Google Cloudtop Virtual Desktop Tool for Employees Only

Google maintains software, Cloudtop, that employees use to access internal programs. It’s the kind of thing that can be useful for companies that want to keep their employees productive while working from home while protecting themselves in their place to prevent a new spread of coronavirus.

However, when Google cloud customers request a virtual desktop solution, Google refers them to third-party solutions, according to two people familiar with the company’s cloud business, who requested anonymity while discussing internal issues. business.

Google’s approach contrasts with market leaders, Amazon and Microsoft. Both have their own virtual desktop services and both have seen an increase in use during the pandemic. For many companies navigating remote-scale jobs for the first time, relying on cloud providers to deal with infrastructure is easier than keeping administrators in place to manage servers or send emails to new employees.

For example, after Zoom experienced an increase in new customers during the pandemic, the video calling software company signed up to more than 1,000 Amazon WorkSpaces virtual desktops for its support service employees, Amazon said in November. In May, AWS said pipeline operator TC Energy had signed up for Amazon WorkSpaces so employees could work safely from home.

For Microsoft, the boom was big enough for CEO Satya Nadella to mention it in the company’s quarterly earnings call with analysts last April. “Windows virtual desktop usage tripled this quarter as organizations deploy virtual desktops and applications in Azure to enable secure remote work,” Nadella said.

Google first made its Cloudtop service available to employees in 2017. It is designed to help them create software, interact with internal systems, and communicate via Internet or IRC broadcast chat. The service offers desktops with Linux and Windows operating systems, which can be useful for testing source code.

In previous years, Google has impressed the information technology industry by making software available to external users that depends on its core Internet businesses. He published the Cloud Bigtable and Cloud Spanner databases after describing the underlying software architecture in academic articles, for example.

Google published an article about its virtual desktop software in 2018. More than 25% of Google employees use virtual desktops, and Google migrated the software to the public cloud from its corporate infrastructure to enhance the experience of the user and reduce the total cost of ownership, depending on the role.

But that hasn’t translated into a product for outsiders.

A Google spokesman said the company recognizes the growing demand for virtual desktops as people work remotely, but currently has no plans to offer Cloudtop as a cloud service. Instead, the company prioritizes its third-party offerings in the virtual desktop market: Telus uses a privately owned Itopia product in the Google cloud, while Equifax relies on Citrix software in the Google cloud, for example. Other customers use a privately owned Workspot product.

Partner product promotion provides customers with the ability to extend the technologies they use in their data centers to the public cloud and customers will not be locked into a proprietary service, the spokesman said.

These products have gained strength since the coronavirus appeared. In 2020, revenue growth in Citrix’s Workspace segment, which includes its virtual desktop software, accelerated by about 13% year-over-year, compared to 5% the previous year. It’s also profitable revenue: Citrix reported a gross margin of about 85%, up from 97% of S&P 500 companies, according to FactSet.

This growth does benefit Google to some extent: the company reduces by 20% the commissions that third parties charge customers.

But neither of the third-party options is a big hit, according to the two people familiar with the company’s cloud business.

“It was a little surprising that Google was no longer present in this market,” said Michael Silver, an analyst at technology research firm Gartner that has covered the category. “I don’t know why it wasn’t.”

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