Seamless migration and interoperability will drive Google Cloud, says Asia-Pacific head

Tech giant Google's recently rebranded cloud services platform Anthos has made cloud migration seamless across multiple platforms with its interoperability, said Richard Harshman, managing director for Google Cloud's Asia Pacific region.

Harshman said that, unlike other cloud platforms, Anthos only required the employees to be trained only once to operate the open-source programme. “Every other cloud has a proprietary API (application programming interface) which fragments skill-sets. Anthos, on the other hand, allows a customer to build infrastructure workload once and then adopt it anywhere," he added.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) had launched Kubernetes, the open-source cloud programme built by the company in collaboration with the Linux Foundation, four years ago. It has since become the most popular platform for managing containerised applications, the company said.

The US-based tech giant is expanding the footprint of its cloud operations to deliver its clients end-to-end business solutions, Harshman said at the annual Google Cloud Summit 2019 in Mumbai.

"We are currently focusing on expanding its sales team and adopting an increasingly long-term ‘customer-for-life’ approach. Our competitive pricing and interoperability across the G-Suite of programmes and apps are unique propositions giving us the edge over other cloud platforms," Harshman said.   

A couple of months ago, GCP had broadened the service’s scope such that Anthos works not just with its own platform, but other cloud providers as well, including its biggest competitors Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure.

“Google Cloud is enabling digital transformation across the world, helping businesses to reach out to customers in a secure manner,” said Nitin Bawankule, country director of Google Cloud. 

With most customers opting for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, the ecosystem is increasingly seeing partnerships among competitors. A couple of days ago, Oracle had partnered with Microsoft to offer interoperability to its clients.

At last year's Google Cloud Summit, Harshman had said that Indian customers' adoption of GCP was being facilitated by the large community of software developers in the country, which is also the second largest in the world after the US.