Accelerating digital transformation with industry solutions - Podcast

Most large enterprises started with their own data centers and developed in-house solutions to meet their specific business needs, regulations, and industry specifications. These solutions were based on traditional applications from legacy vendors like Oracle and Microsoft — or even mainframes — and from key technology providers like SAP and VMware. During the last decade, organizations started their digital transformation journey by migrating their IT infrastructure, applications, and data to the cloud to reduce operating costs and gain efficiencies as their needs scaled.

The next step in the journey was to take advantage of cloud-based data analytics, services and scalability to drive business growth and revenue. Rather than offer generic “industry clouds” which require multi-year IT deployments and significant customization, Google Cloud has responded to customer needs by developing production-ready industry solutions that address specific use cases with repeatability across organizations.

These industry solutions are grounded in Google Cloud’s differentiated capabilities, including AI, ML, and data analytics. With these, you can dramatically reduce implementation time and realize value from the cloud more quickly with deep insights into your customers and more efficient interactions with your suppliers and partners. 

Here are some highlights from the That Digital Show Podcast where Umesh Vemuri, VP of Global Strategic Customers and Industries at Google Cloud, discusses his industry strategy.

Why Google Cloud solutions?

The first is our understanding of the consumer from the standpoint of running an ecommerce platform. We have the solutions to run digital platforms at a very large scale, including the engineering practices we bring to support organizations during important high traffic events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

The second example deals with media and entertainment as a whole.  We operate the world’s largest streaming service and support the largest digital platforms currently out there. That means that whatever problems our media customers are experiencing, there’s a good chance we’ve already seen them and know how to deal with them.

Finally, there is our experience with AI and big data. Our leadership in deploying our AI and big data healthcare technologies has given us the experience to solve complex problems — such as techniques to support evidence-based selection, drug therapy, and molecular profiling.”  

B to B to C

“Google is a B to B organization, I always like to add that we are also B to B to C, because the concern the consumer ultimately has is their experiences and the journey that they're on.  Connecting the dots between the business and the consumer experience is really critical and a real big differentiator in how we could better serve our customers.

For example, take Ford Motors. Really think about the challenges they have —  traditional problems around manufacturing, core I. T. modernization and information, and how to remove costs. But then when you really think about the core of the business, how do you actually make this incredible experience for drivers of Ford vehicles?  What do you want to do from an infotainment perspective? What do you want to do in speech-to-text conversion?

And suddenly your business is really a direct-to-consumer experience. Ultimately, all the infrastructure and technology is designed to provide the consumer — who's ultimately buying that vehicle — with an amazing experience that will maintain their loyalty.

From this example, we can see this kind of linkage in every industry: from retail and e-commerce, media, and direct streaming to healthcare with direct telehealth.”

Solutions that transform the consumer experience

“The consumer's expectations are constantly shifting and we have to be able to provide the technologies, the structure, and the solutions to our customers to be able to meet those changing expectations at that consumer level. 

So first, we want to be very clear on the industry segments that we're going to focus on and what we believe our clear differentiation will be. So we’ve focussed on ten industries including: retail, financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, media and entertainment, healthcare and life sciences, education, government, supply chain and logistics and gaming.

Second, we really have to be very prescriptive about the solution pillars in the areas where our customers tell us we have challenges.  We want to build solutions that solve not only today’s issues, but the problems of the future.

And third, in those pillars, we have to be very clear on what are the specific use cases that we think have high value for our customers.  Then make these available as a catalog of actual products and production-ready solutions that we and our partners in the ecosystem provide.” 

Google Cloud industry solutions focus on our top ten industries where we can provide differentiated value to organizations. Whether it’s discovery in retail, AI-enabled call centers, or automotive tools for connected cars, we are delivering  production-ready solutions that are ready to implement with minimum customization.  To hear the full version of Umesh’s talk about his industry solution strategy, listen to the podcast on Google’s That Digital Show.