Google - August 2022

GOOGLE

This is the At Google, headline of Supriya Iyer the feature is asking the right questions DIGITAL REPORT 2022

DIGITAL REPORT 2022

AT GOOGLE, SUPRIYA IYER IS ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS 2

Google.com

GOOGLE

Google.com

3

GOOGLE

Supriya Iyer is the Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations at Google. Here, she explains what it takes to lead and who inspires her

R

esearch from SEO Tribunal suggests that there are over three million Google searches every minute. But behind the familiar question tab is Supriya Iyer – the Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations at Google.

Born in India, Iyer went on to complete her schooling there, all the way through to postgraduate study. After completing a double Master’s in Mathematics and Information Systems from B.I.T.S Pilani India, Iyer then moved to Melbourne, Australia, where she became a formidable player working in global supply chain and operations roles across a variety of industry sectors, such as automotive and high tech.

“My work at General Electric was especially pertinent to my growth as a professional,” she explains. “It was there that I truly learnt about managing change and driving transformation.”

In 2016, Iyer moved to the Bay Area with her family and started working at Google Cloud in the global partner programmes team and subsequently in the professional services organisation.

4

Google.com

Google.com

5

GOOGLE

“ Compassionate and competent leaders have always inspired me to challenge the status quo and invite diverse perspectives” SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

6

Google.com

“In October 2019, I took on my current role in the Google networking team as the Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations.

The Google networking supply chain & commercial operations team is structured to effectively manage procurement and supply of networking equipment to sites, overseeing significant investment in assets and services across the business.”

The challenges in this role range from supporting Google Cloud’s enterprise customers to ensuring effective procurement and delivery to complex countries.

“The shift over the past 40+ years to just-intime inventory and global manufacturing has helped to optimise costs,” says Iyer. “However, the pandemic added a new set of unforeseen challenges. On the supply side, border closings combined with lockdowns constrained the manufacturing and shipping of key components and goods, significantly increasing lead times. Juggling supply to meet growing demand has therefore posed new challenges.”

Hiring supply chain and project management talent globally in a labour constrained environment has been more of a challenge recently.

“As a leader, supporting team members to take care of their health and overall wellbeing during the pandemic has been critical, but not always easy to do. The last two years have been a marathon and it isn’t over by any stretch of imagination!”

Iyer and her team are working hard to overcome these challenges.

“We have developed frameworks, processes and metrics to help better understand and quantify these challenges.

For example, working with business stakeholders on an emerging market roadmap, developing a materials supply playbook for these markets and investing in planning ahead to support timely deployment in these markets have helped.

Google.com

7

Juniper Networks - keeping cloud providers operational Juniper Networks on how it provides infrastructure to cloud providers, including the largest hyperscale networks

supply chain and the man who oversees it – Mitch Haynes, Supply Chain Planning & Fulfillment VP at Juniper.

Juniper Networks might just be one of the biggest companies you’ve never heard of.

A US multinational corporation, Juniper offers networking products including routers, switches, network management software and security products and solutions.

“What’s super important is our ability to scale-up with a customer. We have to physically produce all of the hardware that makes that possible.”

Its customers consist of service providers, enterprises, and cloud providers, including the largest hyperscale cloud providers, as part of its Cloud segment.

“Our customers are building clouds that serve businesses and the public globally,” says Jason Fritch, Senior Vice President of Global Sales, Juniper Networks Cloud Segment. He adds that the company also provides “high-end, high-performance, high-scale networking solutions” that not only connect clients’ data centres to one another, but also connect them directly to their end-users. “Tens of thousands of products and hardware components are required from us to do this at planet scale, like we do for some of our global cloud clients.”

Such vast quantities of components and products demand a great deal of both Juniper’s

This requires an ecosystem of partners, says Haynes: “There are the customers, and the operation of their data centres, and then there are our manufacturing partners, and their suppliers.”

It’s a difficult job at the best of times, but over the past two, pandemic-hit, years, it has been inordinately challenging - which is when Juniper’s strong relationship with their customers came into its own.

“We work with customers so that together we can make the best operational decision we can at any given point in time,” says Haynes.

“That might be whether to place a new order for a product earlier than we typically would, or looking at a design or use-case and making early-stage decisions on future engineering.”

