The now-defunct social media platform Google Plus has been unexpectedly resurrected as an enterprise application to rival the likes of Slack and Facebook Workplace.

After the service sustained a data leak of half a million accounts in October 2018, Google launched a security review and decided to shut down the platform permanently.

A second data leak in December – this time exposing the private data for 52.5 million users – led Google to accelerate its demise from August to April 2019. The platform then officially closed just 10 days ago.

This has also coincided with the launch of Google Currents, which touts itself as a like-for-like replacement to the Google Plus for G Suite app that had been available only for enterprise users.

«Currents is a G Suite app that enables people to have meaningful discussions and interactions across your organization, helping keep everyone in the know and giving leaders the opportunity to connect with their employees,» the company announced.

«Currents makes it easy to have meaningful discussions by enabling leaders and employees to exchange ideas across the organization and gather valuable feedback and input from others – without flooding inboxes.»

Among features in the new platform are analytical tools that let users track how widely-seen their posts across the network are, and priority offered to posts from leadership teams.

Tags and streams, including a ‘home stream’, are designed to show individuals the most relevant posts for them at any time.

Organisations can register with the Google Currents beta now, and all content for existing Google Plus users will automatically transfer upon enrollment. The app is available in all versions of G Suite.

Incidentally the name ‘Google Currents’ is itself a resurrection of the name once prescribed to a social magazine app, or Google’s answer to Apple News. This app launched in 2011 but was replaced two years later with Google Play Newsstand.

Before retiring just days ago, Google Plus endured a torrid life playing second-fiddle to more widely-used platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The data leak in October would have proved the final nail in the coffin but for the subsequent exposure of 52.5 million users not long after.

But Google yet hopes to keep its social media platform alive in some form, with the core code in its consumer-focused app now porting to a business-oriented workplace service.

This also follows the launch of several new G Suite updates at Google Cloud Next 2019, with Sheets, Hangouts, Calendar and Gmail touted for the near future.

Property maintenance business Fortem has moved away from legacy IT infrastructure and into the cloud, migrating its communications system, business continuity and disaster recovery solutions to its UK-based data centres.

Six Degrees was called upon to implement Avaya’s Unified Communications solution to ensure the company’s contact centre runs more smoothly, according to the firm. It will now enable Forteem’s support to be accessed 24/7, with a range of options for customers to make use of, depending on the urgency of their request.

Another major part of the brief was to run a business continuity, disaster recovery and 24/7 monitoring system, to support Fortem’s in-house IT team deal with end-user incidents and requests.

“We have clear aims for the IT transition programme. At the programme’s core is the need for Fortem to continue its sustained growth, and to build on the excellent reputation the business has with its clients throughout the UK,” said Chris Hone, systems director of Fortem’s business solutions division.

“The vision that drives the programme is to implement a 24×7 monitored IT infrastructure that is secure and scalable, with future-proofed telephony that enhances our communication and collaboration capabilities. We also want to further increase our in-house technical skills and ensure that users receive the highest possible levels of support.”

Fortem’s in-house team will be tasked with the day-to-day running of the IT systems, working with customers and engineering teams to ensure incidents are dealt with as soon as is possible.

“We are working closely with Fortem to take it on a digital transformation journey that addresses business challenges and delivers a robust technology platform that supports its ongoing success,” added Matthew Brouker, group product director at Six Degrees.

“By leveraging the expertise of Six Degrees through a consultative process, Fortem has been able to design, build and manage the optimal environment that will meet its ongoing needs.”

Google made a raft of announcements at this year’s Next event in San Francisco this week. The most noteworthy of which was Anthos. Formerly Cloud Services Platform, it becomes the first, multi-cloud platform which will appeal heavily to its enterprise customers, marking a shift away from the developer focus in recent years towards business leaders.

It’s a step in the right direction for Google as it’s the C-suite that it needs to be targeting in order to accelerate the platform’s adoption and most will probably agree that the focus has been on the developers for too long. With Anthos, Google has set its sights on the future, heeding the advice of analysts who say that 88% of businesses will undergo a multi-cloud transformation in the next few years. Google’s new multi-cloud platform, «simply put, is the future of cloud», according to Urs Hölzle, Google’s senior vice president of technical infrastructure.

But, if you look past all the marketing spiel, you stop seeing the innovative new platform and notice that by releasing Anthos as its flagship product, Google has essentially taken a step down and conceded that it’s the second cloud provider in the market. If you can’t beat them, use them to help you scale, though, perhaps?

«They’ve taken on a very interesting approach,» said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner. «They want to be the second cloud which is kind of interesting because they don’t want to compete with the 40-50 pound gorilla [AWS] so they’re basically saying it’s a multi-cloud world and they’re pushing the multi-cloud narrative so they can come in as the second cloud… and then land and expand so I think that’s a pretty smart strategy».

One area where Google seems to be leading the charge is in security. Some 30 new products and services were announced at this year’s event which totals more than 100 in the past year alone. 

It’s clear the company is taking security seriously – as it should – and is keen to show its customers that everything the company offers has security baked in from the start. The Cloud Security Command Centre looks like a nice piece of kit for any cloud platform admin to use and has the added benefit of Google’s industry-leading machine learning (ML) capabilities. This, I’m sure, will prove an attractive selling point as it helps users detect malicious activity ahead of an attack. 

Building on the AI theme, the automated functions of all the new features – from AutoML advancements to intelligent event threat detection – continues to provide Google with a serious USP to draw in customers. Google has made it easier than ever to run an advanced cloud environment in a secure and intuitive way. It wants to leave the coding and app creation to the developers and let the admins do their job which is focusing on driving the business forward.

For example, using ML-driven Connected Sheets, businesses could oversee their distribution channels and see where operations were being halted. It would be easy to detect if warehouse stock wasn’t leaving Brazil on time because major road works were taking place so the business could simply re-route the drivers’ navigation systems to get things back on track.

The challenge Google will face in the next year is that of scale. The company has only just started to win over the hearts of business leaders though. Athos garnered the biggest roar I heard all week, but it needs to take that and move on, proving to its customers that it’s really serious about enterprise.

Google also faces the challenge of partnering with the smaller software vendors. Over the week, Google announced partnerships with the biggest bulls in the pen: Cisco, Salesforce, HSBC – I could go on. But, now, what it must do – given it has committed to this containerised and stateless approach with Anthos – is show that it can work with the smaller ISVs.

«The interesting part will be seeing how it can start working with smaller ISVs and convert those apps into Google containers and its containerised as that will be the challenge – that’s how it will grow its business,» said Nag. Smaller apps are the ones that will be modernised in the future, so monetising these will be key to Google’s success years down the line.

It seems as though the new CEO Thomas Kurian is continuing in the hugely successful footsteps of his predecessor Diane Greene – the woman that drove the company to be enterprise-ready in just two years instead of the forecasted 10. Conceding the second place spot to Amazon might be a good move for the company, filling the market gap enterprise customers so desperately needed.

Hybrid cloud is something that many organisations wrestle with and they finally have an answer to the headache they’ve faced for years. We’re excited to see how the company scales in the next year – the first under Kurian’s reign – and whether it’s able to tackle the challenges that it faces.