Google Cloud Hires Entertainment Industry Exec To Drive Its Media And Telecom Business

A technology leader from the entertainment industry has stepped into a new position Google created to accelerate adoption of its cloud among customers in that vertical.

John Honeycutt, CTO at mass media company Discovery for the last four years, joined Google's cloud division as vice president of telecommunications, media and entertainment earlier this month, Google confirmed to CRN.

The hire, first reported by entertainment trade publication Variety, comes as Google Cloud Platform is establishing a thriving niche in serving film and television production companies that require significant data storage and compute capabilities.

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Honeycutt will drive Google's outreach to film studios, content creators and distributors, telecoms, gaming, and esports companies, a Google Cloud spokesperson said.

In leading Google's global strategy for developing and implementing that business, Honeycutt will focus on "ensuring that partners and customers are receiving the best of what both Google and Google Cloud have to offer," the spokesperson told CRN.

Honeycutt worked 15 years at Discovery, in his last position there responsible for the media empire's entire technology stack and managing a 1,500-person workforce.

For eight years before that, he worked at Fox Broadcasting, where he left as senior vice president of broadcast operations, according to his LinkedIn page.

"He will have the opportunity to combine his experiences running strategic, operational and technical sides of multinational media companies with the technical innovation of Google Cloud to help drive not just one company, but the entire industry forward," the Google spokesperson said.

In July, Google turned the lights on at its 17th cloud data center region in Los Angeles.

That complex aimed to put compute and storage resources in the backyard of film production houses, animation studios, and other content creators. Google simultaneously delivered new products for transferring large amounts of data and collaborating on large files—a requirement of the industry.

Honeycutt's efforts will benefit channel partners looking to win media and telecom accounts, the company said.

"Google Cloud currently works with a wide array of partners and customers in the telecommunications, media & entertainment space. We look forward to expanding current relationships even more deeply and building out new ones under John’s guidance and leadership," Google's spokesperson told CRN.

SADA Systems, a Google partner based in Los Angeles, has seen its entertainment industry practice scale rapidly thanks to Google's infrastructure and technology portfolio, said SADA CEO Tony Safoian.

Safoian actually met Honeycutt at the Google NEXT conference last July in San Francisco. He told CRN he's excited to learn that an entertainment industry veteran has been tasked with driving the provider's strategy along that booming vertical.

"We've helped several media and entertainment clients on their cloud transformation journey and welcome the opportunity to work closely with Honeycutt to drive more adoption of Google Cloud," he told CRN.