Former Wipro COO Bhanumurthy Ballapuram joins Google Cloud

Former Wipro chief operating officer (COO) Bhanumurthy Ballapuram has joined Google Cloud’s regional leadership team as the vice president for customer experience, Japan and Asia-Pacific (APAC).

He will report to global vice president for customer experience John Jester, who is based in the US, the company said in a statement.

“Bhanumurthy will partner with our regional leadership, including Karan Bajwa for APAC and Tomoyuki Hirate for Japan, to further our commitment to the success of our customers and continue to advance Google Cloud’s enterprise momentum in the market,” the statement added.

The appointment is timely as Google Cloud looks to up its game to compete with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Under Thomas Kurian, who is now heading Google Cloud, the cloud revenues have doubled, to a Bloomberg report said.

A graduate of the National Institute of Technology, Warangal and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, Bhanumurthy joined Wipro in 1992. He served the IT major in multiple positions, including those of president and COO when he left the firm in June 2021.

AWS is the market leader in cloud computing, with a market share of 31 percent, followed by Microsoft at 22 percent, according to market analyst platform Canalys. Google Cloud’s market share is 8 percent.

Google Cloud lost $5.6 billion in 2020 and $974 million in Q1 FY2021, while Amazon Web Services posted a profit of $4.16 billion, according to Bloomberg. Kurian’s team is now 37,000 strong, almost 50 percent more than what it was when he took over (25,000), the report said. Money Control