Why a Key Google Cloud Product Ended Up Generating Less Than 0.1% of Revenue
The business failure of a Anthos may indicate an uncomfortable reality for the cloud computing industry: IT departments are resistant to change.
Three months after becoming CEO of Google Cloud, Thomas Kurian tried to shake up the cloud market and gain an edge on his bigger rivals, Amazon and Microsoft. He launched a service called Anthos to make it easier for businesses to host their websites and applications in private data centers and on Google Cloud as well as in clouds operated by Amazon and others—all at the same time.
The move appeared to make sense. The top two Google Cloud customers by revenue, Snap and Apple, had already adopted a multicloud approach, hosting their data and apps across several different public cloud providers rather than relying on one firm alone. Other big companies using Amazon Web Services and Microsoft had also done so.
The catch with Google’s Anthos service is that it requires customers to deploy a more sophisticated approach to developing their business applications and managing data, one that suits younger firms better than older enterprises. As it has turned out, relatively few new customers were able to adopt this approach or interested in trying it with Anthos.