Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has agreed to buy Seattle, Washington-based no code platform provider AppSheet for an undisclosed sum.
The deal is the latest under CEO Thomas Kurian, as GCP takes an in increasingly acquisitive approach to growth. It comes seven months after GCP’s $2.6 billion buyout of analytics and business intelligence startup Looker.
AppSheet founder Praveen Seshadri was keen to emphasise that the company’s services would continue to work cross platform, saying: “We will continue to support and improve our integrations with other cloud-hosted data sources like Office 365, Salesforce, Box, Dropbox, and databases hosted in other clouds.”
Low-code/no code application platforms are designed to support rapid application development with minimal finessing of the code itself.
They typically provide users with, as Garter puts it, “one-step deployment, execution and management using declarative, high-level programming abstractions, such as model-driven and metadata-based programming languages. They support the development of user interfaces, business logic and data services.”
(The consultancy estimates that by 2024, such platforms will be responsible for over 65 percent of application development activity across the enterprise.)
Google Buys AppSheet
Seshadri said: “Our core mission is unchanged. We want to ‘democratize’ app development by enabling as many people as possible to build and distribute applications without writing a line of code. [This] aligns well with GCP’s strategy to re-envision digital transformation with a business-user-centric application platform.”
GCP’s business application platform VP, Amit Zavery added: “AppSheet complements Google Cloud’s strategy to reimagine the application development space… with no-code development, workflow automation, application integration and API management.
“AppSheet’s ability to power a range of applications—from CRM to field inspections and personalized reporting—combined with Google Cloud’s deep expertise in key verticals, will further enable digital transformation across industries like financial services, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, communication and media & entertainment.
He added: “With this acquisition, customers will be able to develop richer applications at scale that leverage not only Google Sheets and Forms which are already popular with customers, but other top Google technologies like Android, Maps and Google Analytics. In addition, AppSheet customers can continue to integrate with a number of cloud-hosted data sources including Salesforce, Dropbox, AWS DynamoDB and MySQL.”
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