Google Cloud Hires Cisco’s Nirav Sheth, Acquires VMware Partner

Google Cloud has made a big hire and a key acquisition to further boost the public cloud platform for customers and partners.

Indeed, Google has hired Cisco Systems veteran Nirav Sheth in a partner sales leadership role. Also, the company has acquired CloudSimple to ease VMware migrations and implementations.

Sheth has a strong reputation in the IT channel. He was one of the key persons to help restart and rebuild Cisco's relationships with small business partners over the past three years or so. He also worked closely with partners to help Cisco refine its partner programs for MSPs (managed IT services providers) and recurring revenue engagements.

Sheth confirmed his move from Cisco Systems to Google Cloud in a LinkedIn bio update.

Google Acquires CloudSimple for VMware Migrations

Separately, Google says the CloudSimple acquisition allows customers to "migrate their VMware workloads from on-premises data centers directly into Google Cloud VMware Solution by CloudSimple, while also creating new VMware workloads as needed."

The CloudSimple acquisition essentially counters the VMware Cloud on AWS partnership, which is backed by key IT consulting firms and IT solutions providers like Presidio.

Google Cloud Expansion Strategy

Google has made multiple hires and acquisitions to bolster its public cloud vs. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure over the past year or so. Key moves have included:

No doubt, Google will make additional moves ahead of the Google Cloud Next 2020 conference, which is set for April in San Francisco.