Google Clouds new CEO to provide customers, startup, support open source and more – TechCrunch

After Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud's newly appointed CEO joined the company, he took hundreds of meetings to learn what the company's potential and current customers were looking for. The overall theme of these conversations was always the same, he told me during an interview at Google's Cloud Next conference: "Love the technology – amazed by it. [They] think it's the best of the best, but they want more people That can help them adopt it and improve how they do business with us. "

So that's the first order of business in Google Cloud now. Kurian, who came to Google Cloud after 22 years at Oracle, said the team rolls out new contracts and plans to simplify prices. Most importantly, though, Google will go on a recruitment bonus. "A number of customers told us we just need more people from you to help us." So that's what we're going to do, "Kurian said.

I asked Kurian if he believes his predecessors made a mistake by not doing all this already. Always the diplomat, Kurian denied it (of course)." No, I think It is just the natural evolution of each company. Growing up, understanding his business, seeing an opportunity, "he said." When I look at it, is it not a good position to be in? When you have customers who say "please consider more people to help me" instead of "please get away from me?" "

Businesses want Google to find the business, Kurian believes because they want to use the company's technology." And then we try to do it. "

Whatever he thinks of Diane Greene's tenure In Google Cloud, Kurian has undoubtedly the opportunity to reorganize the organization now, however, when I asked him how his own philosophy differs from his predecessor, he claimed that it is about listening to customers and giving them what they want. ha, is more help but also better collaborative tools, for example, as well as more industry-specific solutions.

Later, however, he also realized that what Google Cloud is going to do ahead is to play for its strengths. "I think you will see us emphasize our differentiators and strengthen the multi-cloud infrastructure, "he said, highlighting today's launch of Anthos as an example of what the company can do – and as a product developed in response to customer requests." that area with security. We have taken the area with analyzes. We have taken AI – and we have invested much more in solutions there. And the reason is that it's what customers want from us, "he added.

It's no secret that Google definitely focuses on bringing more businesses to their platform, not to say that Google Cloud doesn't care about "When we say we're focused on the business, it doesn't mean we stop focusing on small and medium-sized businesses – on the digital natives and startups," Kurian said. "Historically, the complaint has always been" Google does not focus on businesses, they focus on digital natives. […] The notion beyond what Google does not care about businesses is not true, and the statement that we are now going to focus solely on businesses is also not true. "

Kurian claims that nine of the 10 largest media use Google Cloud, as well as seven of the 10 largest retailers and six of the top 10 corporate companies. "Other cloud providers want you to believe that nobody is using Google, which is not true," he added.

Talking about other pushers, it is also worth noting that Google takes a completely different role approach to open source than any of its competitors, and especially the AWS. It is something that is not likely to change under Kurian's leadership in the Google Cloud. "The most important thing is that we believe that the platforms that win in the end are those that make it possible to destroy the ecosystems. We really believe it fundamentally," he told me. "Any platform that wins in the end is always about promoting rather than closing an ecosystem. If you look at open source companies, we think they work hard to build technology and allow developers to use it." 19659002] Kurian is not the kind of CEO who will directly attack his competitors in an interview, but he came closer to it in this context: "To maintain the company behind open source technology, they need a revenue-generated vehicle. If the cloud provider attacks them and takes it away, they are not viable and it exacerbates open source community. "

For the future of Google Cloud, Kurian did not entirely want to look at his crystal ball. Instead, he argued that as long as the company focuses on doing what customers want – by hiring more employees to help those customers and making it easier to do business with Google – these customers will buy much more from their cloud technology from Google.