Dive Brief:

• Following its pick of CEO Thomas Kurian last year, Google Cloud is bringing on another executive with legacy vendor expertise, tapping Robert Enslin as president of global customer operations, according to an announcement Tuesday. His first day is Monday.

• Enslin spent 27 years at SAP, most recently serving as president of the cloud business group and an executive board member. In his role, he led SAP's cloud product portfolio and managed operations like the channel and professional services

• Enslin will take over for Paul-Henri Ferrand, who served as president of global customer operations for almost two years. He is taking on a new role within Google, according to the announcement.

Dive Insight:

During the former Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene's era, focus was on maturing the company's portfolio, growing it into an enterprise contender.

With Kurian at the helm, attention has turned to sales and the potential of the channel.

Kurian spent 22 years at Oracle, a company with business entrenched in the enterprise. When moving to Google, Kurian took that expertise and pitched the potential of an aggressive sales force to allow the No. 3 provider to compete in the market.

Early in his tenure, Kurian is positioning Google Cloud as a viable alternative to Amazon Web Services, and promising it won't compete in customer's markets. Such a claim is alluring to retailers and consumer packaged goods firms, and Google has gotten big names like Kohl's to sign on with its services.

Hiring Enslin will bolster Google Cloud's sales operation. SAP has undergone a renovation for the cloud era, pivoting the way it traditionally sold services. Executives like Enslin can take their expertise working in traditional environments and apply it to a much more nimble cloud operation.

That type of leadership is appealing for companies dealing with modernization efforts, not just the digital native companies born in the cloud.