Google Cloud Next ’22

Google Cloud kicked off its annual Next event on October 11, 2022. A three-day event where thousands of viewers across the globe tuned in to witness this cloud technologies giant set forth new services to accelerate digital transformation in different industries. As such, Google Cloud declared a multitude of innovative cloud solutions to curb existing challenges and improve the following areas:

• Cybersecurity
• Data aggregation and analysis
• End-to-end application development
• AI and machine learning
• Cloud migration
• And more.

Led by the CEO, Thomas Kurian, the event saw Google Cloud announce the following updates.

The open data ecosystem

The growth of adoption of open source is rapidly accelerating and Google Cloud announced updates that would extend this to data analytics. The main challenge with integrated data analytics is that data is stored in multiple formats and different systems. Since a large percentage of an organization’s data is unstructured, Google Cloud introduced the processing and analytics of unstructured data on Big Query.

Unstructured data processing in BigQuery

The company announced multiple updates that are coming to BigQuery, but the most notable one was that it will now support both semi-structured and unstructured data. This addition will extend the capabilities of BigQuery users who were previously limited to working with structured data from operational databases and SaaS apps. Users can now analyze and manage data from unstructured data from sources like video, audio, and so on. During the event, Google Cloud also announced an integrated experience BigQuery for Apache Spark as well as bringing together its operational databases via Datastream for BigQuery.

Vertex AI Vision for better data visualization

Google Cloud also unveiled Vertex AI Vision: an end-to-end application development environment, which is an extension of Vertex AI that permits analytics and storage of visual data, such as images, videos, and so on. Developers can use this solution to rapidly generate applications capable of analyzing this type of data. By using its extensive library of pre-trained machine learning models, developers can create computer vision apps in just hours, especially for common tasks.’

Unifying Data Studio and Looker

The company announced that they were unifying Data Studio and Looker and it will now be known as Looker Studio. This combines the capabilities of Looker and Data Studio in making data-oriented decisions.  

AI integrations to enterprise solutions

Translation Hub

The company released Translation Hub, an AI-powered translation solution during Next ’22. This solution will bring the translation capabilities of Google Translate to scale as it supports up to 135 languages. Also, it retains a document’s formatting post-translation, allowing researchers to share findings globally.

Updates to Document AI agent

At the Next ’22 two additions to the Document AI agent were announced:

• Document AI Workbench – for extracting data from documents.
• Document AI Warehouse – for improved document searching and management.

Contact Center AI

Contact Center AI which supported communication across multiple channels now automatically distributes calls to available agents. In addition, it smoothly hands over customer cases to human agents.

A new VM family

Google Cloud also introduced their C3 VMs: an efficient, highly predictable, and highly performing family of virtual machines. In conjunction with Intel, Google Cloud generated a custom IPU and 4th Gen Xeon Scalable processor on which the C3 VMs can run. Its high performance is attributed to its System on a Chip (SoC) architecture which integrates most if not all components of a computer in an integrated circuit.

Boosting collaboration on Google Workspace

Google Workspace updates primarily focused on extending its capabilities to other platforms. First, Google Cloud made new chat and meet APIs that could be integrated into 3rd party apps. Apart from extending meet’s capabilities to other platforms, the company released an SDK for developers to embed their apps directly into the meet experience.

Updates to curb cybersecurity challenges    

Chronicle Security Operations

The company launched a series of impressive updates coming to its cybersecurity solution, Chronicle. Google Cloud has unified a variety of independent cybersecurity functions to generate a composite cybersecurity suite called Chronicle Security Operations.  It combines the following:

• Event and security information management from Chronicle
• Orchestration, automation, and response from Siempify (acquired by Google Cloud in 2022)
• Threat intelligence from Google Cloud itself

The result is a potent security solution that extensively analyzes entities by leveraging data from a vast pool of sources. This is the next big thing in beefing up security for enterprise remote teams.

New Cloud Regions

Because the demand for Google Cloud services has been rapidly rising, the company has spent a fortune to bring data centers closer to its clients. As a result, during Next ’22, they announced five new cloud regions: Austria, Greece, Norway, South Africa, and Sweden. These additions mean that Google Cloud now has 49 live and pending regions in total.

Secure software supply chain solution

Software Delivery Shield

Among the biggest unveilings at Next ’22 was the Software Delivery Shield. It is a robust solution built to ensure your software supply chain throughout your SDLC. This includes from dependencies to deployment.  Software Delivery Shield is based on the best practices used by Google Cloud in their software supply chain over the years. As a result, it extends to services in the GCP ecosystem like Cloud Build, GKE, and so on. With Software Delivery Shield, organizations can build specific solutions tailored to their needs by recruiting the best tools and dependencies without worrying about security. 

Mainframe cloud migration

Dual Run for Google Cloud 

Dual Run for Google Cloud which was also announced during this event works to eliminate the hurdles that come with mainframe modernization. It does this by allowing customers to make a copy and run a digital version of their mainframe on Google Cloud at the same time. This is especially important for highly regulated industries (like banking) that don’t want to hamper user experience when migrating their mainframe to the cloud. 

Wrapping up

Through Next ’22, Google Cloud was able to unveil the rapid innovative steps that the company is currently undertaking to the general public and aims to pioneer digital transformation for enterprises in both the public and private sectors.

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