Why Google Cloud Beats AWS, Azure In Silicon Valley: CloudWerx

One of Google Cloud’s fastest-growing partner startups, CloudWerx, explains to CRN why Google Cloud is besting AWS and Azure, and why CloudWerx placed its bet on Google versus the competition.

Fast-Growing Startup CloudWerx Is Winning With Google Cloud

One of Google Cloud’s fastest-growing partners says its Silicon Valley customers are placing their bets on Google versus Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, which helped CloudWerx achieve Google Cloud’s Premier Partner status faster than any other channel partner in history.

“We’re seeing a ton of this now in Silicon Valley where the customers that are AWS 100 percent, they now want more leverage,” said CloudWerx CEO and co-founder Jason Geis. “Then once they start to play around with Google, they love it. And once it gets in, then it just continues to grow.”

San Jose, Calif.-based CloudWerx is a cloud consulting startup that placed its future on Google Cloud versus AWS or Microsoft Azure.

The solution provider has a focus on winning digital-native companies in California’s Silicon Valley area with a 100 percent customer retention rate. CloudWerx is on pace to increase annual revenue by 10-times in 2022, with Google Cloud sales accounting for the vast majority of sales.

AWS is the worldwide market share leader in cloud computing, holding approximately 33 percent share of the global market as of the first quarter of 2022, according to IT research firm Synergy Research Group.

Microsoft Azure is No. 2 at 22 percent global cloud market share, followed by Google Cloud at No. 3 at 10 percent share.

CloudWerx’s sales and marketing leader Betsy Reed said Google Cloud is currently offering the best-in-class technology out of any cloud vendor in the market today.

“Obviously, Amazon’s the leader. You then have Azure and then you have Google coming up in third place. But it’s not because the product isn’t superior, it’s because they just hadn’t focused their efforts and energy in selling and servicing customers on their public cloud,” said Reed, who co-founded the cloud startup. “Google now, in our humble opinion, has the best-in-class cloud platform with the Google Cloud Platform with the most native features, security and otherwise.”

In an interview with CRN, Geis and Reed—who both have decades of experience in the IT and channel industry—talk about why Google Cloud is gaining momentum on AWS and Azure.

CloudWerx CEO Jason Geis

Are businesses in Silicon Valley picking Google Cloud right now over AWS or Azure?

Jason Geis : Yes, which is why we’re seeing such great growth because we really thrive with digital-native companies. In Silicon Valley, these are engineering-based companies.

You get to a point where Google’s an engineering-based company, an open-source company, look at what they did with Kubernetes—they’re the cool company.

This is a religion thing, right? Microsoft, not as cool with the digital native companies. In the enterprise, all day long—if you’ve got Microsoft, then Azure is a great solution. But in Silicon Valley, it’s a ton of AWS.

Then there was this perfect storm, where Google got to a point where now they have the momentum. They’re big enough. They’re solid as a platform. And they’re emerging from a channel standpoint, where we can be extremely relevant very fast.

We’re seeing a ton of this now in Silicon Valley where the customers that are AWS 100 percent, they now want more leverage. Then once they start to play around with Google, they love it. And once it gets in, then it just continues to grow.

CloudWerx sales and marketing leader Betsy Reed

When founding CloudWerx, why didn’t you place your future on AWS or Azure?

Betsy Reed: The opportunity with GCP and our commitment to going all-in on GCP and being an exclusive partner and not spreading ourselves across Azure and AWS is based on the fact that we want to represent the most amazing product possible.

And candidly speaking, when you think about the total addressable market for cloud—it’s growing every day, especially due to the environmental factors, the supply chain issue and so on—customers are really looking for those best-in-class solutions.

You look at market share, obviously, Amazon’s the leader. You have Azure and then you have Google coming up in third place.

But it’s not because the product isn’t superior, it’s because they just hadn’t focused their efforts and energy in selling and servicing customers on their public cloud.

That’s really how Amazon started. It wasn’t because they had the best public cloud offering. It’s because they had some extra available storage they wanted to resell that they weren’t using during their high retail moments. And Microsoft had the customer accounts and the relationships.

