Oracle Cloud Exec Amit Zavery Headed For Google

Amit Zavery, the top executive at Oracle's cloud division since the departure of former boss Thomas Kurian, has followed Kurian to Google Cloud, where he will lead the Apigee team.

Zavery had spent the past 24 years at the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based software giant, and ran the Oracle Cloud Platform business for more than a year. Google confirmed for CRN the hire that was first reported by Reuters.

As a vice president for engineering at Google, Zavery will again work under Kurian as he looks to build out capabilities and customers for the API management business Google acquired in 2016 for $625 million.

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Oracle declined to comment on Zavery's departure.

The Apigee platform enables Google Cloud customers to offer APIs to outside developers, collect analytics on their use, and secure the connections those software interfaces establish with third-party applications.

Last September, Kurian unexpectedly stepped away from his position as Oracle president after 22 years at the software giant amid reports of clashes with Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison.

Oracle's top product development executive and the architect of the company's emerging cloud strategy later officially resigned and announced he would join Google Cloud in November. He stepped into the position of Google Cloud CEO at the start of this year, replacing Diane Greene.

Tony Safoian, CEO of Los Angeles-based Google partner SADA Systems, sees the hire as the work of Kurian. The new Google Cloud CEO is building up his division's leadership, engineering and field teams.

"It's natural for Thomas Kurian to pursue a process of ingesting the best possible talent in the market he's worked with in the past," Safoian told CRN.