Data Backup Digest

Google have announced that Diane Bryant is joining their company as the Chief Operating Office of their Google Cloud division.

Bryant previously worked at Intel’s headquarters in California. She ran Intel’s data centre group since 2012, having been promoted to the president of the division last year, reportedly making compensation of $6.4 million.

Byrant went on extended leave on May, for which Intel cited a “family matter” and replaced her with Navin Shenoy. Though technically on leave from the company, her departure has been judged as a formality, and has received a $4.5 million severance payment.

She will be joining Diane Greene at Google Cloud, who joined the firm in November 2015 as their Senior Vice President. Bryant will be reporting to Greene in her role.

“I can’t think of a person with more relevant experience and talents. She is an engineer with tremendous business focus and an outstanding thirty-year career in technology,” said Greene in a blog post.

Intel’s Data Center Group created $17 million in revenue last year, and Byrant sits on the Board of United Technologies, so it’s clear that Google are wanting a bigger piece of the pie. Byrant’s strong experience in the data centre field and her ability to generate strong profits for Intel are key.

She also helped Intel become a prime supplier of chips for corporate clients, rather than just those for personal computers. This was seen when, in 2014, she joined an Amazon conference to discuss a custom chip that Intel had built to help Amazon power their cloud computing.

Google has also been experimenting with designing its own custom chips, though with the aim to improve its machine learning skills, like quicker language translation.

For Intel, their executive roles have been constantly moving around as they tried to adapt to weakening sales in their core business. Brian Krzanich, chief executive, has been hiring from companies like Qualcomm, AMD and eBay in order to bring in fresh talent to the company that he hopes will rejuvenate it.

As for Google, it’s no secret that their cloud business is struggling compared to their competitors. They have around five percent of the market share, according to research carried out by Synergy Research. Google are trailing behind IBM, Microsoft and Amazon. Indeed, Amazon with their AWS platform dominate the marketplace with over 32 percent.

“Google Cloud is the most technologically advanced, most highly available, and most open cloud in the world. We are growing at an extraordinary rate as we enable businesses to become smarter with data, increase their agility, collaborate and secure their information,” said the company’s blog post.

While Google Cloud saw great growth in the third quarter of 2017, it hasn’t really impacted its place in the market. Microsoft continues to grow quicker than they do and Amazon are proving very difficult to shake from the top spot.

It’ll be interesting to see how 2018 plays out for the cloud market and whether Google Cloud, or anyone else, will be able to make significant chips at Amazon’s dominance.