Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian at Google Cloud Next 2019
- Thomas Kurian, who had worked at Oracle for over two decades, has served as Google Cloud's CEO for about three months now.
- Last week, Google Cloud made announcements at its Next conference signalling a commitment to open source software and a strategy of allowing customers to use multiple clouds.
- Business Insider spoke with six startup executives, as well as some Googlers, on their thoughts about his strategy.
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Before becoming CEO at Google Cloud, Thomas Kurian worked at Oracle for over two decades, and was even at one point rumored to be the database giant's next CEO.
But in September, he would take an extended leave of absence, and sources say it was because he butted heads with Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison over cloud strategy. Later that month, Kurian announced his resignation. Less than two months later, he was announced as the new Google Cloud CEO, taking over for former CEO Diane Greene.
He officially took over the post in January.
There's been talk about how he plans to drive changes at Google Cloud, which is seen as lagging behind its rivals at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. Some are speculating how he'll use his years of experience at Oracle to lead Google Cloud, and many say he will likely make aggressive acquisitions.
Already, Kurian has announced that he plans to expand the sales team and have them go after specific, more traditional verticals like retail and finance - a very Oracle-like playbook.
And at Google Cloud's annual conference, the company made big waves by launching Anthos, which allows customers to run their work not only on Google Cloud and their own data centers, but also any other cloud they want - including AWS and Microsoft Azure.
What's more, under Kurian's leadership, Google Cloud announced major partnerships with seven open source software based startups, some of which have their own beef with AWS.
Last November, Business Insider spoke with various executives at other companies on what they thought about Kurian becoming Google Cloud's new CEO, and many echoed the same sentiments: that he has his work cut out for him.
Now that Kurian has been CEO for about three months, here's what startup executives - and the Googlers who work under him - are saying about the direction he's headed so far.
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