Google Cloud Next 2022: The Top 8 Announcements You Need to Know
From cybersecurity and data protection to Accenture and Google Workspaces, there’s a ton of news to digest.
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Behemoth consultancy Accenture and public cloud provider Google Cloud are expanding their partnership.
As of Oct. 11, Accenture will go from more than 5,000 Google Cloud certifications to 15,000. Those credentials will cover domains including application modernization, data analytics and artificial intelligence, mainframe migration, cybersecurity and sustainability.
The two companies also will develop solutions and accelerators for specific use cases. Think customer transformation, sales and marketing optimization, smart analytics, visual inspection and more.
Next, Accenture and Google Cloud will jointly invest in more co-innovation hubs. These sites will reside in Dublin, for starters, among other global locations. The companies will use them, along with an engineering center of excellence, to create, pilot and deploy solutions on Google Cloud.
On the next slide, find out what top leaders at Google Cloud and Accenture have to say about the bigger commitments the companies have made to one another.
In case you hadn’t heard, there’s an ongoing IT talent shortage, projected to last for quite some time. Accenture and Google Cloud aim to curb the impact of the problem by certifying more Accenture employees (getting to that aforementioned 15,000 threshold).
“This next phase of our partnership with Accenture will significantly scale the professional services and implementation support available to customers globally, and deliver new solutions to help businesses and public sector organizations benefit from Google Cloud’s capabilities in AI, ML, data analytics, cybersecurity and more,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO at Google Cloud.
Karthik Narain, global lead of Accenture Cloud First, agreed.
“Cloud offers boundless opportunities for companies to be more innovative and resilient, but the real world is full of barriers to value,” Narain said. “Our expanded partnership with Google Cloud is designed to help clients build a strong digital core utilizing Google Cloud. … A strong digital core helps companies respond to change and shifting dynamics within their industry.”
One last sidenote: Accenture is Google Cloud’s 2021 Global Services Partner of the Year (the companies announced that designation this past summer). This marks the 14th time Accenture has received a Google Cloud partner award.
Google Cloud is ramping up its emphasis on cybersecurity and data protection with new integrations and offerings via more than 20 partners. The efforts apply in different aspects and regions of cloud.
Let’s start with sovereignty, which is a big deal in Europe, especially. The Google Cloud Ready–Sovereign Solutions program will help customers identify partner applications validated as compatible with Google Cloud’s portfolio of Sovereign Solutions. These will include partner offerings from T-Systems in Germany and S3NS in France.
The following companies have committed to validating their platforms for Google Cloud Ready–Sovereign Solutions: Aiven, Broadcom (Symantec), Cloud Software Group (Citrix), Climate Engine, Commvault, Confluent, Datadog, DataIKU, Dell Technologies, Elastic, Fortinet, Gitlab, Iron Mountain, LumApps, MongoDB, NetApp, OpenText, Palo Alto Networks, Pega Systems, Siemens, SUSE, Thales, Thought Machine, Veeam and VMware.
“Our partners play a critical role in keeping customers secure and compliant, whether enabling secure hybrid work, safeguarding critical infrastructure, or meeting stringent data residency requirements,” said Sunil Potti, vice president, cloud security, at Google Cloud.
Next up, find out what’s new with zero trust, identity management and more.
Google Cloud is teaming up with Palo Alto Networks for zero trust. The companies say users will be protected across devices and applications on any network. On a similar note, Google Cloud is debuting new integrations with ForgeRock, JumpCloud, Okta and Ping Identity. These integrations will automatically extend identity management capabilities and policies to joint customers. That’s important for securing hybrid work as employees move between the office and home (or other remote-work locations).
By the by, the Mandiant acquisition means endpoint partners will be able to do more integration with Google Cloud’s security operations suite. Google Cloud didn’t provide details beyond that.
Mainframe modernization continues to pose a challenge to organizations. To help tackle the problem, Google Cloud just announced Dual Run. It’s intended to simplify migrations and cut risk when going from legacy systems to the cloud.
