Does Google have big plans for cloud specialist CliQr?

CliQr Technologies emerged from stealth mode with the announcement of a cloud based service that can port large enterprise applications to any cloud platform in under one day.

If the Palo Alto based startup can deliver on its promise it could result in significant IT cost savings. Enterprise applications are notoriously difficult to rewrite for cloud platforms and their performance can be unpredictable.

“With CliQr we can port an app in under one day,” said Gaurav Manglik, co-founder and CEO. “You can also test run your application across different vendor platforms and choose the one with the best price/performance.”

CliQr itself is a cloud based service that ports the customer’s apps and monitors their security and performance.

The cost savings for IT departments would also be matched with considerable time savings. It can take many months to port an enterprise application to cloud platforms. These are large business applications that are essential to every organization and ports could introduce new bugs.

CliQr also offers an additional advantage: it helps prevent lock-in when critical apps are tied to one host service. “Because you are using the same application you can move it easily around public cloud vendors,” said Dave Cope, chief marketing officer.

Google Ventures, the venture capital arm of Google, is one of the investors. Although the technology is probably not useful for Google’s internal apps, CliQr could possibly become part of a future service offered by Google to large enterprises.

Google already sells a suite of cloud-based productivity apps such as docs and email. The next step could be to expand that service to hosting customer apps in its datacenters. Google’s data centers are finely tuned, with custom built equipment and software, to be highly efficient — far more efficient than most corporate datacenters, with their layers of legacy equipment and poor design.

Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google, has said that a key goal for the company is to be able to host the IT needs of any business, in addition to handling all of its e-commerce, marketing, and advertising operations. Technologies such as those from CliQr are a crucial step in that direction.