What you missed in Cloud: Bright prospects
Acquisitions continue to reshape the cloud ecosystem. Last week saw Google set the pace by entering into a $625 million agreement to buy Apigee Inc., a publicly-traded provider of API management services.
The outfit’s flagship offering is a managed platform called Apigee Edge that makes it possible to closely regulate how users interact with a service. Organizations can employ the system to cap the number and frequency of requests that are handed by their applications, prevent abuse and monitor activity for usage patterns with potential business significance. Google will integrate the technology into its public cloud with the hope of becoming more competitive against rivaling providers such as Amazon Inc. and Microsoft Corp. that have historically enjoyed a lead in the functionality department.
While the search giant is working to expand the appeal of its infrastructure-as-a-service platform, Twilio Inc. is also stepping up its enterprise outreach. The company last week added a new subscription plan to its cloud-based communications service that offers a set of security controls for preventing unauthorized activity. The functionality enables every department to set its own usage policies and limit access to sensitive features so that only senior personnel are able to change important settings. Moreover, organizations can now also integrate Twilio with their single sign-on systems to make it easier for workers to log into their accounts.
The launch of the new plan comes two months after the company’s widely-covered IPO, which raised $150 million despite the recent market skepticism towards tech firms. Last week, another software-as-a-service provider called Coupa Inc. decided to seize upon this sudden thaw and file for a public offering of its own. The financial automation specialist said in an SEC filing that it hopes to raise $75 million, but the number is still subject to change.
Image via Pixabay
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