Anthony Cirot (SKEMA 2000)

“Globalising innovation MEANS FIRSTLY MAKING IT

accessible”

Anthony Cirot heads Google Cloud’s EMEA South region: an extensive territory stretching from Belgium to the Middle East. At a time when data, sovereignty and cyber threats are playing out on a global scale, he looks back at the foundations of responsible digital globalisation, which include power, accessibility and local adaptation.

Interview
by Antoine Boitez

Anthony Cirot, how is Google Cloud establishing itself in today’s global technology landscape?

We have become a key player. Last year, Google Cloud generated a turnover of $43 billion, accounting for just over 12% of Alphabet’s total turnover. It is now the group’s second largest contributor after advertising. What sets us apart is our ability to offer a consistent experience anywhere in the world. When an employee uses an application, they shouldn’t experience any latency, whether they’re in Paris or New York. To ensure this, we have our own infrastructure.

How do you position yourselves compared with other major cloud players?

Although other players entered this market before we did, our growth is extremely strong at present, with an annual rate of over 30% since the beginning of the year. And we are not trying to do what everyone else does. Two of our strengths are data management and AI. Google has outstanding experience in processing massive volumes of information, applying artificial intelligence models to it and making it all intelligible to the user.

In practical terms, how does this play out in companies?

We have customers who are completely transforming the way they work. For example, some distributors have integrated AI to automate the creation of marketing campaigns. They analysed the previous decade of campaigns to pinpoint the most effective ones, and can now create new messages in a matter of days rather than months. We are moving from a small-scale approach to increased production with greater impact.

What are your priorities in terms of cybersecurity?

Security is clearly a priority, a duty and a commitment – not only for us, of course, but above all for our users and customers. Today, attacks are no longer local; they are distinctly global, with certain countries highly active in this area, and they are becoming increasingly sophisticated. For instance, cyber attackers can go about things step by step, exploiting invisible vulnerabilities and sometimes staying hidden for several weeks before taking action. Our cloud tools, especially those using artificial intelligence, enable us to detect these anomalies in the “fog log”: a mass of technical data analysed by our systems to pinpoint suspicious behaviour and prevent intrusions.

What is the impact of your presence in the EMEA South region?

This is a strategic growth area, where we have opened 10 cloud regions. A quarter of Google’s cloud infrastructure is in my region. It’s huge. For instance, our presence in the Middle East responds to obvious needs: the countries in the region want to prepare for the post-oil era. They are young countries embarking on enormous digitisation projects, with groups making rapid strides in terms of energy research and logistics plans.

“Think global, act local.
We deploy a global infrastructure, but we adapt it to real local situations.”

Is globalisation simply the duplication of models?

No: globalisation is not standardisation. Our philosophy is: “Think global, act local”. We deploy a global infrastructure, but we adapt it to real local situations. In France, for example, the Google search engine was given a special look for 14 July, and we have added instant voice translation into French to the video tools for our Google AI Pro subscribers. Another particularly strategic example: we have adapted our offering to the government’s cloud strategy, with a dedicated region, technical solutions for enhanced and localised data controls, and the creation of S3NS: the result of our partnership with Thales in the trusted cloud.

And what about Google Workspace?

A lot of French companies have been using Google Workspace for a while now, like Decathlon, Carrefour and Veolia. And if a group like Airbus has adopted it, it’s because our solutions can be applied both locally and globally, and in highly regulated industrial sectors

How can Google remain true to its DNA in a context of hypergrowth?

Our mission is still the same: to organise information on a global scale and make it universally accessible. Today, this means offering “globalisation in services”: providing companies of all sizes, in all countries, with infrastructure, software and artificial intelligence solutions that are secure, fast, scalable and adapted to their local regulations.

Anthony Cirot

AT A GLANCE

2000

Starts out at IBM as Software Account Manager

2006 – 2009

SW Sales Manager for the Île-de-France region (IBM)

2016 – 2018

Vice President Cloud at IBM France

2018 – 2021

France Country Manager & Vice President at VMware

2021

Appointed Managing Director France at Google Cloud

2023

Becomes Vice President EMEA South, Google Cloud, in charge of 11 countries