Google LLC sealed another big cloud customer contract today with the pizza delivery firm Papa John’s International Inc. signing a new, multiyear deal to use Google Cloud’s infrastructure.

Papa John’s said the partnership with Google is all about expanding its digital leadership and data cloud strategy, and it will work with it to expand the migration of its data centers to Google Cloud. That’s necessary, it said, because it’s facing a surge in demand for online ordering and delivery and it needs Google Cloud as the foundation of its ongoing innovations and planned customer experience improvements.

Papa John’s was already strongly invested in Google Cloud prior to today’s announcement. The company said it uses a number of Google’s cloud services, including its Cloud SQL database, Bigtable and BigQuery analytics services, plus its Kubernetes Engine. Those services, it explained, have helped it to build a new multichannel marketing platform, as well as various e-commerce and in-store customer touch points. Its customer loyalty program was also built using Google’s cloud services.

Perhaps its most notable involvement with Google, at least from a customer’s perspective, was its decision to move its mapping system to Google Maps in order to provide more timely and relevant information on local restaurants and delivery statuses via its Papa Track service.

Carrie Tharp, Google Cloud’s vice president of retail and consumer, said the retail and food services industries have been forced to adapt rapidly over the last year to the new normal of COVID-19 lockdowns, and Google has played a big part in facilitating their transformations.

Papa John’s Chief Technology Officer Justin Falciola said that by migrating more of its information technology infrastructure to Google Cloud, the company will be able to increase speed to value and deliver a better experience for both customers and its team members.

Today’s news follows a string of major customer announcements from Google in February. Twitter Inc. and The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. both said that month they’re planning to move major data processing and analytics workloads to Google Cloud, and they were quickly followed by similar multiyear deals with Telus Corp. and Global Payments Inc.

That followed news in January that Bertelsmann Music Group had selected Google Cloud to build a highly scalable global infrastructure to power its digital media streaming services.

Photo: Pam Lane/Flickr