Google Cloud poaches SAP exec Adaire Fox-Martin to run EMEA ops

Hired to boost channel sales and, erm, 'accelerate' that 'growth journey'

Google Cloud has poached Adaire Fox-Martin, a veteran from the stuffy world of corporate database sales, to run its EMEA operations.

The new hire, who has joined the organisation effective immediately, comes on the heels of the May departure of previous incumbent Chris Ciauri, who spent only 20 months as the regional boss at Google’s fluffy white tech services business before exiting in May.

Fox-Martin will lead the Google Cloud sales teams in EMEA and be tasked with “strengthening the go-to-market strategy and supporting customers’ digital transformation,” the company said in a statement sent to The Register.

Customer wins for the cloud division at Google include Lloyds Banking Group, Nokia, Orange, Renault, SEB and most recently Deutsche Bank. The newbie exec will need to “accelerate” the “growth journey across Europe”.

Under the leadership of Ciauri, who joined in September 2019 after a decade spent as exec veep and GM for EMEA at Salesforce, Google recruited managers for a number of the country operations, including the UK and Ireland.

Ciauri also grew his region’s revenues in calendar 2020 by 41 per cent to $3.917bn, but sources told The Reg at the time that given the investment on headcount, top brass in US HQ wanted to see bigger returns. Neither Google nor Ciauri would comment on this.

Google Cloud didn’t break down the regional split, but reported an operating loss of $5.6bn last year globally, versus an operating loss of $4.645bn in the prior year.

The choice of Fox-Martin, who held various senior positions during her 18 plus years at Oracle and more than 13-and-a-half years at SAP - mostly recently as president of global sales, services and customer engagement - is Google again hiring someone seemingly well-versed in corporate IT sales.

AWS itself brought on board Andy Isherwood, the former HPE EMEA boss, in 2018 to spearhead its push into the large enterprise business market.

Google is the third biggest public cloud player globally, lagging Microsoft and AWS by quite some distance. ®