Learn more

GOOGLE

SUPRIYA IYER TITLE: DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS LOCATION: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES

EXECUTIVE BIO

Supriya leads Supply Chain and Commercial Operations, with a focus on predictable materials supply and operations to operate Google’s network at scale. With 20+ years experience transforming value chains and growing small teams into mature organisations to deliver high quality products and services, Supriya enjoys fast-paced and dynamic environments while fostering people-first culture and stakeholder engagement. Previously, she has held global leadership positions at VMWare, GE and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI).

Supriya holds a Master's degree in Computer Science and a Master’s degree in Mathematics. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hiking, cooking, and travelling.

10

Google.com

At Google, Supriya Iyer is asking the right questions

Google.com

11

Discover the Latest in PDU Innovation

PRO3X PDUs MORE BENEFITS IN A SINGLE PDU SOLUTION

JUST SOME OF THE PRO3X PDU BENEFITS: •

Improve uptime with mechanical locking outlets

•

Increase flexibility with outlets accommodating both C14 and C20 plugs in a single outlet

•

More intelligence from a technology platform that enables complete power chain visibility, remote management, advanced alerting and security

•

Improved airflow and load balancing with alternating phase design

STAY POWERED AND ENSURE UPTIME WITH INDUSTRY LEADING INNOVATION Learn more about the PRO3X PDU at: https://www.servertech.com/solutions/pro3x-pdu-solutions

www.servertech.com | sales@servertech.com | 800-835-1515

12

Google.com

GOOGLE

“ I’m inspired by seekers – anyone who is committed to learning, growth and giving back” “Similarly, developing a two-year capability roadmap has helped not only supply chain but also our partner teams to work on the right tools, data structures, reporting and processes to enable scale and velocity.

“Strong partnerships with strategic suppliers has been pivotal to ensure smooth supply and early notification of supply constraints. Jointly, we have been able to develop solutions that have supported Google networking’s rapid growth.”

SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

Vulnerability and authenticity in leadership The best piece of advice Iyer has ever been given is to “get out of the office and connect with customers, vendors, peers and team members” – pretty difficult to do in the pandemic, but not impossible.

“Only then can you hope to understand them and build relationships of trust and open communication,” she says.

This advice is in part inspired by an eclectic range of Iyers personal heroes.

“I’m inspired by seekers – anyone who is committed to learning, growth and giving back: Malala Yousafzai, Mahatma Gandhi, Greta Thunberg and Maya Angelou, they are some examples of people who inspire me by what they stand for and how they lead.

They demonstrate vulnerability, authenticity and standing up for the community.

Google.com

13

GOOGLE

“At work, I am inspired by the Google leaders, my peers and of course my team who have shown customer centricity, perseverance and teamwork despite the tough challenges of the last 2 years.

Compassionate and competent leaders – my first mentor (John Gafferena) and my father (Alak Sundararaman) – have always inspired me to challenge the status quo, invite diverse perspectives and focus on the customer.”

Making the Google supply chain resilient Google is a planet-scale network, but there are some figures that can provide a more easily digestible view of the organisation: • Google’s global network consists of a system of high-capacity fibre optic cables that encircle the globe, under both land and sea, connecting data centres to each other and to users • Globally, Google operates data centres in 23 locations, 34 cloud regions and 103 zones • The company has 147 points of presence and has announced 20 subsea cable investments around the globe • Google also has thousands of edge locations around the world in over 200 countries and territories, offering users and customers very low latency services such as Google Assistant and rich content such as YouTube and Google Photos

“ Strong partnerships with strategic suppliers have been pivotal to ensure smooth supply and early notification of supply constraints” SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

14

Google.com

Though undoubtedly a complex, multi-layered role, which elements of growing this worldwide network demand most from Iyer?

“Anticipation is key and asking the right questions to pre-empt the needs of a rapidly growing and evolving network is a challenge,” she says. “The only guarantee is the next 12 months won’t be like the previous 12 months, for sure!”

Innovating material supply in ways that enables responsiveness at short notice will be key in the coming years – most likely for all industries.

Part standardisation, rationalisation and in-region customisation are some approaches that Google is taking to reduce long lead-times. Iyer’s team invests considerable time in building on the strong partnership with their strategic vendors and jointly innovating with them.

