By Sara Castellanos
Google Cloud is racing to roll out new features and services
aimed at helping its enterprise customers maintain business
continuity during the coronavirus pandemic, including a new
security product expected to launch Tuesday, said Thomas Kurian,
chief executive of the Google LLC unit.
"Every week, there's a new set of dimensions, and we have to
adapt, keep people positive, and focus through it," said Mr.
Kurian.
The new security product includes technology that could entice
more businesses, especially those in highly regulated industries,
to adopt cloud services during the pandemic. The confidential
computing technology encrypts data while it is being processed;
previously, data was encrypted in storage and in transit. "We
wanted people comfortable [in knowing] they can move to the cloud
and don't have to worry about the security of [their] data," Mr.
Kurian said.
Google Cloud and Google are part of Alphabet Inc.
The technology will be initially available in parts of Asia,
Europe and the U.S. Pricing varies per company depending on the use
case.
Cloud-service providers, which sell computing capacity on an
as-needed basis, emerged as among the few corporate winners in the
early days of the pandemic, owing to their ability to support
remote work, among other capabilities.
Google Cloud accelerated the deployment of several features for
its virtual meeting product, Google Meet, in April, including one
that automatically filters out background noises such as keystrokes
and dog barks. Another feature automatically adjusts a user's video
to account for lighting variations. Google Meet was made available
free of charge in April as a consumer product; previously it was
available on a subscription basis to enterprise customers through G
Suite.
In 2018, the company launched an artificial intelligence tool
for manufacturers that automatically inspects products for quality,
which Mr. Kurian said could be useful during the pandemic. The
computer vision tool, built with SAP SE, lets manufacturers
circumvent manual inspections, which often require workers to be
physically close together and more susceptible to contracting the
virus, Mr. Kurian said.
During the early months of the pandemic, Mr. Kurian said his
role was partly focused on preparing the company for extended
remote work scenarios. Employees in certain offices around the
world began working remotely in February, weeks ahead of many
customers. "We wanted to test what it would be like," Mr. Kurian
said.
That meant employees weren't transitioning to remote work while
customers needed help overcoming their own information technology
challenges, Mr. Kurian said. Google Cloud's customer support staff,
for example, was already working remotely while handling queries
related to scaling up online learning platforms and helping
government customers set up virtual meetings, he said.
Google Cloud also benefited from existing protocols for Black
Friday, when retailers' websites see a rush of online shoppers, to
deal with surges in demand for cloud services, Mr. Kurian said.
During the early months of the pandemic, staff mobilized to help
customers provision cloud services, plan for cloud computing
capacity and monitor for IT system outages, Mr. Kurian said.
That protocol benefited customers in online videogaming,
government services, education and retail, who needed assistance in
ramping up computing capacity, he said.
Seemantini Godbole, chief information officer for home
improvement company Lowe's Cos., worked with Mr. Kurian and his
team in March and April to manage increased e-commerce demands.
Lowe's customers were doubling down on projects such as those
related to home offices and backyards during those months, and
Lowe's saw "tremendous" demand," Ms. Godbole said.
The company used Google Cloud services to rapidly scale the user
interface for a curbside pick-up app that was originally planned
for later this year or early next. The app was deployed in April
and lets customers pick up their purchases in front of the store if
they choose, Ms. Godbole said. Lowe's has been using Google Cloud
services for about two years, she said.
Google Cloud's world-wide market share in the cloud was 4% as of
2018, according to the most recent data from technology research
firm Gartner Inc., trailing behind Amazon.com Inc.'s Amazon Web
Services, Microsoft Corp. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. AWS's
cloud services market share was about 48%, Microsoft Corp.'s was
15.5% and Alibaba's was 7.7%. During the pandemic, its virtual
meeting product is facing competition from cloud rivals and
companies such as Zoom Video Communications Inc., which offer
similar products.
Mr. Kurian's focus since he joined the company from Oracle Corp.
in 2018 has been on delivering growth to parent Alphabet and
developing services, including those using artificial intelligence,
that provide business value to chief information officers.
The coronavirus pandemic presented a new opportunity for Google
Cloud to prove its value and commitment to customers, said Daryl
Plummer, chief of research for cloud computing at Gartner.
Google Cloud aims to differentiate itself by being known as a
provider who can handle unpredictable scenarios such as Covid-19,
Mr. Plummer said. It aims to do that by offering secure remote-work
tools and software development tools that require minimal
coding.
Working closer with customers on rapidly provisioning computing
resources to help them cope with the pandemic is also a key part of
its strategy, Mr. Plummer said. "Trust is built in times of
crisis," he said.
Write to Sara Castellanos at sara.castellanos@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 14, 2020 08:14 ET (12:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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