Google Cloud leader lays out ambitious plans for the enterprise

The head of Google’s enterprise business says the consumer giant has unique attributes in data management, analytics and machine learning that differentiate its cloud offerings.

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The IT world is going through an unprecedented transformation that impacts how enterprises operate and leverage opportunities within mobile, data and the cloud, according to Diane Greene, senior vice president of Google Cloud. Greene has been leading Google’s enterprise business since late 2015, focusing much of her attention on reorganizing Google’s approach to the enterprise market and the big customers it wants to win over.

“I’ve never seen the kind of growth that’s going on here,” she said this week during an appearance at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. Because of that, her biggest challenge is organizing and hiring for scale and she constantly has to declare just how serious Google is about becoming a force in the enterprise market.

Google says it was built for the enterprise

While most of Google’s success comes from its consumer services and the advertising associated with those apps, Greene says Google was built to be a giant in the enterprise as well. “We have the cloud for the enterprise because the enterprise has to lean into data and that’s what Google was built for, so I feel very good about where we are and what we’re doing for people,” she said.

“We’re highly reliable, we’re highly secure, we’re highly scalable and we have very good technical people to partner with companies, which is super valuable,” Greene said. “We’re kind of in the sweet spot of where customers are going and we’re seeing that confirmed over and over as we start working with more customers.”

Google has been inventing how to manage and quickly analyze massive amounts of data for 16 years, according to Greene. She also claims Google’s data centers operate more efficiently than its competitors and the company has built the most secure cloud on the planet. Google’s resources and expertise in machine learning are becoming a differentiating factor for Google’s efforts in the enterprise as well, Greene said.

“Google’s been doing [machine learning] since before 2000… We arguably have the largest assemblage of machine learning experts,” she said. “A company that isn’t using machine learning is going to be, if not already, at a disadvantage.”

Why enterprises are moving to the cloud

Enterprises aren’t moving to the cloud just to save money, they’re also doing it to make their business more competitive, according to Greene. “A lot of people want to do machine learning, they want to do data analytics and they want to understand really how to stage their movement to the cloud,” she said.

“The cloud is on everybody’s mind,” Greene said. “A lot of companies are dabbling in it but we are just at the very early stages of people moving [to the cloud].”

During 2017, Greene hopes to land more big customers who will showcase Google’s strengths in the enterprise cloud and encourage more businesses to make the move. “I hope that people will understand why we’re really the cloud for the next generation of enterprise and that won’t be a question in people's’ minds.”