Dive Brief:
- Google announced a strategic partnership with Intel on Thursday to "support and accelerate" enterprise adoption of the cloud, according to a Google Cloud blog.
- The partnership will focus on Kubernetes, machine learning, the Internet of Things and security, combining Google Cloud software capabilities with Intel’s hardware, Nan Boden, Google’s head of global technology partners, wrote.
- Google also announced Sam Ramji, a former Microsoft exec and Cloud Foundry Foundation chief executive, will join the company working under Google Cloud leader Diane Greene. Ramji will focus on public cloud computing and open-source technologies.
Dive Insight:
Google and Intel have worked together on data center processor technology for several years, but their renewed partnership will focus on helping enterprise customers move legacy infrastructures to the cloud.
It's been about a year since Google brought on Greene to lead its cloud push, and while it’s made headway — landing huge customers like Coca-Cola and Disney — the company still faces challenges catching up to Amazon Web Services, which currently dominates the cloud market.
A report released earlier this month from Synergy Research Group found Amazon Web Services now has a 45% share of the worldwide public IaaS market — twice as much market share as Microsoft, Google and IBM combined. Working more closely with Intel could help Google gain inroads to Intel customers that want to move to the cloud but want need an integrated hardware and software approach to help get them there.
The addition of Ramji to the team should also help Google further strengthen its enterprise cloud efforts. Ramji previously led open source efforts at Microsoft, and is an expert at helping move enterprises to the cloud.
