Google adds migration tools with Cornerstone acquisition

Google has acquired a mainframe- and database-migration specialist as it continues to add tools to help enterprise customers move workloads to public clouds.

Dutch-based Cornerstone Technology provides tools and project-management services for application and database migration.

The firm will be incorporated into Google's mainframe-to-GCP service, which customers can access through its professional services and partner networks.

There are no details about the cost of the deal as yet, but the move is in keeping with the company's enterprise strategy that focuses on helping its existing clients move their legacy workloads to the cloud.

"Easy mainframe migration will go a long way as Google attracts large enterprises to its cloud," said Matt Eastwood, senior VP of enterprise infrastructure at IDC. "Google Cloud is listening to its customers and meeting them where they are, steadily improving its services and attracting businesses across industries."

This is the second deal Google has announced in February after the firm's $2.6bn acquisition of Looker, a service for data analytics for multi-cloud customers.

Moving mission-critical workloads to the cloud can be complex and the aim is for Cornerstone's expertise and hands-on approach to slowly modernise customer stacks without the need to re-architect all of their legacy applications.

The company provides a migration roadmap which conducts a mainframe assessment to find a suitable path for upgrading. It also converts code languages and databases that help prepare applications for modern infrastructure, which also includes automated data migration.

"We're migrating both our AS/400 and z/OS systems to more modern technologies like Java and SQL databases," said Ricardo Orlando, CTO of Brazilian financial services company Boa Vista. "Google Cloud is helping us realise new revenue streams and more effectively deploy our resources."