Google Cloud’s Gearhart: ‘I’m Committed to Making Partners Succeed’

Closing in on her third year as Google Cloud Platform’s channel chief, Carolee Gearhart calls the ride “action-packed.”

“Even to the beginning of last year, we had been on this growth trajectory but I don’t think anyone knew what the pandemic would mean for the channel,” she told Channel Futures. “It rapidly became clear that 2020 would really be a watershed acceleration year for our partners.”

Indeed, COVID-19 gets much of the credit – or blame, depending on your view – for increased cloud computing demand worldwide. For Gearhart and Google Cloud, it’s the former. Cloud technologies should solve problems, especially the hard ones. Without question, the pandemic meets that criteria. Providers including Google Cloud and its channel partners responded with haste and expertise — so much so that some industry observers say the customer of 2030 arrived a decade early.

At Google Cloud, pandemic-fueled adoption translated into more business in 2020 than ever before. The company also brought on more indirect resellers than the previous year, Gearhart said.

Google Cloud’s Carolee Gearhart

“Beyond the number, I’m so proud of the way our partner ecosystem responded to support customers,” Gearhart said. “It became clear that customers needed the agility and transformation only cloud can offer.”

She pointed to SADA’s National Response Portal as just one example. SADA is a California-based managed service provider that went all-in on Google Cloud two years ago. Last May, SADA launched the portal so health care providers and policy makers could share data about the pandemic.

“Those are the kinds of investments that will continue to pay dividends,” Gearhart said.

As another highlight, India’s largest cash and payment solutions vendor used Google Cloud to pioneer a way to deliver paper money to vulnerable seniors, Gearhart noted.

“We’re seeing positive impact on communities overall … and on real people around the world,” she said.

In turn, Gearhart, as head of Google Cloud’s channel, remains eager to keep demonstrating commitment to partners.

Headed ‘in the Right Direction’

Gearhart aims for partner satisfaction. She and her team seem to be earning it, considering the “onslaught” of testimonials submitted in the last year alone.

“We nearly doubled the number of entries … to more than 1,700 net-new customer stories,” she said.

Much of the praise came as the result of Google Cloud’s work to help partners differentiate themselves. Here, Google Cloud defines MSPs, resellers, independent software vendors and other partners by expertise around particular products, industries, solutions and markets that set them apart, Gearhart said. The vendor then pairs those channel specialists with end users seeking distinctive capabilities.

“We got a really strong signal we were going in the right direction [because] … between 2018 and 2020, partners were involved in three times the number of customer deals than they were before,” she said.

Google Cloud has enabled that differentiation largely through its specializations, “which are like Ph.D.-level expertise,” Gearhart said.

The curriculum covers 13 areas. Those include security, machine learning, work transformation, cloud migration and application development. Earning certification proves to customers that the partner “can bring something unique to them,” said Gearhart.

Over the past year, Google Cloud partners more than doubled their expertise, Gearhart said. And more of them took advantage of the tools the vendor houses in its portal.

“Everyone’s got a portal,” Gearhart said. “What I care about is that folks are actually using it.”

To that point, weekly engagement activity within Google Cloud’s partner portal more than doubled in 2020, she said.

“I know that partners are going out there and using these resources.”

Key Accomplishments

Since her arrival at Google Cloud in 2018, Gearhart has helped the partner ecosystem grow by more than 400%. That by itself, she said, “has been incredible.”

But it’s not just about having more partners.

“It’s really about the value they can bring,” she said.

Indeed, due in part to the channel, Google Cloud Platform now boasts …