Google scores biggest enterprise deal to date

GlobalPost

Google has won its largest enterprise contract ever from Spanish banking giant Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA (BBVA), who will be migrating all of its employees onto Google Apps and using the US multinational’s cloud computing services in a potential breakthrough in corporate adoption.

In Google’s biggest deal with a single company to date for its cloud-computing facilities, BBVA will use its Gmail service, Calendar tool, information-storage facility Docs and its website-creating program Sites, Bloomberg reported.

The bank’s 110,000 employees across 26 countries will use Google’s tools for internal communication only, according to the BBC. BBVA is the biggest financial services provider in Mexico, and has a large presence in the south of the US.

Both companies declined to give the value of the deal.

More from GlobalPost: Google gets more personal with search results

Given banking’s strict regulations and high security needs, it is a big win for Google to secure a major bank’s trust in its cloud services.

The BBVA deal is twice the size of Google’s next biggest customer wins with Rentokil and Ahold, according to the Financial Times, and is part of its efforts to step up competition against rival Microsoft and take on the latter’s Office software by offering products accessed over the Internet.

Google Enterprise, the arm of the company focused on selling Google products to the business world, now counts 4 million companies as customers. Sebastian Marotte, vice president for Europe, says that 5,000 new clients start using the technology every day.

BBVA rose as much as 1% in Madrid trading today, while Google gained 0.5% to the equivalent of $624.84 in Frankfurt after being pushed up 0.1% yesterday in New York, according to Bloomberg.

More from GlobalPost: Google admits making profit from illegal ads

Sign up for our daily newsletter

Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.