Google's Next HQ: Modern, With Retro Flairs

Google's Cloud plans are getting loftier as it lays down the groundwork to quadruple the number of its cloud regions and ramp up its workforce for that effort.

Over the next 18 months, the Alphabet subsidiary plans to go from four cloud regions to 16, Google announced on its blog post Tuesday.

Currently, Google operates in South Carolina, Iowa, Belgium, and Taiwan, Google notes on its cloud platform zones list.  In the months to come it plans to add Japan and Oregon to its cloud region list. The remaining 10 regions will be rolled out over the next year to 18 months.

Google lags far behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft in the cloud infrastructure market, and at least part of that was due to having a cloud data center network that wasn't as extensive, said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group told InformationWeek. He added that AWS, Microsoft, and IBM have a more geographically diverse base of cloud data centers, but Google's adding 12 more should address that shortfall.

Google is also not just expanding its cloud footprint, but is apparently tweaking the way it goes about increasing its cloud business. Google late last year named VMware founder and former CEO Diane Greene to lead its cloud efforts, demonstrating it was serious about going after the enterprise market rather than serving only consumers.

Despite having a reputation for possessing advanced cloud technology that one would think enterprises would glom onto, Google is also eyeing the notion of delivering enterprise cloud basics, according to comments Greene made in a Bloomberg report.

As Google builds its team to sell to enterprise customers, it will require a designated sales force. These customers will require more hand-holding than the average consumer who uses the company's free utility apps in the cloud, and other self-service cloud features.

Google has approximately 60 cloud-related job postings on its site, with about a third of them related to sales and marketing, and another third related to IT positions.

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These positions include Google Cloud Platform Territory Sales Representatives to a Google Cloud Platform Sales Engineer Manager, West Region.      

Google is also looking to hire IT professionals like cloud software engineers.

"Organizations are looking for skilled cloud professionals, especially architects, and their demand within organizations will likely see increasing growth over time. Cloud computing has seen broad adoption and has moved from an emerging technology to a mainstream technology, and these initiatives are increasing.

"Clients are placing a premium on technology professionals with a track record of cloud computing implementations [and who] have the first-hand experience necessary to develop a successful cloud computing strategy for their organization," said John Reed, a senior executive director with recruiting firm Robert Half Technologies.

Google declined to comment on its cloud hiring plans.