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Executive column: Google Cloud eyes traditional enterprises
Tim Synan (JP)Google Cloud has joined a number of multinational tech firms such as Dell, Lenovo and Microsoft in targeting Indonesia’s traditional enterprises, which are currently undergoing a digital transformation as the country marches on with its Industry 4
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Tim Synan (JP)
Google Cloud has joined a number of multinational tech firms such as Dell, Lenovo and Microsoft in targeting Indonesia’s traditional enterprises, which are currently undergoing a digital transformation as the country marches on with its Industry 4.0 roadmap.
Google Cloud’s more prominent Indonesian clientele include big internet companies such as Go-Jek, Tokopedia and Traveloka, yet these firms — for all their regional fame — contributed 2.7 percent (worth US$27 billion) to Indonesia’s GDP last year.
The International Data Corporation (IDC), in recognizing cloud technology’s foundational role in growing the local start-up scene and local digital economy, predicted that Indonesian companies will spend $500 million on public cloud services by 2022.
Google set the ball rolling two years ago when it began cofinancing a high-speed fiber optic internet cable, then announced a year later that it would establish a cloud region in Indonesia.
The company is last year’s third-most popular cloud provider, with a 9.5 percent market share worldwide, following Amazon (32.3 percent) and Microsoft (16.5 percent), according to research firm Canalys.
The Jakarta Post’s Norman Harsono met with Tim Synan, head of Google Cloud Southeast Asia, in Central Jakarta to discuss the company’s expansion strategy in the country. Here is an excerpt of the interview.
Question: How is Google Cloud’s expansion progressing in Indonesia?
Answer: We have a strong small-and medium-business user base that cuts across both Google Cloud and G-Suite (Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and so on). We’re penetrating more meaningfully into larger digital natives like Go-Jek, Traveloka, Tokopedia, Tiket.com and Blibli. Retail ecommerce has been a bright spot for us here.
Traditional conglomerates are also leveraging our cloud platforms to modernize their backend systems while also sort of migrating their digital frontend. It’s a nice path for us prior to us having the Google Cloud region in Jakarta.
When can we expect the cloud platform region and fiber optic cable to be operational?
We are looking for that opening sometime next year, in 2020, so enterprises can avail themselves of our cloud services here in Jakarta. As for the project Indigo fiber optic cable, it should be operational by mid-2019
How will the company expand market penetration in Indonesia?
We will work closely with other Google business arms, whether advertising, YouTube or Android. We are trying to fit within that ecosystem as we continue to drive digital transformation with other business arms.
What is the company’s strategy in capturing traditional enterprises?
We’ll be doing three things to capitalize on traditional enterprises. Firstly, we will be focusing on particular verticals that have a lot of concentrated IT spending: financial services, insurance, public sector health care, communications, media and entertainments, manufacturing (both discrete and process), retail and ecommerce.
Secondly, we’ll also focus on the specific workloads that differentiate us, which include modernization, hybrid and multicloud deployment, data management and data analytics.
Thirdly, underpinning all that is security. We want to continue investments in what we perceive to be our advantages in security.
Enterprises don’t necessarily talk about “Why should I move to cloud?” but “How do I get to the cloud?” and “How are you going to improve my security posture once I’m on the cloud?”
Many traditional enterprises struggle with digital transformation. What will be Google’s approach in helping these enterprises?
It’s not something that happens overnight, so we spend a lot of time educating and understanding our clients. We educate them on our idea of digital transformation, on developing modern applications like Kubernetes and on organizing IT services to support new capabilities, among other things. Not every organization has robust DevOps and teams that are really following agile methodology.
We also fundamentally believe that customers want choice, so we’re also doubling down on our hybrid cloud and multicloud strategy. It’s a given that not everything can be deployed in the cloud. Some organizations, because of their nature, will retain their applications on-premise, but others will put it on someone else’s cloud — then hopefully on our cloud.
The trepidation to change is not unique to Indonesian businesses; I see that in every market that I cover in Southeast Asia. But I do see certain Indonesian companies exporting their know-how, their brands, to put the country’s digital economy on the map.
How do you see the future of the cloud market in Indonesia?
We wouldn’t be investing in Indonesia if we thought the market couldn’t sustain it. We’re at the very start of this cloud journey. One statistic is that enterprises have only deployed 5 percent of their applications to the cloud. That number may have increased by a percentage point. Now, if we think about how long our competitors have been doing this, that’s a lot of runway for growth.
