Businesses with big ambitions had better be able to fund them. Google Cloud’s top executive made it a point today to ensure there would not be any doubts about the level of his company’s commitment as a major cloud provider.

Google Cloud Chief Executive Officer Thomas Kurian opened his keynote remarks at the company’s Cloud Next conference in San Francisco today with a few data points to illustrate the financial investments his company has made.

“I was struck by the stats that Google gave at the beginning of the keynote today,” said Dave Vellante, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. “Google, in the last three years, has spent $47 billion on capital expenditures, and this year, $13 billion on data centers. It would take IBM three-and-a-half years to spend that much in capex, and it would take Oracle six years.”

Vellante was joined by John Furrier and Stu Miniman, co-hosts of theCUBE, and they discussed Google’s recent announcements regarding cloud security and the company’s competitive advantage in data management (see the full interview with transcript here).

New security products

In addition to making the point about capital investment, Google also used today’s keynote sessions to talk about cloud security. The company announced more than 30 new products and services in the security space this week, including the use of phones running Android 7+ as a security key for Google Cloud accounts and enterprise tools to monitor sensitive data at cloud scale.

Although the news provided a level of security for enterprise customers, some analysts thought it would be fair to question how Google’s commitment to security in the cloud will mesh with an overall corporate model heavily dependent on making money from user data.

“We know Google as a whole — Alphabet — is 95%-plus ad revenue,” Miniman said. “I heard what they said, but there’s got to be some concern there.”

Despite whatever concerns there may be, Google’s ability to leverage the power of data in the cloud continues to be a significant competitive strength.

“On the data front, Google has so much in the toolshed,” Furrier said. “The next level of innovation for Google is to make data programmable. This is going to be a 10-year opportunity. And if they get it right, they will win big.”

Here’s the complete video analysis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s extensive coverage of Cloud Next:

Photo: Google