Dive Brief:
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According to CRN, Apple signed on to become a Google cloud customer late last year, and has quietly been moving away from AWS.
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CRN sources say Google executives have reported that Apple is spending between $400 million and $600 million on Google Cloud platform. That could not be independently confirmed, however.
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If Apple eventually leaves AWS, it would reportedly take about 10% of the company's profits with it, worth about $10 million.
Dive Insight:
Last month, Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak said that Amazon Web Services may eventually lose Apple as a client because Apple is working to build 2.5 million square feet worth of data centers to house the company's offerings, like iCloud storage and iTunes, GeekWire reported.
Taking on Apple as a customer would give Google’s reputation as a distant-third player in the cloud business a huge boost. But AWS may still be tough to catch. Last quarter, AWS sales were up 69 percent year over year and generated $2.4 billion in one quarter alone.
Google has long relied on lower prices as a major benefit of its services.
"Google is actually the cheapest play in the market when you take into consideration everything they're doing and when you take into account their various incentives," Michael Fraser, CEO of InfiniteOps, a cloud vendor that works with Google and other public cloud vendors, told CRN.
Google has slowly been taking on larger enterprise accounts. Last month, Spotify signed on with Google as a cloud customer.
