Apple Planning to Unify Teams to Improve its Cloud Services

According to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter, Apple is planning to unify its separate internet services groups into a single campus to improve its cloud services, which include Siri, Maps, iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple News and parts of iTunes and Apple Music, in order to better compete with cloud services offered by Google and Amazon.

All of Apple’s cloud services teams, which are headed by executive Eddy Cue, will move together into company’s Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino. At present, majority of Apple’s cloud services are developed separately from each other in office parks rented out in other parts of Cupertino and Sunnyvale, a structure that “contributes to software bugs and slow product development”.

The source notes that Apple plans to improve growth of the services business, as well as fight the competition from Google and Amazon, by bringing the teams together at a single, dedicated campus.

While many Apple executives want to relocate their teams to the new campus, Cue thinks unifying at the old campus is a suitable way to improve his organization, one of the people said.

A committee of Apple managers is working on the plan to reorganize Apple across its current and future locations. Recently that plan has changed, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Apple originally expected up to 13,000 employees at the new campus. Now that number will increase by thousands and Apple is adjusting internal office space accordingly, the person said.

Apple’s services business grew nearly 20% in the third quarter, and is expected to soon pass the Mac and iPad as Apple’s second-largest revenue source.