Spanish bank joins Google cloud
A Spanish bank is to use Google’s cloud computing services, a move that will be seen as a credibility boost. But BBVA will only be using the tools for internal communication rather than handling financial data.
The bank says around 110,000 staff in 26 countries will switch to using Google Apps, making this Google’s largest business contract. The deal gives staff access to online services such as Gmail, document editing and collaboration, and website creation, with additional support compared with the freely available version.
Although the payment for the one-year deal will be customized based on the actual use (unlike most flat-fee software licenses that take no notice of which staff use which applications), BBVA says cutting costs isn’t its primary motivation. It instead says the goal is to give staff the ability to work while on the move, without having to rely on the company’s own IT systems.
Google is already talking up the point that the customer is a large financial company, saying “it shows that now even banks are moving to the cloud.” There’s certainly something to the point that financial groups are subject to tight regulation and generally less likely to take risks with even internal data. However, the bank was quick to stress that customers’ financial data would not be part of the scheme.
From Google’s perspective, this isn’t just a case of a win for cloud computing as a whole, but also a high-profile victory over Microsoft: BBVA currently uses Microsoft applications on its internal network.
That battle is a long-running affair, with Google taking some major potential Microsoft customers such as the General Services Administration (the logistics department of the US government), but facing embarrassment when the Los Angeles City Council voted to scale back its use of Google services over security concerns.
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