What’s NEXT for cloud tech? A rundown of Google Cloud NEXT 2019
For many industries, gone are the days of fearing that the cloud would mean less control and more risk. According to Cisco, global cloud IP traffic will quadruple by 2020, reaching 14.1 zettabytes - or 14.1 sextillion bytes, a number you may find impossible to visualise. (Hint: it’s 14,099,999,999,999,998,951,424.000000000 000000000000000000000.) If anything, the cloud is a more exciting prospect than ever. And at the forefront of the promise of cloud, is one of its leading providers, Google Cloud.
Our writing team develops case studies for the Google Cloud customer reference programme, and love keeping their finger on the pulse of all things tech. We sent both them and our account director to Google Cloud NEXT 2019 to uncover the latest news and insights from the world of cloud computing. Here’s what they found:
The mission: digital transformation
In his keynote, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian talked about the company’s mission to help businesses around the world transform through digital transformation. The idea is not just to move to the cloud, but to modernise techniques in the cloud.
How? By delivering not just world class infrastructure and a digital transformation platform, but solutions that are industry-specific, whether you’re in retail, tech, healthcare, or something else. “We give you this platform to paint a new vision for your company,” he said, “to imagine what was once considered impossible, and to transform the way you serve customers in every industry.”
With this in mind, it makes sense that Google Cloud products are going the way of abstraction, with less and less need for customers to touch code. Enabling business value through ease of use is the order of the day.
2. Everything’s converging
Today’s advancements in compute, storage, and network will enable previously unimaginable capabilities, cost efficiencies, and scale. As many experts now say, we’re living in the era of convergence for cloud computing. At NEXT ‘19, spotlight session Solving for the Future of Analytics & AI emphasised the idea that with Google Cloud businesses can use a growing number of external products and services, in any capacity - and choose Google Cloud, hybrid, or multi-cloud, for the utmost flexibility. As Director of Product Management Google Cloud, Sudir Hasbe said, “With Google Cloud, you don’t have to choose.”
Google Cloud developers who spoke at the panel discussion, Application Development on Google Cloud, echoed this theme, saying that which development product(s) you use now simply depends on what you want to achieve.
3. Options are key
It’s clear that not having to choose one or the other is becoming a basic expectation of many cloud customers. Sharing insights from his work at HSBC, the bank’s CTO Big Data and Cloud, Shane Lamont likened on-premises data storage and management to buying a new car.
You need to do plenty of research on different models as they all have different options and capabilities, you need to make a commitment to invest a large sum of money in the car you choose, and so on. Google Cloud, on the other hand, he said was like renting a holiday vehicle. You could choose what car you wanted, for how many days, and at the end of the day, just return it - or perhaps exchange it for a motorbike! (That’s us getting carried away with his delightful metaphor.)
Lamont applies this thinking for the massive amount of data that HSBC handles every day; switching between data lake in the morning and data warehouse in the afternoon, for example.
Bonus theme: diversity and inclusion
With diversity and inclusion on the tip of the tongue for so many industries and businesses today, it made sense to use NEXT ‘19 as a platform for Google Cloud to make its own statement on the subject. The panel, Leading with Inclusion: How it drives business impact, brought together speakers from advertising, tech, and journalism to share their insights on diversity in business.
Karen Blackett of WPP spoke of the need to think diversely as well as act. “The key is being open to changing our perception of ‘the norm’,” she said, “so we focus on diversity of thought among our workforce.” Meanwhile, The Telegraph’s Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging, Asif Sadiq differentiated between the concepts of diversity and inclusion. “Inclusivity doesn’t necessarily mean you have a voice; it just means you’re included,” he said. “A feeling of belonging, on the other hand, brings about motivation, and consequently, more efficiency and even innovation - because you’re free to be yourself.” And Dawn Baker of Fitbit drove home the importance of having a workforce that reflects your customer base: “Our customers are 60% women, but our workforce isn’t. It’s a constant challenge to figure out how you appeal to the people you’re trying to reach, and understand how they think, if you’re not them.”
Google Cloud customers too, talked about how important it is for companies today to place diversity at the core of their business. In the Customer Innovation Series panel Niccolo Maisto, CEO of competitive gaming platform FACEIT, shared that the company’s online community had been losing members due to instances of offensive language or toxic behaviour displayed by some players during gaming. To tackle this issue, which at its root is an inclusion case study, FACEIT built Minerva, an AI-powered moderator that analyses gamers’ behaviour, from sentiment to context, identifies toxic behaviour, and recommends actions that should be taken to neutralise the situation.
With more than a hundred sessions to choose from, and experts on everything from infrastructure modernisation to smart analytics and AI, application development, data management and more, NEXT ‘19 was packed with insights, forecasts, and exciting announcements. Plenty to keep our team inspired as they craft case studies that hero the experiences and successes of cloud-adopting businesses in every industry, all over the world.
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