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Much in tech has changed since Sam Sebastian first joined Google in 2006. First, he and his colleagues were explaining newfangled search advertising to customers. Today, the Ohio-born executive is at the forefront of another major leap cloud computing as the Canadian head of Google Clouds operations.

When COVID-19 forced much of the worlds economy into lockdown, the thought of keeping data trapped on office-bound servers was intolerable to many CEOs. Cloud storage boomed, and forced painstaking digital transformations through in a matter of months rather than years.

Google Cloud was fairly well-positioned to capitalize on the sudden demand for off-premises yet adaptable places to store data. In a matter of minutes, companies can quickly scale up their storage to handle an influx of new data, or shed excess capacity. This flexibility is appealing to all three of Google Clouds main cohorts of customers: digital native firms like Lightspeed, stalwarts like Canadian Tire, and next-generation AI-oriented customers like Mobius.

To many average consumers, whether or not their favourite brands rely on the cloud or locally stored data is irrelevant. But firms like Google have made big business from convincing sometimes-reluctant CEOs to shell out for new operating systems capable of retrieving data from anywhere.

Youve bounced to and from multiple executive roles at Google. Your last position was in 2017. What keeps you coming back?

Yeah, Im a boomerang Googler. Theres a few of us around. I started at Google 17 years ago in the U.S. I was in different roles in the States, on the ad side for eight years. About nine years ago, I moved my family to Canada and ran the Canadian business for about three and a half years. At the time, most of our business was ads.

I loved every minute of it. But I had the opportunity to be the CEO of Pelmorex Corp., a big brand that included the Weather Network and MtoMdia. They had a business in Spain Eltiempo. So, after 11 years at Google, an opportunity to go be a CEO of a strong Canadian brand that needed to digitally transform was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

I thought I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, in the early days of Google, to be on the ground floor when search advertising and YouTube was first kicking off. Now, I have the opportunity to come back and almost have a second chance at a once-in-a-million opportunity cloud which is new to many folks. Were on the cusp of this generative AI revolution, which is also tied in with the cloud. To be on another rocket ship, with another kind of revolutionary shift, was just too good to pass up.

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Whats it like going back to a very senior position at Google after being a CEO at Pelmorex?

In the end, I have always thought about what I want to do in my career in three ways. Number one, I want to keep learning. As long as Im in a job, and Im learning a whole new set of skills, it doesnt really matter to me what role Im in. Number two, I love to lead. Regardless of whether Im leading an entire organization or a country inside of a larger multinational, so long as Im leading and working with people that inspire me, then Im good. And lastly, I need to add value.

I had never done the CEO role before. I could learn a ton. But I was an ads guy for 30 years. So, at Google, I had an opportunity to learn. I could lead great young Googlers and very experienced Googlers in cloud. I could both learn from them, but also be inspired by them. I knew the playbook for Google on the ad side because I had built out its country infrastructure.

You have a lot of leadership experience, but youre new to cloud computing itself. Are you still learning about it as you go? Are you leaning on other people? How does that work?

We have an incredible team who has made huge investments in this space, from training, evangelizing, and technology. I lean on the team significantly. But its a relatively new space. There are very few veterans in this space because it has only really been mature for a handful of years. My ultimate clients are CEOs, the C-suites and boards, and Im trying to convince them to make these tough decisions to modernize their infrastructure.

And I did that for five years figuring out how I was going to migrate on-premise stuff to the cloud at Pelmorex. We all had this MBA in cloud for two years during COVID, meaning anyone who was running a company had to figure out how to do it from home. COVID really saw demand for cloud services explode. So, to a certain extent, I had been through these wars myself as a C-suite leader.

Some businesses are very skeptical about the benefits of cloud computing. How do you convert them?

There are a couple of ways. Number one, every business has a core function. The core function of Pelmorex was weather forecasting. It was not managing data centres or modernizing technology. Doing so requires a huge set of resources, expertise and skills. To an extent, I can rent that experience and technology, and use it as I need it. Thats the ideal business model for someone who wants to really focus on their core business. When you sit down with a CEO, they will get that right away.

Then you have to go deeper and ask about the objections. They may say a cloud migration will take a long time, its not as secure as on-site storage, or there isnt a specific solution for their industry. But we can counter each of these objections. So we have to talk at the highest level with the CEO to inspire them, and then work inside the organization, and with our partners. COVID was a pretty big demand generator because, all of a sudden, folks had to manage all this stuff remotely, which is a bit more difficult when youre not in the cloud.

The vast majority of digital transformations fail. How are you trying to change that equation?

A couple of things. Digital transformations are huge projects, and any huge project comes with a lot of risk. What we try to do is break that project down, atomize it, and create a bunch of different milestones over time and then put all the right people on various parts of the project. One client, one vendor, one cloud player cant solve everything.

Whenever theres a burning platform, and a company has to succeed, there is no other alternative. COVID was a great example. Youd be amazed at what a company or an industry can do in a matter of months. Now, were trying to leverage that to create a sense of a burning platform, a no excuse but success mentality, so we can push folks to move.

There is a perception that cloud computing is a lot less secure than relying on on-site data storage. What do you say to critics who say to avoid the cloud because it is insecure?

Just look at Google. And you can look at Amazon as well. These are massive companies that built massive infrastructure targeted by the biggest cyber threats, both internally and externally, of any company in the world. And theyve been secure. Weve had to build so much threat detection, security and authentication protocols inside all of our own technology. Now, all were doing is making those same attributes available to customers.

The hard part for customers is that they feel out of control. Once we walk them through how, frankly, theyre more exposed to risks with the work theyre doing on-premises, their objections go away. Some of the biggest threats come from people inside an organization, who have access to a lot of things that they might not otherwise have with the cloud.

A lot of Googlers in executive roles end up going back to San Francisco. Do you think thats in the cards for you?

I dont. That was the thinking when I moved to Canada nine years ago. A lot of times, executives move up here, they do a stint, they learn some things, and they take it back. After four years, the kids loved the country. My wife and I love the country. We have built some great relationships. I had built a profile inside the country so that I could continue to take on new opportunities. And so, our entire perception changed.

Thats why I had no problem leaving Google to go to a Canadian company and get even more experience inside Canada. Now, Ive come back to Google in Canada. Both of my kids are in university in Canada. Weve got no plans to leave. We love it here. And we still have lots of family back in the States, and we go back and forth, obviously. But this is home now.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Read more here:
Google Clouds Sam Sebastian on how the pandemic accelerated the shift to cloud, converting the skeptics, and why Canada is now home - Toronto Star