Asked what he would say to enterprises that are skeptical about using Google’s cloud, Hölzle pointed to the company’s long track record providing enterprise services through its Apps productivity suite, and through the Google Search Appliance, which it’s been selling to enterprises since 2002.
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Google is buying Greene’s start-up Bebop Technologies that helps make it easier to build and maintain enterprise applications.
The Internet giant announced on Thursday afternoon that it has hired Diane Greene to lead a unified cloud arm, encompassing Google for Work, Cloud Platform, and Google Apps.
While Google clearly has the cloud chops to compete strongly with Microsoft, Amazon and others, what it has been lacking up until today is leadership with a clear understanding of the enterprise.
In addition, Pichai mentioned that Google has entered into an agreement to acquire a startup that Diane Greene founded in recent years: bebop.
Greene was one of the co-founders of VMware, where she served as chief executive officer from 1998 to 2008.
Businesses may not think of Google first for their cloud applications, but Hölzle said that’s based on an outdated perception of the company. At the time, Microsoft’s cloud business was on track to hit more than $6.3 billion for the year; by October, the revenue run rate had exceeded .2 billion. The entire bebop team will join Google as part of the acquisition.
While Google is one of the earliest cloud companies, and has made great headway with consumers, it has struggled to keep pace with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and IBM in the enterprise.
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She’s been a Google board member since 2012.
