GOOGLE CLOUD NEXT, LAS VEGAS – We’ll keep this short and sweet. Plenty has been written already about digital transformation efforts and the fact that a large majority (more than two thirds!) end up flopping. The big question is why.
Well, Phil Davis, Google Cloud's VP of Global GTM for Applications, SaaS and SMB, offered his take. The reason? Humans being human.
“I think the biggest hurdle is the people and the process change that goes with it [digital transformation]. It's not the technology,” he told Fierce at Google Cloud Next this week.
According to Davis, when many folks approach digital transformation initiatives, they’re primarily looking at how to digitize what they already do. Or, put another way, they’re looking to take the same broken processes and move them to the cloud.
"The biggest thing is how do you train people to do things differently," he said. "We see this even with Workspace. People may be used to doing things in a very suboptimal, clunky way and this is a very different, more efficient way to do it. But you have to help train them" during the change process.
We've written before about the cloud skills gap and how upskilling existing employees is key to helping close it.
For its part, Davis said Google Cloud offers an "immense amount" of free training options. But he noted it also heavily relies on its network of more than 100,000 partner companies.
Why outsource the heavy lifting? While Google Cloud is heavily engaged with larger enterprises, the sheer number of small and medium-sized businesses make it a challenge. Even a company like Google can't handle that volume without a little help, he said.
"As you get down and you have millions of customers it gets harder to be engaged with them all, and so the partner network also becomes very important," he concluded.
Catch all of our coverage from Google Cloud Next 2024 right here.