https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/24/how-google-cloud-learned-to-embrace-its-partner-ecosystem/

Google Cloud’s annual Next event is happening in San Francisco next week (and we’ll be on the ground to cover all of the announcements), but ahead of the event, Google Cloud today put a spotlight on its partner ecosystem. It’s no secret that in its early days, Google’s cloud efforts were somewhat hindered by its inexperience in working with large enterprises and the consultancies, professional service firms and partners they rely on. But when Thomas Kurian took on the CEO role in 2019, he set Google Cloud on a path to build out that expertise and an open partner ecosystem, which is now starting to pay off.

In a blog post today, Google puts its focus on its AI and data services partners like Confluent, DataRobot, MongoDB, Redis, Datastax, Elastic and Neo4j. Given the current hype around generative AI, that’s perhaps no surprise, but this is also the story of Google Cloud learning how to sell to enterprises and embracing more traditional ways of selling to them.