Amazon struck a blow at Google by buying a tiny Israeli cloud company for a reported $250 million

Brent Lewis/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos

• A tiny Israeli company called CloudEndure confirmed on Thursday that Amazon Web Services had acquired it.
• Press reports indicate that Amazon paid as much as $250 million for the startup, which had raised $18 million in its 7-year lifetime.
• Industry experts say that this was a big miss for Amazon's arch-competitor Google.

Tiny Israeli company CloudEndure confirmed on Thursday that Amazon Web Services has acquired it.

The Times of Israel reported that Amazon paid about $250 million for the startup, though Crunchbase estimates the price at closer to $200 million.

CloudEndure, founded in 2012, had raised $18 million from investors including Dell, VMware and Israeli VC Tamar Ventures. So, assuming those reported prices are accurate, investors will see a hefty return on CloudEndure.

Word of the deal leaked over the last week, setting the industry gossip mill abuzz - word on the street is that this represents a brilliant coup on the part of Amazon Web Services that should frustrate the heck out of Google.

Read: Amazon's latest cloud product is dangerous for Cisco and Dell but really scary for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, analyst says

CloudEndure makes a tool that lets companies easily back up and move their data and apps from their own private servers and data centers to the cloud, without downtime.

AWS re:Invent/Business Insider

AWS CEO Andy Jassy

It works with AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon's newest bestie, VMware.

CloudEndure isn't the only tool that does this. Amazon has its own in-house tool for cloud migration. Amazon has even created a lot of out-there hardware for doing this, including a computer box called Snowball that vacuums out data from servers to be shipped back and upload in AWS, and a semitruck called the Snowmobile that does the same.

There's also migration tools developed by Deloitte, one of AWS's big cloud consulting partners, and tools from other startups like CloudVelox, Atadata, Racemi, and Attuinity.

Add to this to the fact that Amazon isn't a highly acquisitive company - it only bought two companies in 2018: smart doorbell maker Ring and pharmaceutical delivery company PillPack - and you can't help but ask, why would Amazon pay a premium for CloudEndure?

CloudEndure happens to be the partner that powers Google Cloud's free migration service. So points out Peter Groucutt, a managing director of London-based Databarracks, a consultant that helps companies with their data backup and transfer needs. Groucutt tells the Computer Business Review that he was surprised Google didn't buy CloudEndure.

"Although CloudEndure had relationships with all three of the major hyperscale, public cloud providers, it seemed that it's most strategic was with GCP. GCP's cloud migration service is powered by CloudEndure," Groucutt told CBR.

And Google's own documentation backs this up. In one of Google's best practices guide for helping companies move their apps and data into Google's cloud, there's a large section that discusses using CloudEndure.

So AWS snatched CloudEndure away from Google. However, a Google spokesperson points out that in May, 2018, Google acquired a cloud migration company for itself, Velostrata, and that Google Cloud now offers its own commercial migration service (in other words, not free) that is currently available.

CloudEndure has been on Amazon's radar for at least two years, too. Back in February, 2017, CloudEndure was one of the companies that presented at AWS internal Sales Kick-off event that took place in Las Vegas. At that event, the company shares goals and strategy with salespeople and key partners for the coming year.

In the formal announcement of the acquisition on Thursday, CloudEndure didn't say much. It most specifically did not promise that it would continue to help companies migrate their stuff into Google's cloud - or Microsoft's for that matter. It simply said that the acquisition "expands our ability to deliver innovative and flexible migration, backup, and disaster recovery solutions."