Still Skeptical About Google in the (MarTech) Enterprise
At its recent annual conference, Google made a bevy of announcements about its Cloud platform, prompting some observers to consider that the company was taking yet another run at enterprise business customers. I'm skeptical....less that Google might try, and more that it would fail.
Recurring Theme
GSA - case study of the many things that Google does well, and some of the crushing areas where it fails.
G Suite
Mostly stayed away from business-facing applications. Consumer search and base-level cloud services to compete with AWS, Azure, and others.
Rethinking
At least two things have pundits wondering about a broader scope here.
Ecommerce
Hires
Still Skeptical
Google could become a major MarTech or Digital Workplace player, but I doubt it. Not in the culture to work directly with customers, and major enterprises don't always want to work with a reseller model.
Changing cultures is almost impossible without changing a lot of people. A friend of mine works as a product manager for a software company trying to convert their solution from an OEM play to a platform sold directly to enterprise customers. It's proven a nearly impossible transition for the current mix of developers, project managers, consultants, and support staff. Their expertise and experience set is all around serving other ISVs and not enterprise customers.
My hunch is Google will face the same hurdles, and will join Microsoft and Amazon in concluding that providing core developer and infrastructure services to true ISVs and large enterprise IT departments remains the best play.
What do you think? Share on your favorite network below.