Google Cloud revenues up 54% YoY; Cloud native security is a top priority

Google Cloud revenues increased 54% year over year to $4.62 billion during the second quarter of 2021, parent company Alphabet reported today. Google Cloud’s operating loss shrunk 59%, from $1.42 billion a year ago to $591 million last quarter.

Google Cloud includes both Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and its Workspace (formerly G Suite) cloud computing services and collaboration tools.

Like previous quarters, “GCPs revenue growth was, again, above cloud overall, reflecting significant growth in both infrastructure and platform services,” the company said in a statement.

“As for Google Cloud, we remain focused on revenue growth, and are pleased with the trends we’re seeing across cloud,” Google CFO Ruth Porat said on the company’s 2Q-2021 earnings call today. Porat added that growth in its Google Cloud Platform segment again surpassed overall cloud gains “reflecting significant growth in both infrastructure and platform services.”

“We will continue to invest aggressively, including expanding our go-to-market organization, our channel expansion, our product offerings, and our compute capacity,” she said.

Also on today’s earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai cited security as a competitive differentiator and “our strongest product portfolio.”  Google will continue to invest in security and continue its work to integrate its various security products such as Beyond Corp and Chronicle, he added.

“Cyber threats increasingly are on the mind of not just CIOs but CEOs across our partners. So it’s definitely an area where we are seeing a lot of conversations, a lot of interest…so a definite source of strength and you’ll see us continue to invest here,” he said.

“We are cloud native, we pioneered … zero trust and built the architecture out from a security-first perspective.  Particularly, over the course of the last couple of years, with the recent attacks, [companies] really started thinking deeply about vulnerabilities, supply chain security has been a major source of consensus, cyber threats are increasingly on the mind of, not just CIOs, but CEOs across our partners. So it’s definitely an area where we are seeing a lot of conversations, a lot of interest.”

Google Cloud, along with its other business units, boosted  Alphabet’s revenue 62% year over year, to $61.9 billion. As usual, Google ad revenue represented the biggest piece of the pie. It grew 69% to $50.44 billion.  Retail was the biggest contributor to advertising growth.

Google Cloud holds around 7% market share in the cloud services segment, according to a Canalys report released in April 2021. It trails Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, which hold 32% and 19% market share, respectively.

Microsoft posted financial results Tuesday, its Intelligent Cloud revenue increased 30% to $17.4 billion. The company stated Azure revenue grew of 51%, but did not break out a dollar figure. Amazon is set to report earnings on Thursday.

Along with their hyper-scale cloud competitors Google Cloud is partnering with telecom companies all over the world to help them drive transformation and accelerate 5G adoption and monetization.

Here are a few of their telco partners:

 

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References:

https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q2_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf?cache=4db52a1

https://abc.xyz/investor/

https://www.fiercetelecom.com/financial/google-cloud-revenue-climbs-54-q2

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/google-cloud-losses-shrink-59-revenue-hits-4-6b/2021/07/

https://techblog.comsoc.org/tag/google-cloud/

https://cloud.google.com/solutions/telecommunications

3 thoughts on “Google Cloud revenues up 54% YoY; Cloud native security is a top priority

  1. July 30, 2021 UPDATE:
    Global spending on cloud infrastructure services totaled USD 42-47 billion in the second quarter of 2021, according to two of the latest research reports from Canalys and Synergy. That’s a rise of 36-39% from the same period a year earlier.

    The industry attracted spending of 47 billion in the period, up 36 percent from a year earlier and USD 5 billion higher than the previous quarter, thanks to workload migration and the acceleration of cloud native application development, a study by Canalys showed.

    The pandemic and, more recently, extreme weather events have raised concerns over the long-term disruption from environmental risks, boosting the importance of cloud services, the researchers found.

    The top three cloud service providers attracted 61 percent of total spending in the second quarter, led by Amazon Web Services (AWS) whose income rose 37 percent year on year and had a 31 percent market share, Canalys researchers estimated.

