Enterprise customers have made Google Cloud the world’s fastest-growing major cloud vendor because of its leadership in three areas essential for business transformation: data analytics, AI, and cybersecurity, according to CEO Thomas Kurian.
That assertion from Kurian came during the high-energy Google Cloud Next event this week as 30,000 attendees learned about the 1,000 product updates and innovations the company and its partners have introduced since the last Next event, which was held just eight months ago.
In addition to those three specific competitive differentiators — and I’ll get to those in detail in a moment — Kurian opened his briefing with analysts by outlining some of the market dynamics he feels are most important to customers.
“In the eight months since our Next event in 2023, we’ve seen customers go from small AI projects and evaluations to companywide deployments,” Kurian said. That rapid ramp-up requires a robust AI platform that is fully open and able to handle first-party, third-party, and open-source models — and it was no surprise that Kurian said Google Cloud’s Vertex AI checks all those boxes.
(For an in-depth look at where Kurian believes customers are heading, please see my recent exclusive video interview with him: Cloud Wars CEO Outlook 2024 with Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.)
“We’re also seeing huge changes in how our partners deliver solutions to customers,” Kurian said. “Today, the buyer is generally outside of IT, and we’re finding that with AI projects the line between an initial proof-of-concept and formal rollout is quite fluid.”
Kurian advised that customers need to avoid “falling in love with models” because they are changing, evolving, and advancing at an incredible pace. As such, partners’ engagements are shifting away from beginning-middle-end to fluid and ongoing partnerships, “almost along the lines of a managed service provider,” Kurian said.
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But the precise capabilities that Kurian said have allowed Google Cloud to stand out from traditional cloud powerhouses AWS and Microsoft are data analytics, AI, and cybersecurity. Here are some of his remarks on each:
- Data Analytics: “With BigQuery, we have the most-scalable and best-converged data-analytics platform,” Kurian said, which “gives you access to your data wherever it is” and “unlocks your data in ways that could never be done before.” Kurian described a wide range of enhancements to BigQuery that have elevated it to a complete and unified AI-ready data platform, with Google Cloud unequivocally making it the centerpiece of all of its data efforts and aspirations. You can get a complete overview on those enhancements in this blog post from Geerit Kazmaier, vice president and general manager for data analytics.
- AI: “Many of the customers here were not originally Google Cloud Platform customers–they were using other clouds, but have chosen us for our enterprise-grade AI program and the strength of our [Vertex AI] platform,” Kurian said. Those AI-platform strengths, he said, encompass the areas of evaluation, quality, synthetic-data generation, how we do RHLF [Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback], and how we do distillation.” Offering additional perspective, VP and GM of Machine Learning (ML) and AI systems Ahmin Vahdat said in a separate session that Google Cloud stands above its competitors in three key areas: state-of-the-art models, 20 years of experience and knowledge in turning ML and models into services; and what he called “world-leading infrastructure.”
- Cybersecurity: Tapping into Google Cloud’s status as part of the massive Google corporation, Kurian said that Google Cloud has the unique advantage of having access to the “best cybersecurity intelligence” because Google Chrome is used by 70% of world’s phones and PCs. That was a key factor a few years ago when Google Cloud acquired threat-intelligence leader Mandiant and has given Google Cloud a powerful position in the eyes of customers. I think that distinction will be greatly sharpened by the recent revelations about the major cybersecurity challenges Microsoft is facing by virtue of the recent and highly critical report Cyber Safety Review Board that I analyzed earlier this week in “Microsoft Cybersecurity Disaster Triggers Customer Doubt, Competitor Opportunity.”
Final Thought
It’s one thing to make broad claims about marketplace superiority, and it’s another thing to see if those align with reality. Google Cloud is indeed the world’s fastest-growing major cloud vendor per my most-recent compilation: “Google Cloud Becomes World’s Hottest Cloud Vendor, Edging ServiceNow.”
My sense of the customer stories shared at Next and the new-product announcements that blanketed the event is that Google Cloud is ready and eager to hold that position as the fastest-growing player in the greatest growth market the world has ever known.
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