When Old School still Kicks A$$

During his time at Oracle, Kurian was looked up to by many of his staff, and after more than 20 years there were even whispers he was being groomed to replace Mark Hurd, the current Oracle CEO. Listening to him speak a few times across six Oracle Open World (OOW) outings since 2012, Kurian knows his stuff, and he is technical but able to break down the technical jargons for a less tech savvy audience.

The last time I saw him, he was surrounded by security and his assistants, but I reached over to shake his hand.

Fast forward to today, and it has been over a month since former Oracle exec, Thomas Kurian took over the reins of Google Cloud from Diane Greene. It is an unexpected move, and many may need some time to digest this because Oracle could be seen as the exact opposite of Google, in terms of culture and offerings.

And yet, Kurian’s experience, knowledge and leadership of a large portfolio of cloud products may help him fill the gaps that Google Cloud is facing now.

Rumours are rife that he had a falling out with Oracle founder, Larry Ellison over cloud strategy – Kurian wanted to put Oracle solutions on public clouds, but Ellison can be seen to be ruthless about keeping things within the Oracle family and not wanting to play with others. His jibes at competitors during his annual conference keynotes are also legendary.

Right now, an acquisition is on the cards for Google Cloud, to help them better round up their offerings and go-to-market. Media outlets like TechCrunch think it’s a toss between Nutanix, a hyperconverged software and appliance player which can give Google Cloud some play in the hybrid cloud arena, or ServiceNow, an IT Service Management (ITSM) company.

Maybe Google Cloud via Alphabet, will acquire both.

Time will tell.

IT BYTES BACK! says: An old-school exec that led a large enterprise portfolio trying very hard to transition to cloud, may be just what the doctor ordered for a young cloud company trying to be enterprise-friendly.