Google intends to spin off its public sector cloud services business line from Google Cloud, launching an independent division focused on serving federal, state, and local governments as well as the education sector, according to a recent announcement.
The new public sector business will be set up as a separate legal entity from Google Cloud, operating as its own independent company with a board of advisors. Will Grannis, the Chief Technology Officer of Google Cloud, will serve as the leader of the new division until a permanent Chief Executive Officer is recruited. The current Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian, described the launch as “doubling down our significant commitment to serving the U.S. public sector.”
The new division’s U.S. Public Sector sales organization will be led by Lynn Martin, who will report to Grannis. Other well-known Google staff will provide support for the new business arm, including Jeanette Manfra, Senior Director of Global Risk and Compliance and a former top cyber official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Phil Venables, Google Cloud CISO and an adviser on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; and Joel Minton, Google Cloud Technical Director for the Office of the CTO and former Executive Director of the General Services Administration’s Login.gov.
The public sector business will focus on four big areas that have been key drivers of Google Cloud’s past work with the public sector: IT infrastructure modernization, cybersecurity, advanced analytics, and collaboration tools.
The move comes as part of Google’s overall growth in public sector business, with recent years seeing the tech giant win civilian and defense contracts at the federal level with agencies such as the Department of Energy, U.S. Postal Service, and Department of Veteran Affairs, as well as the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Defense Innovation Unit. The company has also bid on a billion-dollar multi-cloud acquisition, the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC).
By creating a new public sector division, Google will be able to pair resources unique to the public sector that are not needed by commercial accounts with its advanced engineering capabilities to help organizations change the way they use technology to deliver services, become more efficient, and enable new capabilities.
