Executive Summary: ISG Provider Lens™ Google Cloud Partner Ecosystem - U.S. 2023

The individual quadrant reports are available at:

ISG Provider Lens™ Google Cloud Partner Ecosystem - Data Analytics and Machine Learning - U.S. 2023 

ISG Provider Lens™ Google Cloud Partner Ecosystem - Implementation and Integration Services - U.S. 2023 

ISG Provider Lens™ Google Cloud Partner Ecosystem - Managed Services - U.S. 2023 

ISG Provider Lens™ Google Cloud Partner Ecosystem - SAP Workloads - U.S. 2023 

ISG Provider Lens™ Google Cloud Partner Ecosystem - Workspace Services - U.S. 2023 

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) — a comprehensive solution covering key industries for innovation

Virtualization led by hyperscalers has accelerated among business and technology stakeholders globally. Heavy business reliance on virtualized environments for various workloads, including mission critical applications, has made virtualization mainstream in the  current IT market. Infrastructure modernization through virtualization has enabled enterprise clients to accrue the benefits of scalable network and storage capacity. In the pursuit of digital transformation, enterprises worldwide expedite the end-to-end digitalization of their business processes. Google Cloud, one of the leading hyperscalers, facilitates enterprises to gain a competitive edge through agility, flexibility and elastic scalability, translating into an elevated end-user experience. Service providers build their unique capabilities and functionality on GCP, which is leading the digital transformation space with the advanced technology required for redesigning and refining its relationships with product vendors, global system integrators (GSIs) and enterprise clients. The partner ecosystem comprises entities that establish a symbiotic relationship with listed products and offerings on GCP. Google and its partners rely on each other’s inherent expertise and technology prowess. While Google incorporates advanced partner services into its platforms, GSIs leverage the vast reach and innumerable benefits offered by Google to cater to enterprises’ client needs. By utilizing their extensive industry expertise, consulting partners ensure value generation to an enterprise through joint capabilities.

Service providers undertake various projects, from modernizing applications to creating new business models, for developing enterprise products and services. Google has been remaining the epicenter of innovation by investing in additional innovation training programs, developing hiring practices to include diverse ideas, and strengthening data collection and analysis processes for efficient decision making models. Google and its partners encourage enterprises to optimize processes for operational agility and accentuated CX. There is a shift toward a cloud-first strategy for deploying new applications through public cloud services. Leading hyperscalers allow enterprises flexibility to adopt a multicloud strategy, curbing vendor lock-in.

U.S market overview covering sustainability

In the U.S., GCP is known for its functionality rich platforms, products and services. Google thrives on the technology and innovation amassed by continuous improvisation. Although the pandemic altered the paradigms of processing business transactions, cloud technology has improvised and transformed industries to a new point of no return.

Most of the large-scale enterprises in the U.S. have embarked on hyperscaler adoption and are positioned as innovators on the adoption curve. AI and ML capabilities are being continuously deployed to increase consumer interaction through all touchpoints.

Small and midsize enterprises are fast in incorporating novel solutions and covering the shortage of digital talent for the latest technologies. Hyperscalers and GSIs are addressing these impediments through extensive training programs to enable the workforce to explore, learn and grow with advancements. Adjacent to these efforts, enterprises focus on new talent acquisition initiatives, such as industry-focused tech stack training, to alleviate the skill gap.

Enterprises focus on sustainable development models, and there is a growing urgency among them to improve the focus on, investment in and adoption of sustainable solutions. However, they are indecisive on the measurement tools and key performance indicators (KPIs) required to track sustainability progress. Organizations need continuous and real-time data to measure and curtail their cloud carbon emissions. For instance, Google provides the Carbon Footprint metric to gauge energy measurements in data centers to reduce the gross emissions from fossil fuels and electricity production and other carbon emissions. Google also recommends enterprises deploy their applications in low-carbon cloud regions to lower their gross electricity consumption.

Hyperscalers play a vital role in enhancing enterprises’ ability to devise technology strategies for increased revenue, predict futuristic industry developments and offer future-relevant solutions. Macroenvironmental factors such as inflation, supply chain constraints and rising costs have directed clients to pool investments in cloud-based tools, products and services.

In terms of cloud FinOps, most enterprises are in the nascent phase, working toward building maturity. They have adopted industry tailored cloud platforms owing to their simple deployment. Automated cloud cost-optimization policies formulated by Google enable the rightsizing of underutilized resources.

Growing competency in and focus on implementation and integration services

Migrating to cloud without weighing the technical and commercial implications can have an adverse impact, including additional efforts and cost overruns. GSIs collaborate with clients to formulate a road map and detailed migration plan mapping relevant GCP functionalities. As a result, healthcare, robotics, retail, education, gaming and financial services have successfully utilized Kubernetes and containerization to migrate a massive share of their workloads from legacy systems to GCP. 

Security of IT estates comprising applications and workloads on hybrid clouds has bolstered the integration of security offerings by service providers into GCP. It facilitates informed decisions by GSIs and enterprises for future technology growth. GSIs are improvising on their time to value for implementation and integration services depending on the complexity of migration. GSIs offer a rapid turnaround time for migrating applications requiring automation with high-level testing. However, application re-architecture necessitates a longer time for migration.

GCP has been vertically building its product line by introducing Pub/Sub Lite, a no code development platform for migration. A significant highlight of this is Google Cloud’s barrier elimination between its analytical and transactional workloads through its fully managed PostgreSQL-compatible database.

Custom application deployments and greenfield developments will surge in the implementation and integration segment in the future. These differentiators are drawing enterprises to GCP.

Data and ML are the principal tenets of Google Cloud. The hyperscaler derives optimum benefit from the new wave of AI and ML and analytics developments, which requires a cloud foundation. GSIs focus on expanding their R&D efforts by adding certified resources to work on emerging technologies such as chatbots and digital twins. These technologies rely heavily on hyperscaler infrastructure to meet the rising compute and storage demands. Service providers build on industry-specific solutions by utilizing the data analytics and machine learning (DAML) functionalities offered by Google Cloud.

One such instance is Google’s Med-PaLM 2, a medical large language model (LLM) catering to medical use cases. Generative AI support on Vertex AI and Generative AI App Builder deploys ML models at scale. GSIs invest in high-quality data collection and interoperability, which is necessary to leverage AI for smooth operations within an organization. Enterprises must increase their focus on high-ROI business cases to accrue more value from investment in data lakes. The partnership between digital business teams and GCP service providers should benefit enterprises holistically. Engagements should foster year-on-year developments and upgrades rather than the current single basic tool implementations.

The migration to cloud technology has become increasingly crucial for enterprises to remain competitive in the current market. GCP and its partner network of GSIs offer a range of solutions to facilitate this transition. From security offerings to sustainability initiatives, GCP provides a comprehensive platform for enterprises to achieve their digital transformation goals. With a focus on data and ML, GCP enables enterprises to leverage emerging technologies and optimize their processes for increased agility and improved CX. The sustainability partnership initiative by Google Cloud emphasizes the importance of climatic change.

Overall advancement in GCP cloud support and SAP and Workspace solutions

Managed services in the U.S. market have seen a significant increase in demand, particularly in the GCP services segment, where providers are upgrading their capabilities by developing software, managed tools and business applications. These providers work with senior executives to align their clients’ requirements with Google Cloud facilities and evaluate application and infrastructure migration decisions to achieve business objectives. However, enterprises adopting multicloud operations face challenges such as data security, lack of centralized operations and staff resource shortages. To overcome these hurdles, enterprises form centralized platform teams that oversee multicloud operations implement governance frameworks and security policies and train personnel for optimal performance across different hyperscalers.

Google Cloud provides extensive training and certifications to service providers, ensuring their expertise with GCP is validated.

By migrating SAP workloads to the cloud, enterprises experience improved agility, reduced costs and increased uptime. In addition, Google Cloud and service providers leverage state-of-the-art ML tools to facilitate enterprises in increasing throughput and yield optimization, increasing resource productivity. 

Partnerships between Google Cloud, SAP and service providers continuously expand, promoting innovation. For instance, the recent integration between SAP and Google Workspace enables clients to access Google Docs and Sheets directly from their SAP workflows. SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) on Google Cloud provides intelligent enterprise applications in cloud and hybrid environments. Enterprises leverage the integrated data obtained by extending the capabilities of SAP systems by service providers on GCP. SAP and GCP offer enterprises digital transformation through RISE with SAP for better business outcomes.

The pandemic has led organizations worldwide, particularly in the U.S., to embrace hybrid and remote working structures. Google Workspace services are ideal for this shift, offering easy-to-use productivity suite tools. Service providers are continuously innovating to cater to the changing work culture. Google Workspace service providers mitigate challenges such as the proliferation of disjoint workplace tools by offering modern collaborative solutions infused with minimal context-switching capabilities. The latest generative AI tools introduced into Docs and Gmail are an effort by Google to match the LLM technology trend.

Adopting cloud technology and migrating workloads to cloud has become increasingly crucial for enterprises to remain competitive in the current market. GCP and its partner network of GSIs offer a range of solutions to facilitate this transition. From security offerings to sustainability initiatives, GCP provides a comprehensive platform for enterprises to achieve their digital transformation goals.

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