Google snaps up VMware co-founder in cloud push

Google announce all cloud divisions to combine into one unit under the leadership of Diane Greene

Google has hired VMware co-founder Diane Greene to lead its new-look cloud business.

Google divisions including Google for Work, Cloud Platform, and Google Apps, will be joined to "bring together product, engineering, marketing and sales and allow us to operate in a much more integrated, coordinated fashion", Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, said in a statement.

Pichai said Greene - who co-founded VMware and served as its CEO from 1998 to 2008 - is the perfect candidate to lead this new cloud division.

"Cloud computing is revolutionising the way people live and work, and there is no better person to lead this important area," he said. "We're also lucky that Diane [Greene] has agreed to remain on Google's board of directors (she has already served three years here) - as she has a huge amount of operational experience that will continue to help the company."

As well as announcing the arrival of Greene, Google also said it has acquired a company she founded - Bebop - which is a development platform to maintain and build enterprise applications.

"We think this will help many more businesses find great applications, and reap the benefits of cloud computing," Pichai said.

The new announcements form part of Google's efforts to expand its cloud proposition.

"More than 60 per cent of the Fortune 500 are actively using a paid Google for Work product. And all of Google's own businesses run on our cloud infrastructure. Including our own services, Google has significantly larger datacentre capacity than any other public cloud provider," he said.

"All of this demonstrates great momentum, but it's really just the beginning. In fact, only a tiny fraction of the world's data is currently in the cloud - most businesses and applications aren't cloud-based yet. This is an important and fast-growing area for Google and we're investing for the future."