Google Cloud's new hybrid cloud offering makes serious play for enterprise

New CEO unveils Anthos product as well as outlining strategy targeting enterprise customers

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian's previous commitment to accelerate growth has taken shape in the form of Anthos, its new hybrid cloud platform.

Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, introduced both the new offering and Kurian during the opening keynote at the Google Cloud Next event in San Francisco.

"Cloud is one of the largest areas of investment for Google as a company and we are in it for the very long term," Pichai said.

Anthos allows customers to run their applications on existing on-premise hardware or in the public cloud. It also enables users to manage workloads running on rival platforms Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

"Anthos is based on Kubernetes, runs on-premise, but also supports multi and hybrid cloud environments and is fully managed by Google," Pichai explained to the assembled audience.

"It brings together the simplicity of open source platforms, our deep tech expertise and the freedom to choose the right cloud partner for your job.

"It lets you write once and run your jobs anywhere: in our cloud, in your datacentre or other cloud providers. It allows you to use the technologies you're already using while improving security. We have built Anthos to be simple, flexible and secure."

He then handed the baton to former Oracle exec Thomas Kurian, who took over as Google Cloud boss from Diane Green earlier this year.

Kurian (pictured at the event above) was making his Next debut and expanded on the opportunities Anthos brings to customers.

He stated that the new hybrid cloud offering was the result of listening to what customers wanted from their cloud provider and that those demands have been met in three ways.

Anthos allows users to have a technology stack that they can run in their own datacentre, next to workloads they can't yet move to the cloud, he explained.

It also offers a single programming model that gives clients the choice and flexibility to move workloads unchanged to Google Cloud, or any other cloud provider, as well as allowing them to manage the infrastructure across multiple clouds in a consistent manner.

"When you came to Next…you probably never thought you would see the ability to build a workload, run it in your datacentre and have that workload be movable to Google Cloud or any other public cloud provider with zero change," he told the audience.

Vendor partners such as Cisco and VMware made appearances alongside Kurian to pump up the Anthos product.

Pichai had told investors earlier this year that the company would be focusing on both its channel ecosystem and going after more enterprise customers to gain more share in the public cloud space, where Google trails behind AWS and Azure.

Kurian re-emphasised this on-stage, highlighting the vendor's strategy to help customers undergo digital transformation, particularly targeting enterprise customers.

"We want to be the best strategic partner to organisations that are choosing their digital transformation journey and we believe we can do that in two ways," stated the CEO.

"First, by bringing expertise to help [customers] on that journey and, second, to be the easiest cloud provider to do business with," he stated.

He added that Google would be expanding its sales force as well as its tech teams, simplifying its pricing and making contracting easier in order to achieve these goals.

Promises were also made to partners, as Kurian highlighted the regard in which Google held its channel partners.

"We recognise partners are very important to Google and are broadening our partner reach and introducing a number of new enhancements in our partner programme," he said.

"We are very grateful to all partners who have done so much to help us further our mission to being successful as a digital transformation provider."