I think Diane Green did an incredible job building Google Cloud and more almost from scratch. Most especially in a company that traditionally has not been remotely enterprise-focused.
Google Cloud fairly quickly became a true and clear force in the market, and arguably, the most developer-friendly option. She took them from <1% to 10%+ market share, which is pretty darn impressive:
But catching up with AWS’s huge headstart will be waaaay hard.
And I suspect Google came to the conclusion that adding some of Microsoft’s more enterprise-focused approach (which established them as the default “second choice” for many enterprise customers and especially multi-cloud customers) was some additional DNA they needed.
Diane Green of course has this DNA, too AND the founder and developer cred. She founded VMware, after all.
For the next phase, it seems like Google wanted someone that was not just enterprise fluent, but enterprise sales + marketing first. Someone that would use that enterprise sales + marketing playbook for the next stage of Google Cloud, and grab some of Microsoft’s momentum in the space as well.
So they recruited a top sales+marketing leader from Oracle for the next phase.
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