Why I Joined Google Cloud

For those of you who know me, I don’t make whimsical decisions and am strategic in my actions. I believe in making decisions with data over intuition, but am willing to take strategic risks based on experiential evidence. I’ve been in the #Telecommunications space for 20+ years and have built a reputation within the ecosystem - vendors and operators - media, and analysts for my insights and technical depth, and my ability to translate that into operational and business value. 

I’ve been a trusted advisor to many - people, established companies, and startups - and value my reputation for focusing on the “industry good” - technology decisions that move the Telecommunications industry forward -  over the ability to help a sales team win a deal. I’ve been a contrarian to some of the more-marketable and prominent perceived-trends that just didn’t match my own data and experiential evidence, and have shared those perspectives openly to force the “meaningful” conversations to happen.

That reputation has followed me across multiple companies - from my start at Cisco to most-recently Dell Technologies - where I’ve been fortunate to grow both my technical acumen and leadership style. At Dell Technologies, I helped build an organization focused on addressing the Telecommunications industry with technology depth in architectures, use-cases, workloads, and operating models first, leading engagements with operators as a partner with a focus on delivering outcomes, ranging from operational efficiency to new business development to applied research.

As I continue to look at the trends driving the Telecommunications industry forward - “open-X” (source, APIs, standards, RAN, etc.), software-defined networking (#SDN, including programmable fabrics, virtualization and cloud native, #automation, artificial intelligence (#AI), #edge computing, it has become clear to me that the public cloud and the Telecommunications industry are inexorably linked over the next decade-plus. 

Public Cloud providers have the ability to unlock their own knowledge in building and operating infrastructure in the ways the Telecommunications industry is looking to do, while also helping enable the vertical industry use-cases that form the foundation of #5G business cases.  From retail to healthcare to hospitality to energy to autonomous vehicles, industry is the platform upon which #5G networks will catalyze societal benefit - in the workplace and our personal lives.  Never before has this been as apparent to me as during the #COVID19 pandemic, which has changed the way we work and play..

To that end, I’ve decided to take on a new challenge, and embrace the opportunity to help a public cloud provider build industry and strategic relevance within the Telecommunications industry, and tackle the complex challenge of transformation side-by-side. I’ve decided to join Google Cloud as Digital Transformation Officer for Telecommunications.

I believe that Google Cloud is uniquely positioned amongst the cloud providers to capture this opportunity for many reasons, most notably:

1. Google Cloud’s extreme willingness to partner with the industry, from operators and integrators  to Network Equipment Providers and smaller Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to application developers
2. Google Cloud’s domain knowledge in architecting, building AND operating virtualized, software-defined networks, at scale and investment into extending that domain knowledge to telecommunications.
3. The depth and breadth of Google Cloud’s technology investments to help address key priorities of the Telecommunications CTO (#network) and CIO (#IT) on the journey towards autonomous networks
4. Google Cloud’s industry leadership in “open” and commitment to contributing back into projects and communities that are driving the network transformation, but also in extending their own technologies outside of Google Cloud, embracing a true “multi-cloud” philosophy
5. Google Cloud’s expertise, experience and ecosystem already-established in enterprise, specifically within the industry verticals that form the foundation of #5G/Telco business opportunity to partner with Telco Product organizations in joint go-to-market

I’m excited to leverage this as an opportunity for my own learning and development, as well. Even for those with technical acumen and industry depth, “The Cloud” is an ephemeral concept until you are immersed in it and Google has its own aura about it which I am excited to witness from the inside. Lastly, I am excited to continue to work closely with the same industry leaders in the Telecommunications industry with whom I’ve built lasting professional and personal relationships, applying a new lens to the challenges and opportunities in front of us.