James Phillips, a former Microsoft President, has joined Google Cloud, saying, “the depth of talent here is staggering.”

Phillips worked at Microsoft for a decade, serving as VP for eight years and company President for another two, before leaving in April 2022. Phillips revealed his new role as VP at Google Cloud in a LinkedIn post:

This week I joined the Google Cloud leadership team. I’m grateful for the warm welcome from Thomas Kurian and all my new colleagues. And with so many former colleagues who’ve joined before me, it feels a bit like a homecoming. The depth of talent here is staggering – across every discipline; and the energy and momentum is palpable and contagious.

Given Google’s emphasis on AI, Phillips unsurprisingly touts the benefits of the technology for the cloud industry:

We are accelerating into a world in which data (information) and AI will transform every business process, across every enterprise, spanning every industry. Since its founding, Google’s mission has been to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. The company’s innovations and contributions in furtherance of this mission are nearly innumerable – but includes the foundational work underlying the recent explosion of generative AI models. The depth and breadth of that innovation is embodied in the Google Cloud platform.

Google has been making moves in the cloud industry, furthering CEO Thomas Kurian’s efforts to move from third to second place. Part of Kurian’s strategy has been to remake the company’s leadership to make it more competitive. Google Cloud most recently recruited Chris Vonderhaar, former AWS data center lead.

Nabbing high-profile execs like Phillips and Vonderhaar is sure to help that goal.