Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said he plans to expand the business' sales team to better compete in the cloud-computing market, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Three things to know:
1. Mr. Kurian, a former Oracle executive, said at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco earlier this month that Alphabet had already been building up its spending on sales and distribution for the cloud before his arrival, and he plans to ramp up these efforts.
2. Google Cloud accounted for 3.3 percent of the cloud infrastructure market in 2017, the most recent period that research firm Gartner released estimates for. By contrast, Amazon made up 51.8 percent of the market and Microsoft represented 13.3 percent. Amazon and Microsoft offer "robust sales and service staffs that large corporate customers demand to support their technology needs," according to WSJ.
3. Mr. Kurian is mirroring part of his former employer's strategy, WSJ notes. Oracle built a massive sales staff with expertise in various industries, and Mr. Kurian plans to pursue this type of market specialization at Google Cloud as well. For example, at the conference he shared that sales representatives who work with financial companies should be able to "talk the language of banking."