How partners can maximize their 2023 opportunity with the transformation cloud

The excitement at Next ‘22 this year was inescapable.  We celebrated a number of exciting announcements and wins that show where the cloud is heading, and what that means for our partners and customers.  As we close out 2022 and finalize our plans for 2023, I wanted to provide a perspective on the most important partner developments from the event to help you hit the ground running next year.

Google Cloud’s transformation cloud was front and center throughout our entire event. This powerful technology platform is designed to accelerate digital transformation for any organization by bringing five business-critical capabilities to our shared customers:

1. The ability to build open data clouds to derive insights and intelligence from data.

2. Open infrastructure that enables customers to run applications and store data where it makes the most sense.

3. A culture of collaboration built on Google Workspace that brings people together to connect and create from anywhere, enabling teams to achieve more.

4. The same trusted environment that Google uses to secure systems, data, apps, and customers from fraudulent activity, spam, and abuse.

5. And a foundational platform that uses efficient technology and innovation to drive cost savings and create a more sustainable future for everyone.

More than just vision, the transformation cloud is delivering results today. British fashion retailer Mulberry and partner Datatonic have built data clouds to drive a 25% increase in online sales. Vodafone in EMEA is working with our partner Accenture to migrate and modernize its entire infrastructure.  Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey is working with partner Citrix to leverage our infrastructure and Google Workspace to modernize its systems, enable collaboration, reduce costs, bolster security, and provide better patient and practitioner experiences. Many more transformation stories are available here and in our partner directory.

For our partners, the transformation cloud is your customer satisfaction engine. It enables you to bring new capabilities to market that customers cannot get anywhere else – from overcoming challenges around organizational management, to demand forecasting, supply-chain visibility, and more – all of this is possible only with the capability of our Data, AI/ML, collaboration and security tools.

Thomas Kurian and Kevin Ichhpurani provided excellent insight and guidance for partners looking to begin, or accelerate, their journey with the transformation cloud in their Next ‘22 partner keynote. Briefly, here are the three steps partners can take now to set themselves up for success in 2023:

Customers expect you to be deeply specialized in cloud solutions and their business 

Customers have made it clear they expect to work with partners who are deeply knowledgeable about the technology solutions and foundational elements of the transformation cloud. Just as important, it’s no longer good enough for partners to offer a small group of highly trained individuals to do it all. Customers need deep cloud expertise within specific business functions and even within global regions. 

They need people who know how to leverage our cloud solutions to achieve great outcomes for finance departments, human resources, customer service, operations, and more. And more than that, customers need people who are also experts at driving these kinds of transformations within regional environments defined by unique policies, compliance requirements, and even cultural issues. This is a tall order, but it’s absolutely critical to your growth and success. 

This is why Google Cloud is investing in the tools, training, and support you need to expand your bench of trained and certified individuals.

Second, increase your focus on consumption and service delivery to land and expand opportunities.

The demand here is significant and growing. In its 2022 Global IT Market Outlook, analyst firm Canalys stated that partner-delivered IT products and services will account for more than 73% of the total global IT market this year and into next year (about even with its 2021 forecast, which suggests that services remain in high demand). This includes managed services such as cloud infrastructure and software services, managed databases, managed data warehouses, managed analytic tools, and more. These are high-margin endeavors for partners. Equally important, these kinds of services allow your customers to shift their people from managing technology to managing and growing the business.

As Thomas Kurian said during his Next ‘22 remarks, Google Cloud is not in the services business–that’s the domain of our partners. We are a product and technology company. This is why we have a partner-led service delivery commitment, and a goal of bring partners into 100% of customer engagements. 

Third, we are investing to help Google Cloud partners drive consumption and new business. 

We know you are focused on growing your customer engagements and accelerating customers’ time to value. We’re here to support you:

• Our Smart Analytics platform is a key market differentiator that enables partners to tap into the fast growing Data & Analytics market, which is expected to hit $500B by 2024.¹

• We are investing $10 billion in cybersecurity and our recent acquisition of Mandiant extends our leadership in this area by combining offense and defense in powerful new ways.

• Governments worldwide are looking for sovereign cloud solutions to meet their security, privacy, and digital sovereignty requirements. Google Cloud has a highly differentiated solution in this area, and partnerships are critical. We are driving to validate all of our ISV partner solutions through our Cloud Ready - Sovereign Solutions initiative.

• We are providing increasing resources and support to help partners embed the capabilities of Google Workspace in their solutions.

• We continue to allow customers to buy partner solutions and decrement their commits just like with Google Cloud products.

You’ll see more from us on all of this in kick off 2023. The opportunity to prosper – Google, partners, and customers alike – is tremendous. I’ve never been more excited about the year ahead.

^{1. IDC Forecast Companies to spend 342 B on AI Solutions in 2021}