Google’s cloud platform has been going through some growing pains. Robert Enslin is a former SAP executive who has taken over the helm to help move the company from edgy tech innovator to mature enterprise cloud provider. As it turns out, it’s not all about the flash and bang that comes with the newest software launch – it’s about redefining how they think about their business approach and partnerships.
Enslin shared his thoughts on Google Cloud’s growth as a firm: “I’m always thinking about how do we package the solution sets so that a business leader understands it. So that it’s not a technical solution, it’s actually a business solution. And the value that they will receive is clear in understanding. We want to bring value to the company. Because if someone makes a significant investment in Google Cloud, we want to make sure that they get a significant return for that.”
Robert Enslin has recently joined the Google family as president of Global Customer Operations after almost three decades at business software giant SAP. He is in charge of getting the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in with the big guys of the enterprise world. While naysayers may already have AWS and Azure in first place at the enterprise cloud Olympics, Enslin isn’t ready to make any concessionary speeches.
Both he and the internet giant’s cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, a former Oracle exec, want to make sure that everyone knows they are still very much in the race. It might be odd to think of multi-billion mega-corp Google as the scrappy underdog but they just might be that in this arena. Their plan is to go beyond competing against the likes of AWS on infrastructure – they want to compete on intelligence.
“We are very good at solving the world’s biggest, complex problems,” Enslin said. “Bring your complex problems to Google Cloud, and we’ll solve them with you.”
GCP wants to be the SaaS service that provides industry-specific solutions to complex business problems. They are targeting those clients that will require a more customized, comprehensive kind of cloud service – ones that require a very particular set of skills. And ones that they can have a big impact on having acquired through a long career of storing, sorting and analyzing 75 percent of the world’s internet data.
Of his move to Planet Google, Enslin believed it was the right move at the right time: “I felt that there was an opportunity for me to do something really different in the industry, to build applications that went past just transaction-based applications – but truly have the ability to apply intelligence to massive amounts of data.”
“Google has knowledge of vast tracts of the internet, and how to operate in that space. Bringing many of the AI and ML technologies, for which Google is well known for, to the market. I think we will able to provide highly differentiated applications,” he added.
They have honed in on a number of verticals, including retail, financial services, media, manufacturing, and the public sector that they want to specialize in. GCP is also overhauling their partnership program, they want to expand their sales team and streamline their contracts, pricing, and solutions to better meet the names of potential big business clients. Enslin also plans on expanding Google Cloud’s presence in the international arena – it’ll be a multi-year undertaking but he knows it’s worth it.
“We have really focused on, and what I’m trying to bring, is the enterprise knowledge of how customers want to transact with Google, how they want to be supported by Google. I’m building out Google’s presence on a global basis, we have a huge opportunity in Asia, in markets around the world, where we are, I would say, in our infancy.”
