Former Google, Microsoft Exec Takes Helm at CloudSphere

Cloud governance vendor CloudSphere this week named a Google and Microsoft vet as its new CEO.

Jane Gilson previously worked as director of emerging markets at Google. The Silicon Valley Business Journal notes that Gilman helped that division grow by more than 66% in three years.

Gilson also led worldwide business strategy at Microsoft for more than 13 years. Furthermore, she has co-founded a venture-backed company and mentored several startups.

CloudSphere’s Jane Gilson

“I’ve worked in multinationals and I’ve worked in startups, so I have a little bit of the yin and yang in my experience to help CloudSphere expand worldwide,” Gilson told the Business Journal.

And CloudSphere intends to do just that. Cloud adoption is soaring. Forrester Research, for its part, predicts the global public cloud infrastructure market will grow 35% just in 2021, reaching $120 billion. Another firm, IDC, sees global spending on cloud services topping $1 trillion three years from now. Consider, too, that a significant number of organizations (81%, according to 2019 numbers from Gartner) rely on two or more cloud providers. So-called “multicloud” structures complicate oversight, including security, and budgeting.

All in all, organizations are funneling lots of money into cloud services and assets. And CloudSphere seems well positioned to benefit (especially with someone at the helm who has overseen expansion). CloudSphere’s platform lets enterprises – or their channel partners – simplify cloud optimization and governance. The need for this level of control has grown more imperative since last year’s COVID-19-fueled scramble to the cloud. That frantic shift has turned into a rush to rein in slackened security, unapproved apps, excessive permissions and unplanned spending.

Notably, Gilson stands out as the first woman to lead CloudSphere. The company formed last summer as the result of a merger between Ireland’s iQuate Ltd. and California’s HyperGrid Inc. Gilson replaces Patrick McNally, who hailed from Dell and was leading iQuate.

“When the opportunity arose to help scale a company in this space with significant technology differentiation, I knew that I needed to join,” Gilson said. “I see the CEO role as a coaching role, and my plan is for the team to drive fast and sustainable growth with a laser focus on providing customer value. I lead by the mantra that ‘if you want to go quickly go by yourself, if you want to go further, go with a team.’’”

European Connection

Gilson will relocate to the United States from Europe. She has lived in the Czech Republic, Germany, France and Ireland. CloudSphere says this experience gives her a unique perspective that will help take CloudSphere global. Part of her goals include building on CloudSphere’s partnerships with Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. (These three, incidentally, together account for more than half of all major data centers worldwide, according to new stats from Synergy Research Group. AWS and Google opened the most last year, a boon for a company such as CloudSphere looking to go big.)

Kevin Dillon is executive board chair at CloudSphere and managing partner at Atlantic Bridge Capital.

“Gilson’s rare combination of leadership experience at both massive multibillion-dollar business units and smaller technology startups makes her the ideal choice to drive CloudSphere’s success in its next phase of growth,” said Dillon. “We have the right technology in place. And with Gilson joining, we have the executive leadership to advance the business and scale the company internationally.”

CloudSphere employs about 100 people in different parts of the world, including the United States, India, Ireland and Romania. The company says it intends to expand quickly, starting with its sales team. Keith O’Kelly leads the CloudSphere channel as regional vice president of sales.