Is Google Finally Taking This Cloud Thing Seriously? If any vendor has the scale, geographic spread, experience and appetite for disruption to really push this whole cloud infrastructure thing, it’s Google. They have a massive data center footprint, they own huge chunks of global networking infrastructure, they have vast operational experience and, frankly, they’re not encumbered by any legacy issues. One would have to come to the conclusion that the stars are completely aligned for Google to outperform AWS and the other cloud vendors. And yet… to date, Google’s commitment to its Google Cloud Platform family of products has seemed kind of marginal. Sure it’s there, but Glass, driver-less cars and other “moonshots” seem to get more attention. Add to this the fact that Google isn’t exactly a natural when it comes to the enterprise sales model, and you’ve got some hurdles to get over. Some news this week, however, indicates that the company is at least starting to push the envelope a bit. Google has announced a developer roadshow to show off its cloud platform. This in addition to a previous announcement about a cloud platform event being held in San Francisco. Of course AWS is the king of outreach – its Re:Invent events are legendary, having helped organize a conference that clashed with Re:Invent, I know just how important the cloud community considers the AWS showcase. Alongside Re:Invent, Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels, and its blog content churning machine Jeff Barr are always busy talking, writing and generally socializing what AWS does. Google needs to provide and answer to all of this attention grabbing content. It’s something that, as I’ve opined previously, somewhat goes against the Google ethos. They’re all about being laser focused on the stuff that is substantive – having execs committed to something as vague as events doesn’t really gel with Google’s modus operandi. But as I’ve said before, part of being a real enterprise company is doing all that peripheral stuff that, better or worse, enterprises like to see. Unlike the little engine that could, Google is the little engine that should. It should be able to make this stuff work and provide a credible competitive platform to AWS. They just need to get over themselves and, yes, do what everyone else does in order to gain and retain mindshare.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 07:34:25 +0000
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