Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) buys Orbitera for an undisclosed sum, although reports have suggested it was just above $100 million.
Orbitera was founded by Firas Bushnaq, a serial entrepreneur, and Brian Singer, an enterprise software product leader. They decided to make buying and selling software in the cloud simpler, more efficient, and more widespread for all kinds of companies and consumers. They wanted to focus on solving the most complex challenges that come with the shift of enterprise workloads moving to the cloud and created Orbitera, a SaaS-based Cloud Commerce Platform, in 2011.
Cloud commerce is more than just buying and selling any type of software in the cloud, it includes bringing together the whole ecosystem of cloud (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) at every level of the value chain from packaging and provisioning to infrastructure consumption to billing to trials and lead management to marketplaces.
Cloud commerce not only enables direct sales in the cloud but it also empowers cloud resellers, managed service providers, system integrators, and hosting companies with pricing models from simple resale to consumption and subscription, bundles, and channel programs and promotions.
Cloud commerce means buying software or a bundle of software and services but it also means finding and evaluating before purchase, and deploying, using, managing and supporting it on the infrastructure of choice after purchase.