Google now, in our humble opinion, has the best-in-class cloud platform with the Google Cloud Platform with the most native features, security and otherwise

From a vendor enablement and channel incentive perspective, why select Google Cloud over AWS and Azure?

Jason Geis : It would have been hard to be relevant to AWS. AWS is an amazing company, I just think Google has a different culture, especially from the GCP standpoint.

Google Cloud has really helped us more than any manufacturer ever.

I mean, Cisco, Juniper and NetApp have been good to us in the past, but Google’s been incredible.

If you know the business and make the investments around technical resources and driving value—and Betsy has built an incredible team where we have metrics where we can show that when we get involved, consumption goes up—when you can do that, Google’s like ‘This is great. We want to bring you more opportunities.’

Betsy Reed: We believe GCP is the best possible cloud platform out there.

In terms of the channel, it’s an immature channel. So we can shine above competitors. We can bring a really nuanced and unique approach to it.

But it’s also because we believe we are reselling and servicing the best possible product out there for our customers as their multi- or hybrid cloud, or whatever phase of their cloud journey they’re in.

CloudWerx is projecting revenues to increase by 10-times in 2022 compared to 2021. How are you growing Google Cloud sales so fast in such a competitive cloud landscape against AWS and Azure?

Betsy Reed: Google Cloud is allowing customers a lot of flexibility and a lot of native features that are not available on other cloud platforms.

And, again, they have best in class technology. So some of their fiber optic networks that run underneath the ocean, some of the things they’ve been investing in for 10 years to run their own products—like Google.com being one of them.

Then also just the nature of the security that comes into play with Google Cloud is unsurpassed, and that’s really a primary element to so many of our customers’ concerns.

The thing with Google Cloud is because it’s so easy to work with, it’s engineering-friendly, it has a lot of native features—it also requires a partner to help customers really navigate what are the tools and applications within GCP that they can utilize to be super successful.

So it’s not just as plug and play, but it allows that flexibility. So when you pair the opportunity, the flexibility, and the elite value of Google Cloud Platform—with an implementation partner like a CloudWerx—it’s the perfect storm.

Because we can say, ‘Here’s how you want to structure it. Here’s how you want to architect it. Based on what we understand of your business needs, here’s the way in which we would we apply these different tools, applications, or other features of Google Cloud.’ So then a customer can truly utilize it.

It’s that combination of the flexibility of the platform with an implementation partner like us that understands the business needs and challenges, and then really putting together a strong framework for how we would apply all of that into their Google Cloud Platform framework.

What are your bullish thoughts on Google Cloud and overall cloud growth ahead for CloudWerx?

Jason Geis : There’s two major factors at play. One is the supply chain.

Companies can’t get routers and switches for sometimes months now. So that’s driving people off private cloud onto public cloud faster than we thought.

The second thing is this whole internet, digital native.

We didn’t have companies back in the early 2000s exploding so fast like a Snowflake is. … Snowflake will spend billions of dollars in the cloud. We didn’t have customers back in the early 2000s spending billions of dollars on HP, Cisco, Dell.

The models now in the internet space are exploding at such a faster rate, it will drive growth in the cloud faster than anything we’ve seen before.

We think we’re just at the bottom of the hockey stick, as it’s just starting to go up. That’s why we want to focus on the digital-native companies.

Betsy Reed: CloudWerx is specifically committed to changing the game for the partner ecosystem.

We are not just a lazy lackadaisical value-added reseller that takes on a bill and gets fat and happy on that MRR. We are hustling every single day for that customer’s mind share, market share and understanding ways we can accelerate their business.

That shows because, to date, we’ve never lost one customer.

Our first target was achieving Premiere status in record time. And we did just that in under two years, but really it was more like under a year.

Our next step is specialization, which is a huge accreditation system that GCP has to say, ‘These are the best of the best service providers that we have.’ We have to go through rigorous, multi-day audits with third party auditors in order to justify all of our technical processes, our security procedures and our resources.

We’re about to achieve our Infrastructure specialization, which is huge. Then we’ll get our security one right on the back end.

The next goal is to become the fastest-ever partner to achieve MSP status. We intend to do that in the next two quarters.