Google is acquiring Bitium, a provider of identity and access management services, in a move to enhance its cloud security tools for enterprise customers.
Bitium, which was founded in 2012, helps enterprises manage Google Apps, Office 365, social network, CRM, collaboration and marketing tools, while ensuring they remain compliant with security standards.
Its single sign-on (SSO) technology allows employees to use the same login for multiple cloud apps, which improves security by making sure employees only need to remember one password and gives administrators a centralized way of controlling identity throughout their organizations.
Karthik Lakshminarayanan, Google’s director of product management for G Suite and Cloud Identity, said that with the increase in cloud adoption, “there are new considerations about how to manage cloud applications within an organization and to ensure that the right levels of security and user data access policies are in place.”
“Our enterprise customers want a comprehensive solution for identity and access management and SSO that works across their modern cloud and mobile environments,” he said in a blog post. “Bitium helps us deliver a broad portfolio of app integrations for provisioning and SSO that complements our best in class device management capabilities in the enterprise.”
According to VentureBeat, the deal “should help Google Cloud compete against Microsoft, which offers its own Azure Active Directory service to provide cloud-based identity management.”
Lakshminarayanan said Google would “continue to work closely with our vibrant ecosystem of identity partners so that customers are able to choose the best solutions to meet their needs.”
“It sounds like Google wants to continue the work that Bitium was doing on its own, and extend it to additional application partners, while also keeping the platform open to other third-party identity management providers that integrate with enterprise customers on the one side, and Google Cloud and G Suite on the other,” TechCrunch said.
Bitium had raised a total of $14.9 million from investors including Polaris Ventures and Resolute.vc. The deal is Google’s second in two weeks, following its purchase of staff and intellectual property licenses from HTC to augment its Pixel smartphone business.