Similarly, working with the engineering, deployment and network operations teams within Google, to ensure alignment, is a key part of Iyer’s work. Over time, the Google network hopes to be able to deliver greater predictably with innovative solutions to meet industry needs, while Google.com

15

Trusted by 7 of the TOP10 Global Tech Giants

Global Vendor Managed Inventory 1,000+ OEM Partners

Inventory Holding | Direct Shipping to Deployment Site | Live Inventory Management Portal and E-commerce Site | Deployment Services | Streamlined Shipping Costs | Reduced Lead Times | DDP Shipping Terms: 100% Insured | 24/7/365 Multi-Lingual Support Team

Servicing 150 Countries | 6 Continents Worldwide NAMER | LATAM | EMEA | INDIA | APAC | SEA | ANZ

Optimize IT Supply Chains Rahi delivers high-performing VMI, allowing your organization flexible supply chain management and our ability to deliver direct to site, minimizing logistics headaches, and providing peace-of-mind procurement and logistics.

16

Find out more: rahisystems.com/contact-us Google.com

GOOGLE

operating an autonomous network. Similar to a self-driving car, Google’s intent-driven automated network needs to evolve into an autonomous network.

“In addition to thinking about reliability as ‘How do we minimise failures?’, at Google we think as well about ‘How we can make our services resilient to failures when they happen?’. In our organisation, we spend as much time on systems and processes to respond to failures as we do in preventing them in the first place. Google Cloud has grown significantly, and we are continuously increasing the number of enterprise customers we support.”

Supply chain and digital transformation at Google Iyer has a roadmap for Google’s networking supply chain. She and her team have devoted considerable effort to optimise their supply chain tools and systems to reengineer across the end to end value chain and enable FLOW and agility.

“Revisiting processes and systems in light of both the demand and supply variability is essential to predictably deliver at scale,” she says. “The frequency and volume of change will increase and we are developing

“ Revisiting processes and systems in light of both the demand and supply variability is essential to predictably deliver at scale” SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

processes and tools where we can react within a lead time that our customers need to sustainably succeed.”

Iyer plans to leverage AI and ML capabilities to further automate supply chain processes and simplify decision making. An example of this could be scaled invoice validation to support timely processing and payment.

“Integration with vendor systems and tools for timely information flow across the materials supply chain,” she explains.

“For example, integration with third-party warehouse providers is key to ensure the right information is available to make the right decisions in a timely manner.

“We are actively working to deliver an agreed capability roadmap. We are well progressed on all fronts and, in light of the recent supply constraints and demand growth, we have further refined our capability roadmap to predictably meet customer demand in the coming years.”

Google.com

17

“ Responsive and responsible supply of networking materials and services is our mission; that is what motivates us” SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

18

Google.com

This transformation will help Google to offer customers capabilities that it hasn’t been able to offer before, with the investment in enhancing tools, systems, processes and data frameworks helping Google to support cloud customers with new networking products and capabilities at scale. It will support customers’ growing businesses and help them to achieve their purpose and strategy.

GOOGLE

However, Google’s longterm strategy for the Google networking supply chain links right back to Google’s vision: ‘To organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’. “My team’s vision aligns with this as we aim to provide access to networking materials and all material related information to our customers easily and simply,” says Iyer.

“Responsive and responsible supply of

networking materials and services is our mission; that is what motivates us.”

Such a mission would not be possible without a reliable partner ecosystem.

At Google, vendors are valued partners and the company actively collaborates with them at all levels to develop innovative solutions and products. Google networking engineering, product, supply chain and other teams regularly connect, discuss and work closely with vendors.

“They are vital to delivering our vision and strategy and, likewise, Google as a customer is critical for them and their organisations,” says Iyer. “There is mutual respect, trust and confidence in our ability to shape Google’s network in the coming years.

“Our relationship with our vendors has deepened in the last two years; we’ve been learning from each other.

We have also supported each other in developing innovative solutions and ensuring timely execution of critical projects.”

Increased digitisation; stronger partnerships with suppliers; working closely with governments; holding larger inventory buffers for critical components; bringing supply chains closer to home; and increasing optionality will be key to protect from future shocks.

The pandemic has given supply chain professionals a platform to appropriately influence design, engineering and deployment – and Iyer is ready for the next stage.

Google.com

19

Googleplex 1600 Amphiteatre Pkwy Mountain View California USA Google.com POWERED BY:

POWERED BY: