Dun & Bradstreet inks 10-year cloud deal with Google Cloud

Dun & Bradstreet Holdings Inc., a major provider of data analytics tools and market intelligence, today announced that Google LLC’s cloud business will become its preferred cloud provider. 

Google Cloud will also collaborate with Dun & Bradstreet to bring new offerings to market. 

NYSE-traded Dun & Bradstreet provides a wide range of products designed to help companies operate more efficiently. It offers software tools that can be used to remove duplicate records from the data an enterprise uses in its analytics initiatives, optimize ad campaigns and carry out accounting tasks. Dun & Bradstreet also provides market intelligence that organizations can consult to identify new sales opportunities.

The market intelligence that Dun & Bradstreet provides has another use. Companies can consult the firm’s data to find potential risks in their supply chains that may lead to operational challenges. This data is at the center of Dun & Bradstreet’s newly announced partnership with Google Cloud.

The partnership has two main components. First, Dun & Bradstreet has inked a 10-year agreement to use Google’s cloud platform as part of its information technology modernization efforts. The second component of the partnership is a product collaboration through which Dun & Bradstreet will make its supply chain data available for Google Cloud’s Supply Chain Twin offering.

Supply Chain Twin made its debut last year. It’s a cloud solution that enables companies to centrally analyze different types of supply chain data, such as product availability information and purchase logs. Such records are usually scattered across different systems, which makes them difficult to analyze.

By centralizing supply chain records in one place, Supply Chain Twin aims to help companies more easily identify potential supply chain disruptions and address them before there is a significant impact on revenue. As part of the partnership with Google, Dun & Bradstreet will make its supply chain data available for Supply Chain Digital Twin users. 

“Through this collaboration with Dun & Bradstreet, we are helping companies of all sizes make better decisions through data-driven insights,” said Google Cloud Chief Executive Officer Thomas Kurian. “Dun & Bradstreet’s reputation for business data and delivering innovative capabilities, combined with our leading analytics, artificial intelligence and machine-learning technologies, will bring new opportunities to our mutual customers.”

Supply Chain Twin is the first of several industry-specific solutions on which the companies plan to collaborate as part of the partnership. Going forward, Google and Dun & Bradstreet intend to launch “cloud-based solutions in analytics and business-centric intelligence for Dun & Bradstreet’s clients.” The companies also plan to explore the possibility of collaborating on go-to-market initiatives.

When Supply Chain Twin made its debut last September, Google introduced an accompanying product module called Supply Chain Pulse. The module allows companies to simulate supply chain changes and find the best way of addressing them. It can also generate alerts when a potential disruption occurs. 

The offering was developed as part of a broader effort by Google to add more vertical-specific capabilities to its cloud platform. The search giant has also prioritized the healthcare and finance sectors as part of the initiative. Google Cloud introduced Datashare last May to help financial firms more easily process market data and, a few months later, rolled out Healthcare Data Engine to support healthcare organizations’ analytics initiatives.

Partners such as Dun & Bradstreet play an important role in Google Cloud’s growth strategy. Google Cloud earlier this year announced plans to expand its investments in partner initiatives significantly, with a particular focus on delivering industry-specific solutions. 

Image: Google