The New Man In Mountain View

Bertrand Yansouni has been on the job for about three months as Google's global channel chief, brought to Mountain View by Diane Greene, his old boss at VMware and current Google Cloud leader, as part of a leadership overhaul in the company's enterprise division.

Yansouni is tasked with leveraging Google's expanding partner ecosystem to challenge Microsoft and Amazon for cloud dominance. It's a tricky role for the seasoned channel exec. After all, he comes to a company that has less of a channel heritage than just about any enterprise tech vendor of its size and significance, and a tradition of playing by its own rules.

But Yansouni firmly believes that "Google Magic" — a mandate for far-reaching innovation — will prove to be a differentiator in the cloud wars.

After he met with Google Cloud implementers, integrators and resellers at a partner summit Tuesday, a day before the NEXT Cloud Conference -- the largest event Google has ever hosted -- he sat down with CRN to discuss the emerging program and where he plans to take it.