Google promises channel investment as cloud business burgeons

CEO Sandar Pichai says the firm will bolster sales and distribution channels this year

Google has pledged to invest in its channel ecosystem this year to drive its public cloud growth.

Alphabet, Google's parent company, published its results overnight, with revenue for the year ending 31 December 2018 climbing 23 per cent to $136.8bn (£105.2bn).

Revenue for Google Cloud Platform is not broken out, with Alphabet instead including it in its "other revenues" segment along with its Play app store and hardware units.

Sales for this group of products was up 31 per cent to $6.49bn.

Google CEO Sandar Pichai has typically been coy about revealing how the firm's public cloud business is shaping up, but said that it made a number of large deals over the last 12 months.

On an earnings call, transcribed by Seeking Alpha, he also said that Google will look to strengthen its channel set-up this year.

"One of the things that was evident towards the end of last year is our ability to win very large customers, global 5,000 companies, with multi-year contracts," he claimed.

"It's very clear to us that our product offerings are ready and differentiated and so we want to invest and scale our go-to-market both in terms of direct sales and our channel partnerships, and maybe you will see us focus more on areas where we're clearly seeing returns.

"We will continue to invest in and expand our sales and distribution channels to meet customer demand, so that's going to be an important area for 2019."

Last week the two market leaders, Microsoft and Amazon, both provided snap-shots of their cloud businesses in their quarterly results filings.

Microsoft saw Azure revenue grow 76 per cent, although the actual figure is not released, while market leader Amazon Web Services saw revenue grow 45 per cent to $7.4bn.