Brian Kane: Scaling GenAI Ecosystems with Google Cloud

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
All right, hey everyone. It's Tuesday, Tuesday. No, it's Wednesday. Oh my gosh, the week's going so fast. Day two. Day two started yesterday, and gosh, what a great event. We're here in Las Vegas.

Brian Kane  0:14  
That's right, yeah, we're at Google Cloud Next this year, we're at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, and over 30,000 people attending this amazing, I've been told, including over 6000 partners. So really, really, a ton of energy and a really great event. So far,

Chip Rodgers  0:31  
it's great. And Kevin was saying yesterday, double the number of partners this year from from just eight months ago and in San Francisco, which is amazing.

Brian Kane  0:38  
That's right. And of course, the theme, as as everyone can probably imagine, is AI. AI, not only for the actual model providers and the tool providers and the AI natives, but really AI across all partner types, and in my world, across all ISVs,

Chip Rodgers  0:57  
that's it's amazing. There were some incredible demos that that TK showed, and yesterday, and then, and then great stories that, you know, Kevin was talking about with ice, with the IBMs, the industry, value networks, and just so much going on with Google and and working with partners.

Brian Kane  1:15  
Yeah, that's right. And, you know, I'm focused a lot on our ISV and marketplace motion and so, a lot of exciting momentum there, and a lot of just exciting meetings and developments that I'm happy to talk to you about.

Chip Rodgers  1:34  
Yeah, yeah. So, so, so, this is Brian Kane. Brian is, you know, heads up for ISVs transformation and strategy. Just really excited to have you Brian. Brian actually has incredible background with Google now for about two and a half years with AWS, previously long background with Microsoft. You were with peloton for quite a length in your career and just a lot of technology, great technology companies helping, helping build solutions for customers. So Brian, maybe let's start with your role. And you know, ISVs are so important, I think to Google it's, it's everywhere. We're here, actually, we're here in the in the partner lounge, the Partner Summit lounge, a ton of partners everywhere, and tell me a little bit about the this, what it is, what your role is, and how, how Google sees ISVs, in, in their in go to market.

Brian Kane  2:34  
Yeah, absolutely happy to so in my role, I'm a part of the global ISV and marketplace team, and I'm really focused on furthering a lot of our areas of strategic focus. So to kind of summarize this for all your viewers, first and foremost, marketplace is our route to market. So working with work span and working with other partners to help ISVs really realize that potential is first and foremost. The second focus area, which is related is really unlocking the indirect channel. So we know talking to ISVs, many of them are over 50% fulfilled through resellers, through system integrators, through managed service providers, in some cases like security. Some of the research firms, like canalist, have said over 90% so a big focus of marketplace this year is not only growing marketplace, which we're seeing, but also unlocking the indirect channel, which we know increasingly for ISVs is an area of focus. We were just both in a session with three partners, and Steven orben around coopetition. So that's another focus area where we have ISV partners who are partners and sometimes compete within specific workloads, and getting really smart about how we approach those situations where the customer is always first, where we're competing, but we're competing fairly, and then ultimately becoming closer partners as a result, is a big area that we're focused on, and then finally winning in key strategic industry verticals is A big focus throughout the event this week, particularly around retail, financial services, media and entertainment, telecon, gaming and health care, a lot of great customer examples and partner examples.

Chip Rodgers  4:33  
That's the work that Paula and team are doing with the IBMs that's really an incredible initiative and very exciting, bringing bringing multiple partners to get services. Partner ISVs Google together to build create solutions, bring them to market for specific use cases in industries. Yeah,

Brian Kane  4:52  
that's right, and I'd love for you to chime in as well, because I know you're helping us and working with us on industry value networks. So just so people kind of understand what we're trying to do there, what we're trying to do is really bring together the whole ecosystem, particularly with AI. So if you imagine that you're a retail customer, you're not just going to be working with Google. You're likely not actually going to be just working with Google and SI, but probably also multiple ISVs and data providers. It really goes back to just the ethos of building an ecosystem. And there's this opportunity statement of, how do you bring everyone together, and how do you get everyone aligned and serving that customer? So a big focus of how we're going to kind of bring together the ecosystem is industry value networks or IBMs, where within specific industries, we've talked to actual customers and validated with them. What are the use cases you care about the most? And then what we're trying to do is bring together the right partners. And so, for example, in that AI example I was alluding to, if you're a customer, you might need to choose the right model. And we've got over 130 models to choose from within our model garden, you then are going to need to get your enterprise data, enterprise ready and ready for AI. So you're likely going to use multiple ISVs from that sort of end to end data modernization journey. And then you're probably going to want industry data to ground and train and prevent hallucinations within your model. So you're likely going to work with a data provider, and then, of course, a system integrator or a service partner, as we would say, to guide you overall, through so really exciting around IVMS, and also curious for your perspective, because I know you're involved here,

Chip Rodgers  6:46  
yeah, no, it's, it is, I mean, it's, it's the ultimate ecosystem play, right? Because it's it, as you said, it's, you've got multiple partners. It's Google Plus, a service provider plus, and I, you know, I could be multiple ISVs, data provider. So you and how do you coordinate? How do you all work together to co sell together, make sure that you're aligned on the go to market and going after opportunities together, arm in arm, as a sort of virtual account team across companies. So it's, it's, it's exciting. What's what's to come?

Brian Kane  7:19  
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think, as you, you know, you kind of take a step back. I mean, just for me personally, I joined Microsoft right out of college, and I was actually a traveling public presenter, and this was pre Azure, so we had just started to talk about, back in those days, in my former life, hosted Exchange and hosted SharePoint, and there's just a lot of discussion of like, Man, I don't know why I wouldn't just buy my own server. And so it's incredible to sort of see the just the waves of change that are ultimately, you know, the waves were all surfing, and so depending who you talk to, the majority of workloads are still on premises. So as big as the overall software and cloud spaces, it's only getting bigger. It

Chip Rodgers  8:10  
is amazing how it's we all think, you know, digital transformation was going on for so long that we're, we've got to be pretty far down the road, but it's like, we're only like, scratch the surface, like, you know, maybe 20% or something like that. So there's a lot of opportunity for partners to, you know, bring real customer value. So,

Brian Kane  8:29  
yeah, absolutely. And, you know, obviously at Google Cloud, we're, we're really excited to work with all of our partners in my world, especially ISVs, to bring that to life.

Chip Rodgers  8:41  
Brian, thanks so much for taking a few minutes and sharing some things about what the what the your team and and you know, Kevin and Steven and Mark and wit and the whole the whole team are all die, are all doing to to make it a reality for for customers and for partners. So thanks for taking the time. Thank you chip All right, and thank you all for joining as well, and we'll see you. See you next time. Thanks, everybody. Yeah.

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