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 review the Q3 growth rates of Google Cloud as it continues on an upward trajectory.
Highlights
00:14 — Google Cloud released big numbers for its Q3 growth rate, which spiked to 35%, and its revenue reached $11.35 billion. This is a remarkable accomplishment.
00:35 — Over the last five quarters, Google Cloud’s growth rate has been strong but nothing like this. The company is by far the fastest-growing major cloud vendor.
01:00 — On the earnings call, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai shared five points about how customers are using Google Cloud software; these are the reasons behind this big spike.
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01:14 — First, he said that Google Cloud has put enormous effort into making AI infrastructure and models more efficient so the cost to customers is less for processing and training.
01:30 — Second, Mandiant threat intelligence has been a huge growth factor; the demand and purchases of this have gone up four times in the last six quarters. Third, Google Cloud is building out its enterprise applications in new ways, such as its customer engagement suite.
02:03 — Fourth, the Vertex AI platform was another contributing factor. The company reported that the API calls to Vertex for some of its AI services were up 14 times in the last six months. And finally, BigQuery, its data platform, closely collaborates with Vertex, making it another contributor to this massive growth.
02:31 — Looking back over the past five quarters, Google Cloud’s growth has had a clear upward trajectory. I think that Google Cloud’s advanced and customer-centric ecosystem, which includes best-in-class AI technology, has been a huge differentiator of the company’s growth compared to its competitors.
04:12 — Six years ago, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said he wasn’t concerned with catching up to competitors but more so concerned with meeting new and emerging needs of customers. This has played out over these six years exactly the way Kurian suggested it would.
