Oracle veteran to head Google Cloud division

Oracle’s former product chief Thomas Kurian ( pictured) will head Google’s cloud division, replacing Diane Greene.

In a blog post on Friday, Greene said Kurian will join Google Cloud on November 26 and transition into the leadership role early next year.

“I believe that he’ll do an amazing job helping to take Google Cloud to the next level. Thomas has 22 years of experience at Oracle; most recently he was president of product development,” Greene said.

She will continue as CEO through January, working with Kurian to ensure a smooth transition.

Greene, who will remain a director on the Alphabet board, had joined Google in December 2015 to run its cloud business.

“... after an unbelievably stimulating and productive three years, it’s time to turn to the passions I’ve long had around mentoring and education,” she added.

Greene said the mentoring role would include investing in and helping female founder CEOs who have engineering or science backgrounds.

“I want to encourage every woman engineer and scientist to think in terms of building their own company someday. The world will be a better place with more female founder CEOs,” she said.

Greene noted that Google Cloud has moved from having only two significant customers and a collection of start-ups to having major Fortune 1000 enterprises.

“The cloud space is early and there is an enormous opportunity ahead,” she said.

In February this year, Google had announced that its cloud division was generating more than $1 billion in quarterly revenue.