Recently, we had the opportunity to attend Google Next 2022. To be more specific, we had the chance to catch up with Google Cloud execs at an analyst summit organized on the sidelines of an Innovators Hive event focused on developers in Bengaluru, India. The Innovators Hive events were held as part of Google Next 2022.
Here are some takeaways from the event:
Google Cloud continues its growth trajectory globally, with CEO Thomas Kurien citing an annual run rate of $25 billon for the current fiscal year.
As is the custom, there were a blizzard of announcements to coincide with the Google Next show, which was being held simultaneously and even simulcast across multiple cities, including New York, Bengaluru, Tokyo and others.
One of the product areas where Google Cloud seems to be investing heavily is in Data Analytics, with the launch of several tools like BigLake and DataPlex. The idea seems to be to bring Google’s considerable strengths in AI/ML and the cloud to help enterprises transform their data into actionable insights.
A number of customer wins and new logos were shared but a few stood out.
In the telecom vertical, T-Mobile has signed up with Google Cloud to improve their customer experience. T-Mobile will use Google Cloud’s BigQuery and BigQuery ML tools for generating powerful insights on their customers as well as use Dialogflow and Contact Center AI to generate a new wave of AI-powered customer interactions.
Closer home in the APAC region, Google Cloud will be helping the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) migrate its data and analytics platforms (DataSphere) with a view to providing deeper, actionable insights to its financial partners.
In India, Google Cloud has partnered with Mahindra Group to support the launch of their newest SUV, the Scorpio-N. While the partnership announcement came back in March 2022, the SUV launch event was more recent in October 2022. Mahindra Group, with help from Google Cloud, was able to implement a new order booking system that helped them log 100,000 new bookings in the first 30 minutes of the launch, totaling $2.3 billion in sales.
Google Cloud has significant momentum in India, and has been investing significantly in the country.
It already has two cloud regions in Delhi and Mumbai, with 3 availability zones.
The parent company has announced the Google for India Digitalization Fund with $1 billion to support new initiatives in country. Airtel has partnered with Google Cloud to target the enterprise segment with cloud services in India, especially targeted at the SME segment. In the telco segment, Google has also partnered with Jio Platforms on a variety of initiatives spanning cloud services to a new smartphone.
In India, the customer strategy has been amended to focus on “verticals to align with the way customers like to buy”. This has meant that a more focused approach based on major verticals is now visible, with key verticals including FSI, Telco/Media/Entertainment, Health/Public Sector and EdTech, Retail & Travel, Manufacturing & Industrial, and IT services.
One notable segment that is getting increasing traction for Google Cloud is the public sector. With Delhi already firmly established as a cloud region, Google Cloud has gone further and secured certification from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY). This certification will help make the Indian Government at all levels, federal, state and local, a very large target market.
There is also a rebooted and focused effort to build the partner ecosystem in India. Google Cloud is pursuing a 3-tier approach, where they ISV and Tech partners, Reseller & Solution Partners and Global Systems Integrators. The latter two will help Google Cloud increase their reach across the enterprise end user base in India.
Google Cloud is also significantly increasing their investment and outreach to building on its existing developer community and helping them upskill with resources and training. One of the comments made in the keynotes was that “developers are becoming the new decision makers” in the sense that for business transformation and business objectives to be met, the underlying technology and platform choices are increasingly crucial and it is the developers who will help the company realize these objectives. So arming the developers with all the cloud and edge compute resources and training they need will go a long way towards helping Indian enterprises achieve their digital transformation goals. Indeed, Google Cloud is targeting 40 million “cloud learners” in the next five years.