Google officially debuted its new database migration service (DMS) today, designed to make it easier for Google Cloud customers to transfer their MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server databases to Google’s fully managed Cloud SQL database service.

This has been a long time coming, given that Amazon’s AWS launched its database migration service more than five years ago, while Microsoft launched its incarnation for Azure two years later.

Google has offered database migration services previously via partnerships with companies such as Striim, but by removing the intermediary, this simplifies the process and reduces both the time it takes and the chances of something going awry during the transfer.

One of the main reasons why Google is launching its DMS now is to capitalize on the surge in cloud computing demand prompted by the global pandemic and to encourage companies to migrate their databases from on-premises infrastructure to a more scalable, serverless incarnation on Google’s cloud. But companies can also use the migration service to transfer databases from other cloud providers, including AWS and Azure, so today’s news effectively puts Google on an equal footing with Amazon and Microsoft in terms of providing native tools to tempt companies to make the switch.

Moreover, according to Gartner, 75% of databases will be stored in the cloud by 2023, and providing the tools to make this transition could encourage more businesses to embrace Google Cloud over its rivals in the long run.

“With the large majority of workloads still running on-premise, it is still extremely early days for the cloud, and we think we have an incredibly differentiated approach,” a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat. “Compared to just a few years ago, demand is no longer only on the renting of server space in our data centers.”

Google has generally languished behind both AWS and Azure in the public cloud infrastructure sphere, with the duo claiming around 45% and 18% market share respectively in 2019 — Google, for its part, held around 5%. Earlier this year, Alphabet started breaking out Google Cloud revenue for the first time, and while its growth is currently exceeding that of AWS, it’s difficult to make firm comparisons given that Google bundles in G Suite alongside the Google Cloud Platform when reporting its financials.

DMS is available in preview for like-for-like migrations from today for MySQL databases, while PostgreSQL support is available only for “limited customers” in preview and SQL Server is “coming soon.”