10 Reasons Google Cloud Is #2 on Industry Cloud Top 10 List – Cloud Wars

While the boom in industry-specific solutions is a new phenomenon that every major cloud provider is pursuing, the case of Google Cloud is particularly distinctive because it launched its entire industry-specific effort just 2-1/2 years ago.

On my new Industry Cloud Top 10, Google Cloud is #2, behind #1 Salesforce and ahead of #3 Oracle.

After a recent lively conversation with the leader of Google Clouds industry solutions business, Lori Mitchell-Keller, I came away with 10 overarching reasons that underpin Google Clouds strategy in this booming category and that reveal the huge impact CEO Thomas Kurian has had since his arrival in January 2019.

Here are those 10 takeaways plus some illuminating perspectives on each from Mitchell-Keller, who joined Google Cloud about a year ago after a distinguished career in SAPs industries business. And you can hear my entire conversation with Mitchell-Keller on our Cloud Wars Live podcast episode.

First, customers want to figure out how to get significantly smarter, and quickly. Most companies have a lot of data, but its all in different silos. So a key value driver within Google Clouds industry-specific solutions is helping clients bulldoze those data silos.

Most corporations usually have some data scientists or ML experts that can really dig into the data and provide great insights, but thats not available to everyone in the company, Mitchell-Keller said. So were talking about helping customers ensure that their entire workforce is becoming smarter.

A second big thing we hear from clients is that they really want more of a freedom to adapt to the market as it changes. Many of these companies have large on-premise solutions that are typically very transactional and theyre trying to figure out how to get the freedom to be able to use their data to look at a new market insights versus being able to see only whats built into the solution.

Another big question is, How do I better connect my workforce and connect with people across my organization? Mitchell-Keller said. The ability to really collaborate and connect and be able to work concurrently on documents has been a real challenge.

We provide the opportunity to augment existing solutions without telling clients they should rip and replace. As you know, weve been talking about multi-cloud and hybrid cloud for quite some time and our solutions work on other clouds, not just ours. So the idea is how can we help our customers get better without a lot of churn or having to rip out some of the core solutions that theyve been using.

Speed is definitely another dimension, like growth and profitability, that all customers are looking at. With COVID, speed took on huge importance and became a huge imperative for every company. Mitchell-Keller cited three examples: the big grocery-store chain, Albertsons, was experiencing a huge influx of phone calls related to store hours, mask requirements, etc. In two weeks, Google Cloud stood up a Rapid Response Virtual Agent to handle almost all of those calls.

At home-improvement retailer Lowes, Google Cloud helped get curbside pickup in full gear in less than 2 months. In healthcare, Humana wanted to be able to extract vital information and insights from the deluge of phone calls coming in from members. In less than three months, we installed a solution using AI and ML to actually analyze those calls and to give Humana some really great insights and resulted in an 80% reduction in the processing time on any analysis around that call center experience, she said.

I have to say that our unique AI and ML capabilities, which I think are ranked highest in the market by lots of outside sources, really help us to be able to respond to our customers very, very quickly. The whole way we build solutions from start to finish is involving customers at every step of the journey.

The heart of what were doing across all the industries is really to tackle the toughest challenges that the C-suite executives are having, Mitchell-Keller said. Its not enough to just solve problems that are already out there, that have other solutions. Thats not what were interested in. Were interested in solving those tough challenges that either dont have a solution today or have a solution thats not doing the best work it could do. For example, demand forecasting: Businesses have been using the same algorithms to do this work for decades. And yet today we have lots of new information that we can use, like traffic patterns, weather, trends, as well as using ML to better understand how a demand might evolve over time.

We can build from the ground up and be very agile in the types of industry solutions that were building. And I want to make sure Im clear that were looking at industry transformation. Were not looking at industry continuous improvementof course, certainly we have solutions that help with thatbut what our customers really wanting from us is understanding how do they transform their business? How do they find new opportunities for revenue growth and new business models that they wouldnt have otherwise been able to implement without the help of Google Cloud?

In a couple of instances, Mitchell-Keller emphasized that wherever possible, Google Cloudd industry teams look to enhance what customers already have rather than competing directly against established solutions or providers.

To be very clear, were not in the business of building a demand-planning solution to replace any of the transactional vendors out there. We want to just help with the algorithm that can sit on top of any demand-planning solution. Again, our desire is not to cause churn in our clients, not to cause a rip and replace, but actually to provide them capabilities that augment what they already have, she said.

Some specific examples of that:

I put Google Cloud in the #2 spot because of a combination of its Kurian-inspired leadership and vision in this emerging field and because their execution plan employs the entire company in a unified effort to meet the rapidly emerging need among customers for advanced purpose-built solutions.

I also believe that Mitchell-Kellers outlook and mindset, reflected clearly in the 10 attributes outlined above, are playing a major role in turning Kurians compelling vision into high-impact reality.

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10 Reasons Google Cloud Is #2 on Industry Cloud Top 10 List - Cloud Wars