Google LLC’s latest major cloud deal will see it become the primary infrastructure provider for BigCommerce Inc., an e-commerce technology provider that supports more than 60,000 merchants worldwide.

The companies announced the deal today. BigCommerce, which is backed by $220 million from investors including SoftBank Group Corp, has already moved the bulk of its customer base to Google Cloud Platform. The company said that it expects to complete the migration by the end of February.

BigCommerce switched from IBM Corp.’s SoftLayer managed hosting platform and, more notably, Amazon Web Services Inc., which it used as an auxiliary resource pool to handle traffic spikes. Google said BigCommerce has seen a major improvement in response times since migrating.

“Since completing the bulk of the migration in late December, BigCommerce merchants have seen, on average, an 81 percent improvement in connection times, which are now below 10 milliseconds,” Pravin Pillai, global lead for retail industry solutions at Google Cloud, wrote in a blog post.

Brian Dhatt, BigCommerce’s chief technology officer, confirmed to ZDNet that the promise of faster connections was a major factor behind the decision to choose Google Cloud. The deal is one example of how the search giant realizes returns on its massive investments in networking infrastructure.

Google has been building its own switches for a decade and connects its cloud data centers to one another with high-speed fiber optic links. Last January, the company took its efforts in this area a step further by commissioning three undersea internet cables. The company followed up the move a few months later by announcing plans for a fourth link to connect Australia and Japan.

But the BigCommerce deal is about more than just networking infrastructure. Major retail industry players such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have been choosing AWS rivals for their cloud projects because of the competition from parent Amazon.com Inc., a trend that Microsoft Corp. is capitalizing on as well. BigCommerce doesn’t compete with the online retail giant directly, but the merchants who use its platform do, which Dhatt acknowledged as a consideration.

Photo: Google