Cloud Computing News: Google Cloud, Wipro, Navisite Make Strategic Moves

Start off a new week with cloud computing news from around the world. Find out which former SAP senior exec has landed at Google Cloud. Which hybrid cloud provider has Wipro chosen for its new innovation center? And which AWS premier consulting partner has Navisite purchased?

Abdul Razack Makes the Leap from SAP

First, Google Cloud has snagged a key senior executive from SAP to take the lead in a newly created role.

The hire comes after Google Cloud recently brought over two other executives. One also hailed from SAP and the other from Accenture.

Google Cloud’s Abdul Razack

Abdul Razack has joined Google Cloud as vice president, technology solutions, solutions engineering. Formerly chief product officer at SAP, Razack comes to the job with more than 25 years in enterprise technology. He spent the last 15 of those years at SAP.

As chief product officer, Razack was in charge of SAP’s cloud technology vision and the buildout of its enterprise resource planning products. Now, at Google Cloud, Razack will define the strategy across the company’s seven “solution pillars,” which include infrastructure, application modernization, data analytics and cloud AI. In addition, he will team up with managed service providers and other channel partners.

“Abdul will work closely with our partners to ensure we support customers with solutions they need to grow and succeed,” a Google Cloud spokesperson told Channel Futures.

Razack will work out of Sunnyvale, California. He will report to Hamidou Dia, vice president, global head of solutions engineering at Google Cloud.

“My goal is to help Google Cloud customers unlock significant value from our solutions, bringing resiliency and scale to businesses in these uncertain times, and also helping them build a technology foundation for their future,” Razack said in a prepared statement.

Prior to SAP, Razack led the Platform Group at Infosys. He focused on big data, automation and artificial intelligence. Razack also has held several engineering and consulting roles at Commerce One, Sybase and KPMG.

“Abdul brings a wealth of engineering and innovation experience to the role,” said Rob Enslin, president, global customer operations at Google Cloud. “He will be instrumental in defining our cloud solutions and furthering our engineering capabilities as we work hand-in-hand with customers to help them solve their trickiest business challenges.”

Wipro, IBM Cloud Team for Hybrid Solutions

Secondly, Wipro Ltd., a global IT consulting firm based in India, has sealed a collaboration deal with IBM around hybrid cloud.

Together the companies will help end users build and secure public and/or private clouds. Much of that capability will come thanks to an innovation center called the Wipro IBM Novus Lounge. It is located at Wipro’s Kodathi campus in Bengaluru. There, Wipro will offer platforms around cloud, artificial intelligence, machine learning and internet of things. As a result, customers will have remote access to IBM and Red Hat solutions.

Wipro’s Ramesh Nagarajan

Wipro also will capitalize on its IBM Cloud portfolio, as well as its own expertise, to develop products for vertical industries. It will target sectors including banking and financial services, energy and utilities, retail, manufacturing and health care.

“Wipro IBM Novus Lounge will allow us to showcase hybrid multicloud and open-source solutions even more comprehensively and support our customers’ continuous business transformation journey,” Ramesh Nagarajan, senior vice president of cloud services at Wipro, said in a press release.

Navisite Buys AWS Partner Privo

Finally, in the last piece of cloud computing news for this roundup, Navisite, an IT channel partner specializing in cloud services, has acquired Privo, a premier consulting partner for Amazon Web Services.

Navisite’s Mark Clayman

Privo brings more AWS capabilities, including cloud assessment, planning, migration, cost optimization and managed DevOps, to Navisite. Privo also offers cloud automation, security and compliance.

Mark Clayman, Navisite CEO, said Privo’s reputation and “highly skilled, certified experts are the perfect complement to our AWS practice and overall managed cloud service portfolio.”

“With this acquisition, we’ll be able to deliver greater breadth and depth of services…

…to help organizations migrate to the cloud, lower costs and accelerate their IT transformation,” Clayman added.

Navisite is adding Privo’s team to its current employee base. Privo has offices in Boston and San Francisco. A number of its staff hold the AWS Certified Solutions Architect designation.

Privo serves customers across various verticals. A concentrated number of clients are in the life sciences, financial services and the public sector. The company also stands out as one of the few APN Consulting Partners in the United States to achieve SOC II Type 2 certification.

“The synergies between our organizations make this a perfect fit in terms of technical capabilities as well as strategic vision and culture,” Nick Underwood, co-founder at Privo, said in a press release. “Navisite brings strategic support and a broad portfolio of complementary services that allow us to do more for our employees, customers and partners.”

Navisite announced the acquisition of Privo after its 2019 purchase of clckwrk, a London-based AWS cloud provider.

In addition to AWS, Navisite also teams with Microsoft Azure and VMware.