Google Hires Microsoft Veteran to Lead G Suite Cloud Applications -

Google has hired Microsoft veteran Javier Soltero as VP of G Suite -- the SaaS productivity suite that competes with Microsoft Office 365. Soltero reports to Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, an Oracle veteran that has been shaking up the search giant's cloud business.

Google is still perceived as a distant third in the public cloud services market -- trailing Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. In reality, the search giant is actually the number four cloud infrastructure provider.

Indeed, AWS commanded 47.8 percent of the IaaS market in 2018, Gartner says, followed by:

Microsoft Azure, 15.5 percent;
Alibaba Cloud, 7.7 percent;
Google, 4.0 percent; and
IBM, 1.8 percent.

Google Cloud Platform: Signs of Progress?

Still, Kurian's focus on some key use cases along with strategic hires have been turning heads across the IT industry. In addition to nabbing Soltero, Google in April 2019 hired SAP veteran Robert Enslin to succeed Paul-Henri Ferrand as president of Global Customer Operations for Cloud. Ferrand shifted to another role in the company.

At the same time, Google is finally building an MSP-centric partner program. Quite a few of the world's Top 100 Public Cloud MSPs now focus their efforts across Google, AWS and Azure.

Longer term, keep an eye on the the Google Cloud Next 2020 conference, which is set for April in San Francisco.