Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian is confident that his business’ “zero channel conflict” strategy, security advantages, growing Google Cloud Marketplace and overall partner go-to-market makes it the best choice for channel partners in the cloud industry.
Kurian said much of his focus since taking over the cloud unit in early 2019 has been around increasing the synergies between channel partners and Google Cloud’s sales force, while at the same time better enabling solutions providers—which has led to more customer wins and increased sales.
“Our commitment is: build the customer base; bring that customer base to the partner ecosystem; commit to being partner-friendly with a goal to be 100 percent [channel] attach [rate]; specialized the partner ecosystem so they have deep skills in different areas; and introduce the partners with our sales organization to customers by eliminating friction of any kind between the partners and customers,” said Kurian in an interview with Channel Company Founding Partner Robert Faletra and CRN Exececutive Editor, News, Steven Burke during a keynote session at The Channel Company’s Best of Breed Virtual conference Tuesday. “So that’s been a lot of focus these last two and a half years. I think we’re starting to see the results of it, and we’re very encouraged with the progress we’re seeing.”
In its most recent first quarter 2022, Google Cloud sales skyrocketed to $5.82 billion, representing an increase of 44 percent year over year.
[Related: Google Cloud To ‘Attach Partners To 100 Percent’ Of Customer Engagements]
Thomas Kurian took over the reins of Google Cloud in January 2021 after a successful 22-year career at Oracle.
Since then, Kurian has championed to better enable channel partners both on the sales front and in technical skillsets with the goal of winning more market share and channel mindshare versus its two largest cloud competitors: Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. In fact, Google Cloud customer spending through channel partners and the Google Cloud Platform “more than doubled” from 2020 to 2021, according to Kurian.
In the interview, Kurian discussed why channel partners should place their cloud bets on Google Cloud compared to AWS and Azure, along with new Google Cloud Marketplace improvements and his goal of attaching partners to 100 percent of customer engagements. 1 23… 9NextRELATED TOPICS: