Google Cloud’s Thomas Kurian on game plan to take on bigger rivals AWS, Microsoft

Google Cloud division's new head Thomas Kurian has set his focus on increasing sales of the unit as he looks to play catch-up with rivals Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft who lead the industry in terms of market share, business magazine Fortune reported.

Kurian, who replaced Diane Greene after a 22-year stint at Oracle, is expected to use his experience from the former databases major to inflate sales numbers on the balance sheet, which has been a struggle for Google, if experts and analysts are to be believed.

However, Kurian in an interview with the magazine defended Google, stating that those who believe that the company doesn't know how to push enterprise sales are wrong.

“You just have to reiterate your position and be calm about it,” he was quoted as saying.

Kurian will take a new direction at Google Cloud and will hire more salespeople as well as heads for specialised units.

He told the magazine that he was looking out for people like Andrew Moore, who heads the artificial intelligence initiative at Google Cloud. Examples of recent hires include former Oracle executive Amit Zavery and former Palo Alto Networks chief financial officer Steffan Tomlinson.

Kurian said that Google was planning to hire salespeople specialising in different fields such as healthcare and finance in order to achieve sales targets in those verticals.

During the first few months of his new tenure, he will familiarise himself with other Google departments as he believes that a lot of technologies can be combined and offered to enterprises.

An example of that would be the launch of a new feature that lets Google Cloud customers use Android smartphones as security keys for their accounts.