Ankur Jain to take over Google Cloud's global telecom biz

The telecom business within Google Cloud is getting new leadership. A company representative confirmed to Light Reading that Ankur Jain will soon take over Google Cloud's global telecom business and products from Amol Phadke.

The move comes shortly before the start of the company's annual Google Cloud Next trade show in San Francisco. At the event, the company hopes to highlight its progress in the telecom industry with speakers ranging from Vodafone CTO Scott Petty to Jochen Appel, VP of network automation at Deutsche Telekom.

According to the Google Cloud representative, Phadke had previously reported to Jain. Now, Jain will assume Phadke's responsibilities. Phadke will depart Google later this month for an undisclosed "new opportunity."

Google Cloud entered the telecom market in 2020, shortly after Thomas Kurian took over as CEO in 2019. As Light Reading reported in 2020, Google Cloud staffed up to enter the telecom industry with a number of big-name hires including George Nazi to lead the company's new Telecommunications, Media and Entertainment, and Gaming (TMEG) division, and Phadke as managing director for telecom industry solutions.

Both Nazi and Phadke came to Google Cloud from Accenture. According to Jain's LinkedIn profile, he has worked at Google for almost two decades.

The cloud factor

Kurian unveiled Google Cloud's telecom plans in a March 2020 post, writing: "We're committed to partnering with the telecommunications industry, providing partners, solutions, and cloud and open source technologies to accelerate digital transformation."

Since then, Google Cloud has been firming up its telecom pitch. For example, the company does not plan to develop its own private wireless networking service to sell to enterprise customers, nor does it plan to develop its own network functions.

Instead, Google Cloud is only looking to host the network functions of other vendors like Ericsson and Mavenir in its cloud, and support private networking services provided by mobile operators and other partners. Further, Google Cloud hosted a booth at the MWC show this year, the company's first time doing so.

But Google Cloud isn't the only hyperscale cloud computing company chasing telecom business. Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Oracle are all promising telecom network operators the savings and scalability of a cloud managed by a third party that's shared among thousands of other enterprise customers.

"Telecom operators have shown increased confidence in running core network workloads in the public cloud infrastructure," Omdia analyst Inderpreet Kaur wrote on LinkedIn recently. "Use cases such as setting disaster recovery for network core and providing local breakout for roaming were discussed during MWC." (Omdia and Light Reading are owned by the same parent company, Informa.)

In the US, T-Mobile has emerged as a top proponent for Google Cloud. The companies are collaborating on 5G and edge computing "to give enterprises more ways to embrace digital transformation," according to T-Mobile.

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— Mike Dano, Editorial Director, 5G & Mobile Strategies, Light Reading | @mikeddano