Google Cloud chief moves to ServiceNow as COO

Just a day after announcing his departure from Google to his LinkedIn followers, Amit Zavery said that he is joining ServiceNow as COO.

ServiceNow said that Zavery will serve as “president, chief product officer (CPO), and chief operating officer (COO) to lead product and engineering, effective October 28, 2024.”

“In his role as president, CPO, and COO, Zavery’s responsibilities include ServiceNow’s platform, products, engineering, cloud infrastructure, and user experience. He also leads enterprise-wide operations,” the statement said. 

The post Zavery is filling was left vacant after an earlier executive hiring saga, which now involves investigations from US government entities including the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, and the Army Suspension and Debarment Office. That matter involved ServiceNow hiring the CIO of the US Army to serve as its head of its global public sector.

On July 24, ServiceNow said that an internal investigation had determined that the company’s president and COO, CJ Desai, “had violated company policy regarding a possible conflict relating to such individual’s hiring” and that it had reached an agreement with Desai that he would immediately resign from all positions with the company.

The former Army CIO, Raj Iyer, also quit ServiceNow. He told CIO.com at the time, “I resigned because I didn’t want to be associated with this fiasco in any way. It’s not my fault.”

In an earnings call with analysts on Wednesday afternoon, ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott championed Zavery’s hiring.

“During his tenure, he helped build Google Cloud into the fourth-largest enterprise software company by increasing annualized revenue from $7 billion to over $41 billion. Before joining Google Cloud, Amit had a distinguished career at Oracle, where he presided over their growth and Platform as a Service and data analytics,” McDermott said. “With sterling educational and career credentials, Amit is a world-class engineer and engineering leader. From a commercialization perspective, he’s also an expert in packaging and pricing.”

In his farewell LinkedIn post, Zavery said leaving Google was “the toughest goodbye,” but added, “I’m excited about the new adventures and opportunities ahead.”

One of his first adventures at ServiceNow will be figuring out how best to package and price the company’s new tools for creating AI agents, introduced in September in the Xanadu release of the company’s Now Platform for managing workflows.