Here's an interesting industry shift to share today. Apparently, Apple wants to diversify their cloud data storage services, and move away from a reliance on Amazon. They have apparently cancelled their contract with Amazon for cloud data services, and signed a new one with the arch-rival Google.
This is a significant industry shift for Google (6% of the market) as their cloud services are consistently in third place behind Microsoft (with 17% of the market), and Amazon (with 57% of the market). Industry speculation suggests that Google probably gave Apple a deal that was too good to pass up in order to secure them as a customer. Despite the probable discount, analysts suspect that the deal will still be worth between $400 and $600 million for the year.
Despite Google being a third place player in the market, their Cloud-computing services will be a primary focus from now on. In fact, Google believes that by 2020, their cloud based services will actually generate more revenue than their advertising.
There's a bit more to the story though. It's probable that Google may quickly lose their new customer in the not-to-distant future. According to further industry intel, Apple could eventually move away from Google as a cloud-services partner as well. Apple has been actively working on developing their own cloud data network. Apple recently announced they are opening three data centers soon, in an effort to reduce their operating costs and to reduce their reliance on competitors' services. This will likely lead to a build-out of Apple's own cloud-computing and data platform.