    Microsoft Azure was the second largest cloud service provider, with a 22 percent market share, and its income grew 51 percent year on year while Google was third with an 8 percent market share and with a 66 percent annual rise in income over the quarter.

    According to data from Synergy Research Group, meanwhile, second-quarter enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services totaled USD 42 billion, up USD 2.7 billion quarter on quarter and 39 percent higher than the year-earlier period, marking the fourth successive quarter of year-on-year growth.

    According to Synergy Research’s calculations, Amazon re-established its strong lead in the second quarter with a 33 percent share of the cloud market, thanks to sequential growth of 10 percent. Microsoft and Google accounted for another 30 percent of the market. Synergy added, and the next 20 cloud providers combined had a 28 percent market share.

    Among the companies chasing the top three, those with above average growth rates include Alibaba and four other leading Chinese cloud providers, Synergy said.

    https://www.telecompaper.com/news/global-cloud-infrastructure-industry-worth-usd-42-47-bln-in-q2-research–1392136

  2. “The goal here is to work with the carriers,” explained Sunay Tripathi, Google’s new director and head of products for telecom and the “distributed cloud edge.”

    Tripathi, who spoke at a 5G Future Forum event here, typified the new trend: He cut his teeth at Sun Microsystems before helping to found software-defined networking company Pluribus Networks. For the past three years, he was the CTO of Deutsche Telekom’s MobiledgeX. According to his LinkedIn profile, he joined Google in July. “We are rearchitecting a lot of the underlying network, and that creates a lot of opportunity,” Tripathi explained.

    Google, Microsoft and Amazon have long played in the telecom industry as software, IT and cloud suppliers. And like most modern enterprises across all industries, mobile network operators have increasingly pushed their IT operations into the public cloud.

    But during the past two years, Google, Microsoft and Amazon have all begun developing cloud computing products specifically designed to host wireless providers’ network functions. Whether it’s Microsoft’s Azure for Operators or Google’s Anthos for Telecom, it’s intended to get network operators to put their crown jewels – their core network functions – into a hyperscale cloud.

    And it’s something all three cloud companies are serious about, judging from their telecom hiring sprees or their acquisitions in the space. Microsoft, for example, last year spent an estimated $1.8 billion buying longtime telecom vendors Affirmed Networks and Metaswitch Networks.

    New ideas and new disruption

    According to analysts, the entry of the public cloud hyperscalers represents a major new strategic turn in the industry, considering network operators have historically retained tight control over their networking systems. And though most have been moving toward cloud technologies they own and operate, few have agreed to run their networking software in a public cloud operated by a hyperscaler.

    “In outsourcing the infrastructure to cloud providers, telcos risk losing control of different aspects of their network and technology roadmap over the long term,” warned analyst Frank Rayal of Xona Partners in a post to his website titled “How telcos outsourced their brains.”

    Nonetheless, there are increasing indications that operators around the world are more than open to the idea. “The technologies that we will build [with the cloud] will let others consume our network,” explained Luciano Ramos, SVP of network development, planning and engineering for Rogers Comunications in Canada.

    Indeed, AT&T recently announced it would transition its 5G core network operations into Microsoft’s cloud over the next three years. And Dish Network plans to run all of its network operations in the Amazon Web Services cloud.

    According to Rakuten’s outspoken mobile chief, Tareq Amin, it’s ultimately necessary. He said he designed Rakuten’s mobile network in Japan to natively run in the cloud, and that it required a major shift in his team’s thinking. “I wanted to pick the right mentality” when staffing up Rakuten Mobile, he said. “It was easier to deploy cloud because the Rakuten people wanted to be open to new ideas,” he said. “They were open to new ideas and new disruption.”

    Amin made his comments during a keynote address at the MWC LA show here. He made sure to point out that Rakuten Mobile in Japan now counts around 5 million customers, and boasts leading network metrics. It was essentially Amin’s victory lap after announcing his plan to build such a network just a few years ago, at the MWC Barcelona show in 2019.

    https://www.lightreading.com/service-provider-cloud/that-time-public-cloud-hyperscalers-invaded-mwc-la/a/d-id/773111?

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