost for the duration of their contracts. Undercutting the competition is what enabled Amazon to establish a dominant position in the public cloud, but Google will need to do much more than that to lure customers away.

Image via Stux