I recently had the opportunity to break away from the cold Michigan weather and travel to San Francisco for the annual Google Cloud Next conference. Joined by cloud experts from around the world, I listened to some of the brightest minds share what’s next in the field of cloud computing. Here are a few of the highlights from this year’s event:
Scalability and security
Google’s unique selling proposition for their cloud platform is that you only pay for what you use. If you have a spike in demand, their cloud can scale the resources instantly and then spin down to zero after the spike in demand is done. For example, an IT leader a major food company shared a success story of how he used the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to turn a six-hour job into a six-second one, and that experience has convinced them to move everything that they can to GCP. Not only is GCP highly scalable, it’s an extremely secure cloud infrastructure with 700 people from Google who work full time on monitoring GCP’s security.
Machine Learning
Machine learning was another major trend at the conference, thanks in part to the recently available Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine. Google’s latest engine has harnessed machine learning complexity to make the technology more accessible, allowing users to harness the power of machine learning tools from the cloud. One example, is a UK-based online grocery store that applied machine learning to manage their incoming email traffic. The technology automatically pulled urgent, negative emails to the front of the line, and archived emails that did not need a follow-up. With the Google Cloud ML Engine, the online grocery story enjoyed a 10000% ROI while also improving their customer experience.
A Focus on the Enterprise
“Let Google” was the resounding slogan of the week, a phrase that encompassed Google’s promise to handle its user’s infrastructure and security so business owners can focus on innovating their organization. Google has created technology to drive optimization of their platform all the way down to the chip level. In collaboration with Intel, they have created processors unique to their specs with added chip level security provisions as well. Here’s an interesting fact: If you stack all the servers that Google runs on top of each other, the stack would rise 5,000 feet above Mount Everest.
Overall, Google Cloud Next ‘17 revealed the significant investment that Google has put into the enhancement of their technology for the enterprise, presenting them as a leader in the public cloud space. If you were able to attend the conference, we would love to hear your own perspective: Send us an email, give us a call, or connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you weren’t able to attend, check out a few of our favorite clips: eBay’s Shop Bot, Google’s API’s, and Google’s Eric Schmidt.