Driving change in the cloud: A fireside chat with Google's Diane Greene
Wednesday morning, we kicked off BoxWorks 2016 with the announcement of The All New Box and a fireside chat with Box CEO, Aaron Levie and Google SVP, Diane Greene. During the discussion, they covered the state of innovation in the enterprise, machine learning, what’s next for Google and Pokémon Go. Oh, and they announced a deepened partnership between Google and Box to transform work in the cloud. Below are some of the highlights from the conversation.
Moving to the cloud now provides the most security, visibility and control of your data.
Companies of all sizes and industries are realizing the capabilities of moving to the cloud, particularly around security. Greene and Levie both agreed that the ability to optimize signals around threats, patching servers faster, and watching activity signals on the systems are key differentiators that are only possible with cloud technology.
"Every enterprise wants to get to the cloud because it's the most secure place to be" – Diane Greene
There's a huge desire for openness and interoperability between platforms.
Despite Google's size and scale, Greene says that Google can't continue to grow without its partners. As far as partnerships go, she detailed how Google, when working with partners in the past, has sent its own engineers to work with its customers to really work hand in hand. Diane noted that Google is looking forward to continue partnering with companies across all industries around everything from their initial move to the cloud to worker productivity and data apps.
"Every company is interesting, and we aren't going to build it all. We've adopted a very partner-centric approach around Google Apps and Google Cloud and it's working." – Diane Greene
Machine learning will soon be leveraged across all major industries.
Greene sees healthcare as a huge sector that's being revolutionized by machine learning; soon, machine learning will recognize a broken arm better than a trained radiologist.
Google has used machine learning internally, too. After acquiring DeepMind, Google applied that technology to its own datacenters and saw a 40% reduction in the amount of electricity needed for cooling. And as Levie inquired, Greene sees this technology being heavily adopted by other industries, especially media and retail.
Pokémon Go is a clear demonstration of the future of augmented reality.
Greene touched on how impressively fast Pokemon Go has scaled, calling it "historic", but mentioned that while her team isn't specifically working with AR/VR technologies, there's a lot of potential there.
She mentioned that while there's potential in that sector, she and her team's focus is getting people to realize the potential of the cloud and how they can better understand their data. She says they're doing things they never thought were possible when it comes to organizations understanding their business and customers.
We’re thrilled to deepen our partnership with Google to make it easier for thousands of customers to work in and transition to the cloud. Stay tuned for more on how we’ll be working together soon.