Thomas Kurian: Google Cloud Deals Over $50 Million More Than Doubled Last Year

By Amit Chowdhry • Feb 16, 2020
  • Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian recently spoke at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference where he revealed details about Alphabet’s growing cloud business

This past week at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian pointed out that the rapidly growing cloud computing business was a major part of Alphabet’s revenue-growth plan as a whole. Google Cloud directly competes against Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure — which are the largest and second-largest cloud businesses, respectively.

At the event, Kurian pointed out that Google Cloud is in the “super early stages” and compared it to the Super Bowl game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans as it could be anyone’s game to win according to Business Insider.

“Lateness, earliness — I don’t worry about that,” stated Kurian at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco via Business Insider. “As I tell people, for those of you who watched the game between Kansas City and Houston, Texas — nothing against Houston, they’re a great team — if you looked at the end of the first half, I think somebody would have chosen a particular outcome. I don’t think it turned out that way.”

Kansas City was down 24-0 at the beginning of the Super Bowl, but then made a comeback and beat the Texans 51-31.

Last year, Google Cloud hit $9 billion in revenue for Alphabet. And the company has been scaling its salesforce in order to keep growing. Plus its current salesforce was more productive and the number of $50 million deals more than doubled last year.

To grow in certain industries, the Google Cloud team has been bringing in a new leadership team that specializes in each sector. So if the client is a bank, then Google Cloud will arrange them to talk to someone who understands banking.

Kurian also recently presented a strategy that Google Cloud has for growing its business — which includes going after 5 industries like retail, healthcare, financial services, media and entertainment, and manufacturing.

Another strategy that worked well for Google Cloud is its recruiting of partners. There was a 190% year-over-year increase in revenue driven by partner for Google Cloud and a 13-fold increase in customers through partners while comparing to the first half of 2018 to the first half of 2019. And the number of Google Cloud certified partners tripled year-over-year.