{"id":37662,"date":"2019-02-05T12:23:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T12:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cloudcomputing-news.net\/news\/2019\/feb\/05\/google-boasts-strong-cloud-performance-q4-shy-over-revealing-specifics\/"},"modified":"2019-02-05T12:23:33","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T12:23:33","slug":"google-boasts-strong-cloud-performance-in-q4-but-is-shy-over-revealing-specifics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/google-boasts-strong-cloud-performance-in-q4-but-is-shy-over-revealing-specifics\/","title":{"rendered":"Google boasts strong cloud performance in Q4 \u2013 but is shy over revealing specifics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cloudcomputing-news.net\/media\/img\/news\/iStock-458475271_1_w1YAfxi.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\">Google has claimed that the number of its cloud deals exceeding $1 million has &lsquo;more than doubled&rsquo; over the past 12 months in what it called a &lsquo;strong&rsquo; year &ndash; yet remained reticent in disclosing details over run rates.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\">The company&rsquo;s fourth quarter and fiscal year results, published late yesterday, saw Google&rsquo;s &lsquo;other&rsquo; revenues &ndash; of which Google Cloud is a part &ndash; hit $6.49 billion (&pound;4.99bn) for the most recent quarter, representing a 30% increase from this time last year. Indeed, this quarterly figure was a 39% uptick from Q318. Total yearly revenues across the business went up 23% to $136.8bn.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\">&ldquo;Google Cloud closed out [a] strong year with momentum across the business,&rdquo; Google CEO Sundar Pichai told analysts in an earnings call. &ldquo;Our focus on helping customers digitally transform their business is paying off.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\">Here&rsquo;s what we know from the call:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Google has &lsquo;more than doubled&rsquo; the number of both its $1 million cloud deals and multi-year contracts signed, while the number of blockbuster $100 million deals has also risen<\/li>\n<li>Google&rsquo;s cloud arm saw the most new employees in this quarter for both technical and sales roles<\/li>\n<li>More than five million paying customers have signed up for collaboration tool G Suite<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\">Yet responding to an analyst question, Google chief financial officer Ruth Porat did not go into more specific detail on Google&rsquo;s cloudy revenues. &ldquo;In terms of growth, cloud does continue to deliver sizeable revenues growth driven by [Google Cloud Platform] and GCP does remain one of the fastest-growing businesses across Alphabet,&rdquo; said Purat, before emphasising the deals already outlined.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\">The biggest news by far from the most recent quarter was the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cloudcomputing-news.net\/news\/2018\/nov\/19\/diane-greene-step-down-google-cloud-ceo-analysing-past-three-years-and-future\/\" style=\"color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline\">departure of Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene<\/a> after three years in the role, with Oracle veteran Thomas Kurian taking over. As Greene put it in her farewell letter, upon taking over in 2015 Google Cloud had &lsquo;two significant customers and a collection of startups&rsquo;, with the enterprise push ongoing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\">Some have argued this push has not been fast enough, from analysts to former employees. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cloudcomputing-news.net\/news\/2018\/oct\/09\/google-cloud-exec-laments-delayed-enterprise-focus-and-chasing-competition-farewell-post\/\" style=\"color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline\">In October<\/a> Amir Hermelin, formerly product management lead at Google Cloud, argued the company&rsquo;s two biggest mistakes during his tenure were dallying over the enterprise market and focusing too much on Amazon and Microsoft.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\">As Hermelin and Greene both noted, however, Google&rsquo;s focus on machine learning was where it could differentiate. &ldquo;There is an important long-term investment that lays the groundwork for our future computing needs, primarily to accelerate machine learning across our businesses &ndash; but also to support the opportunities we see in cloud, search, ads, and YouTube,&rdquo; Pichai told analysts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\">Nevertheless, a clear theme from the earnings call was around clearing the fog of obfuscation around its &lsquo;other&rsquo; revenues. Amazon gives its AWS revenues clearly, as does Alibaba for Alibaba Cloud, while Microsoft gives percentage increases if not total specifics around Azure.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\">According to Synergy Research, in its figures analysing all the major cloud players for the most recent quarter, Google holds 7% market share alongside IBM. Amazon continues to hold more than one third (34%) of the market, with Microsoft a clear second on 15% and Alibaba on 5%. Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba all increased market share over the past 12 months &ndash; though Synergy noted IBM&rsquo;s focus differs given its strength in hosted private cloud services rather than public IaaS.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\">&ldquo;Q4 tops off a banner year for the cloud market with the annual growth rate actually nudging up from the previous year, which is an unusual phenomenon for a high-growth market of this scale,&rdquo; said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\">&ldquo;The rate at which the market leaders continue to expand is really rather impressive,&rdquo; added Dinsdale, noting this continued performance has forced the analyst firm to review and increase its five-year market forecast. &ldquo;Inevitably there will be a few road bumps along the way, but these will be minor relative to the factors that continue to drive the market.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cybersecuritycloudexpo.com\/\" style=\"color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline\"><span style=\"color:blue\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"https:\/\/www.cybersecuritycloudexpo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/cyber-security-world-series-1.png\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cybersecuritycloudexpo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/cyber-security-world-series-1.png\" style=\"height:59px; width:272px\" \/><\/span><\/a><strong>Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases<\/strong>? Attend the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cybersecuritycloudexpo.com\/\" style=\"color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline\">Cyber Security &amp; Cloud Expo World Series<\/a> with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google has claimed that the number of its cloud deals exceeding $1 million has &lsquo;more than doubled&rsquo; over the past 12 months in what it called a &lsquo;strong&rsquo; year &ndash; yet remained reticent in disclosing details over run rates.<br \/>\nThe&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37662"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37676,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37662\/revisions\/37676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}