Google is expanding its efforts to get more businesses to notice its array of cloud computing technologies.
Google’s cloud platform team will hold live events in five major cities this June where it will have customers and developers talk about their experiences with the company’s cloud computing technology.
The events are a bid by Google to give current and potential customers a firsthand look at how people are using its cloud computing platform. The event series is titled “Next” and will be held in New York; San Francisco; Tokyo; Amsterdam, Netherlands; and London next month.
A Google spokeswoman on Thursday said the company has more event locations in the works, but did not disclose where or when those events will be held.
The Next series will feature case studies from companies such as Avaya, Snapchat, DeNA and Outfit7. The goal is to give people who attend the events a flavor of how such companies are using Google cloud technologies in mobile, big data, network and compute-intensive applications.
Also featured at the events will be representatives from several Google partners, including PwC, Fastly, Tableau and Equinix. Each partner will share details on products and services they offer to help enterprises with data-intensive workloads use cloud technologies more effectively.
In addition, there will be hands-on labs at the events where businesses will have an opportunity to take a closer look at Google’s cloud offering and even get some training on them, according to the company.
Each event will feature a developer stream and an IT business stream. Planned sessions include a developer’s guide to the Google cloud platform and sessions on the company’s Kubernetes container technology and alternatives to Google’s MapReduce big data technology. Business stream sessions will include presentations from several Google technology partners.
The events are open to all comers, and registration is free.
Google’s planned global event series builds on the company’s efforts to attract more enterprise interest in its cloud computing platform. The company’s cloud platform business has been growing at a steady clip. Year-over-year, its cloud infrastructure services business grew over 80 percent, according to Synergy Research.
The company ranks only behind Amazon and Microsoft in terms of market share growth. Yet, Google’s overall cloud market share of 5 percent lags far behind Amazon’s dominating 30 percent and well behind Microsoft’s 10 percent market share.
In a Piper Jaffray survey of CIOs earlier this year, existing customers of Google said they expect to buy more cloud services from Google this year. At the same time, when the CIOs in the survey were asked to choose their preferred cloud vendor, only about 7 percent chose Google, compared with 12 percent who said the same thing last year. The Piper Jaffray report did not offer any explanations for the apparent decline in Google’s popularity among CIOs over the past year.
