Google launches IT and cloud consulting business in India
Climbing on board the expanding cloud-based market in India, Google has launched a professional services consulting practice in the country, through which it will provide IT-based consulting solutions to some of the country’s biggest clients.
Google has significantly enhanced its investment into its professional services arm in India, with the aim of training their clients’ staff on key technological processes such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and application building on Google platforms.
The move represents an overall effort to catch up on the cloud services expansion in the country that has already taken place in the form of Amazon Web Services, IBM Softlayer and Microsoft Azure. Google, who have invested over $30 million in their cloud platforms across the world over the last three years, are set to rectify their lack of capitalisation of the Indian market thus far, with the establishment of a cloud centre in Mumbai before the end of the year.
Cloud platforms provide companies with the opportunity to rent Google’s computing and storage capacity. The establishment of a cloud platform in a country requires both extensive marketing-and-sales, as well as engineering expertise to provide professional consulting services, for the purpose of which Google is projected to nearly double its headcount in India. This comes in addition to the wide array of services already offered by Google in India, including the G-Suite services such as Gmail, messaging and Google Drive.
The most striking indicator of Google’s regard for the importance of the Indian IT consulting industry is the plan to establish an Advanced Solutions Lab in India. The lab, which exists with the sole objective of developing solutions for customers of the professional consulting services arm, will be only the second of its kind in the world, the first being located at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.
Regarding its intentions, Google has made clear that it will continue to collaborate with its partners in the country – which include big players such as Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys – denying that it will enter into competition with any of these consulting firms.
When speaking about the plans for professional services in India, the national head of Google Cloud, Mohit Pande said, “We have invested significantly into professional services in India. These are consulting services, change management services for the customers where we work with them to solve some of their most complex problems… India assumes a lot of significance for us. It is a large market where public cloud is set for huge amount of growth. I also think because of the environment in India where internet services are getting better, data is getting cheaper.”
Meanwhile, keen to dispel the concerns of clients that Google may not be directly involved in service delivery, Pande added, “We work with our partners for scale. But professional services are Google-led where it engages with the customer directly. TCS and Infosys can continue to deliver [Google services] but many customers want to engage with us directly, because there are skills that we bring in and areas that we are able to pool in with our engineers.”
