Google’s New Cloud Migration Program To ‘Move The Needle’ For Partners, Customers

“We’re going to bring everything into one motion with RaMP which is our biggest investment and focus areas for accelerating cloud migrations to date,” Google Cloud’s Stephen Orban, vice president of migrations, tells CRN.

Google Cloud launched its bold new Rapid Migration Program today aimed at accelerating cloud migrations by tying together channel partners’ own migration capabilities with Google solutions that will “move the needle” for cloud transformation initiatives for thousands of customers.

“This will move the needle for our customers who are looking to migrate more workloads to the cloud and looking at application business transformation, this is really going to help customers push the needle forward to where they want to be,” said Jo Debecker, global head of FullStride Cloud for Wipro, a top global Google Cloud partner.

The $11 billion India-based solution provider has already joined Google’s Rapid Migration Program (RaMP), which combines Google products, programs and migration models to existing partner cloud migration offerings and capabilities.

“It’s basically the might and the power of Wipro together with the tooling, the framework, the approach, and the engineering that Google brings which we believe will create massive synergies and opportunities for both companies,” said Debecker.

[Related: Google Vs. Amazon Vs. Microsoft: Q1 Cloud Earnings Face-Off]

Google Cloud RaMP Program Details

Google Cloud products inside the program include a new RaMP Deck offering that closely tracks large scale migrations, as well as existing Google solutions such as StratoZone to discover and assess workloads to migrate, and its Migrate to Virtual Machine Service which lifts-and-shifts servers.

“We’re going to bring everything into one motion with RaMP which is our biggest investment and focus area for accelerating cloud migrations to date,” Google Cloud’s Stephen Orban, vice president of migrations told CRN.

Other offerings inside RaMP include a slew of database, storage and container migration services that are tied to best practices based on successful Google Cloud migration use cases. Some of these best practices Google is bringing to RaMP include: creating ‘migration waves’ where workloads are prioritized—usually easiest to hardest—then segmented by migration strategy; building a landing zone with adequate financial, security, and compliance controls; and overall management of the migration.

“So many of our customers are looking for help when they move to the cloud and our partner ecosystem is going to be the way that we drive most of these migrations—ideally, all of these migrations,” said Orban. “Our customers need help. They want a structured approach that’s full of best practices. Our partners have an amazing opportunity now to align with us to give these customers that help.”

How RaMP Leverages Partners’ Cloud Migration Offerings

Google Cloud is committing to work alongside partners to drive cloud migration for customers.

For example, Wipro’s Full Stride Cloud Global Business Group—which includes more than 3,700 Google Cloud Platform (GCP) certified practitioners and 20,000 GCP trained resources—has combined its Wipro Cloud Studio offerings with Google RaMP to accelerate their joint customers migration to the cloud. Cloud Studio includes Wipro’s best cloud methodologies, tools and accelerators.

“In our Cloud Studio, we have now onboarded all the RaMP approved tools and methodologies, and basically create the best of both worlds from a Wipro and a Google perspective,” said Debecker. “It sits within Wipro very close to our go-to-market and our sales. A lot of our customers have started their data center exit and their cloud journey, but of course they want to further increase this. … RaMP and Cloud Studio are a nice combination to make sure that we can further accelerate the move to clouds for our customer, which for us is a great selling opportunity as well. So we’re quite excited on this program.”

How Partners Can Join RaMP

Google Cloud is looking for partners to join RaMP who have already attained the company’s Data Center Modernization specialization.

Additionally, the company is looking for partners who already have the Google Cloud Migration specialization.

“We’re working with our partners who have the Google Cloud Migration specialization to encourage them to also meet the requirements of our Data Center Modernization specialization,” said Orban. “We’re working with a stable of partners who are in that mix to enable them on our RaMP capability, and then aligning their go-to-market approaches with our approach. We’re pulling together all of these different teams, processes, approaches and best practices, to help our customers with these migrations through our partners with this structured approach program.”

Google Cloud Run Rate Hits Nearly $30 Billion

Last week, Google Cloud unveiled first quarter 2023 financial earnings of approximately $7.5 billion, meaning the company now has an annual run rate of nearly $30 billion.

Google Cloud’s sales increased 28 percent year over year during first quarter 2023, representing a faster cloud revenue growth rate compared to both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft. Additionally, Google Cloud reported positive operating income during the quarter for the first time in its history.

Wipro’s Debecker is bullish on Google Cloud’s further thanks, in part, to its new migration program tied to partners.

“With growth of 28 percent and the fact they are now profitable, clearly shows that it’s all coming together for Google,” said Debecker. “For us, we clearly see the momentum of Google continuing.”