Dive Brief:

• Google announced a new partnership with Nutanix Wednesday that will allow Nutanix customers to more easily move critical workloads to Google's cloud, according a Google blog and CNBC. Nutanix provides companies a hybrid approach between on-premise servers and machines in big cloud data centers.
• Both Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, Google’s primary enterprise cloud competitors, already offer solutions to help companies move on-prem infrastructures to the cloud.
• The partnership will "help remove friction from hybrid cloud deployments for enterprises," said Nan Boden, Head of Global Technology Partners for Google Cloud, in a blog. The first integration resulting from the partnership will become available in the first quarter of 2018, according to CNBC.

Dive Insight:

Under the partnership, Nutanix and Google customers will be able to deploy and manage both cloud-based and traditional enterprise applications in one public cloud service.  

Google has shown little interest in supporting cloud architectures that involve companies' existing on-premises infrastructure thus far. But it appears that’s now changing. In the cloud market, vendors often play catch up to one another to ensure their services are not outpaced. 

As the cloud matures, and "low hanging fruit" customers complete their cloud migrations, companies that need more help and are less digitally native will comprise more of Google’s customer base. With this type of partnership, companies like Google and Nutanix will be able to help with the migration.