In a blog, Google said the acquisition will give its cloud business “deep IoT technology and engineering expertise” through Xively’s device management, messaging and dashboard.

“Our customers will benefit from Xively’s extensive feature set and flexible device management platform, paired with the security and scale of Google Cloud. With Google Cloud’s data analytics and machine learning, our customers will also be uniquely positioned to build turnkey IoT solutions and focus on business value creation,” the statement said.

Xively generated $3m in revenue during the most recent quarter. Its 45 employees will join Google.

Gartner predicts that by 2020 there will be 20 billion connected things and hence the driver for Google’s purchase as IoT requires analytics and data storage in the cloud.