Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I delve into some of the highlights from my conversation with Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian as part of our CEO Outlook 2024 series.
Highlights
00:10 — Today the focus is on Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, who is entering his sixth year at the helm of Google Cloud. Before Kurian took over, it was an extremely tech-oriented organization that didn’t have a good outward connection with customers and had very little commercial presence in the marketplace. That’s changed dramatically under Kurian.
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01:32 — He said that Google Cloud tries to build for tomorrow, not just the short-term, tactical one-off solution, but instead giving customers what he calls “a foundation for innovation going forward.” Everything from engineering to go-to-market is oriented around customers and the outside world. It’s also focused on expanding the pie by working with systems integrators, independent software vendors (ISVs), open source partners, and others.
02:34 — Kurian said today’s customers want to simplify their processes. They want to use more technology, but they don’t want that technology’s complexity to become a burden. Kurian believes Google Cloud’s responsibility is to give all the benefits of the technology while hiding the complexity.
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03:51 — Google Cloud last week announced its Q4 financial results. It had revenue of $9.2 billion and its growth rate was 25.7%. That’s up from 22% in the third quarter. So we see that even as it gets bigger, its growth rate is accelerating.
04:16 — Kurian spent close to 25 years at Oracle before moving to Google Cloud and it is has really been remarkable to see his career flourish. He was able to demonstrate at Google Cloud that he’s not just a product development specialist and brilliant visionary but also has the ability to lead and build this company against enormous competition within a very big parent company, Alphabet.
05:03 —The culture that has really taken hold inside Google Cloud is about putting the customer first, being connected with them, and building for tomorrow and letting those customers simplify, accelerate, and innovate. You can see the full-length video from my interview with Thomas Kurian, and also my in-depth analytical article, later this morning.
- Watch the Thomas Kurian video interview
- Read my analysis from discussions with Thomas Kurian about his 2024 outlook