“By moving mainframe systems to the cloud, organizations have an opportunity to better utilize their data, implement stronger cybersecurity protections, and build a foundation for their digital transformations that will drive their future growth,” said Sachin Gupta, vice president and general manager, infrastructure, at Google Cloud. “Dual Run simplifies this process and reduces any associated risks.”
Dual Run enables parallel processing, meaning customers can simultaneously run workloads on their existing mainframes and on Google Cloud. This supports real-time testing and data gathering to assess performance and stability without disrupting the business. Also, Dual Run allows organizations in highly regulated industries to demonstrate compliance with privacy, security and data residency requirements. Part of the reason for that is that Dual Run is built on top of unique technology developed by Banco Santander, one of the world’s largest banks.
Dual Run integrates with the Micro Focus enterprise IT modernization platform, available on the Google Cloud Marketplace.
Google Cloud partners including Accenture, Capgemini, DXC Technology, Kyndryl and Micro Focus will provision Dual Run.
If you’re into data as much as Google Cloud is, good news. The company is showcasing some pretty in-depth changes at Google Cloud Next this week. There’s a lot around BigQuery, Apache Iceberg, Dataplex, Looker and more. Go here to read the blog from Gerrit Kazmaier, vice president and general manager of the company’s data analytics group.
“Data complexity is at an all-time high and as data volumes grow, data is becoming distributed across clouds, used in more workloads and accessed by more people than ever before,” Kazmaier wrote. “Only an open data cloud ecosystem can unlock the full potential of data and remove the barriers to digital transformation.”
Expect more integrations with companies including Collibra, MongoDB, ServiceNow, Reltio and others as Google Cloud pursues its data strategies.
Google Cloud is pursuing what it calls “infrastructure innovation,” too. In this case, that means a new C3 machine series. It’s powered by the fourth generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor and Google’s custom Intel Infrastructure Processing Unit.
“Meeting the rapidly growing demands of our customers’ high performance computing and data-intensive workloads requires deep innovation,” said Nirav Mehta, senior director of product management, cloud infrastructure solutions. “At Google Cloud, we know we can’t rely on ever-faster CPUs alone, like Moore’s Law has enabled in the past. Customers can either optimize their workloads for a given platform, or we can offer them a platform that is optimized for their specific needs. At Google Cloud, we choose the latter.”
On the next slide, learn what’s new with Google Workspace.
Once again with hybrid work in mind, Google Cloud is enhancing capabilities within Google Workspace. There are a lot of additions — a lot. If your customers are keen on making the most of their productivity tools (and they probably are), here are the key takeaways:
• Better ability to tag and see information from partner applications using @-mentions.
• Better ability to insert interactive information and previews from third-party apps directly into a Google Doc (initial partners on these fronts include AO Docs, Atlassian, Asana, Figma, Miro, Tableau and ZenDesk).
• Integrations that allow collaboration (think whiteboarding) within Google Meet calls started in third-party applications such as Figma and Miro.
• A new Meet API that lets users schedule and launch meetings directly from third-party applications.
• Expanding Google Chat and Spaces APIs to enable more functionality between Google Chat and partners’ applications. Capabilities will include automatic creation of direct messages or group chats.
Some capabilities for the Chat and Spaces APIs are already available in the Developer Preview Program, with more APIs launching in the next few weeks.
Once again with hybrid work in mind, Google Cloud is enhancing capabilities within Google Workspace. There are a lot of additions — a lot. If your customers are keen on making the most of their productivity tools (and they probably are), here are the key takeaways:
• Better ability to tag and see information from partner applications using @-mentions.
• Better ability to insert interactive information and previews from third-party apps directly into a Google Doc (initial partners on these fronts include AO Docs, Atlassian, Asana, Figma, Miro, Tableau and ZenDesk).
• Integrations that allow collaboration (think whiteboarding) within Google Meet calls started in third-party applications such as Figma and Miro.
• A new Meet API that lets users schedule and launch meetings directly from third-party applications.
• Expanding Google Chat and Spaces APIs to enable more functionality between Google Chat and partners’ applications. Capabilities will include automatic creation of direct messages or group chats.
Some capabilities for the Chat and Spaces APIs are already available in the Developer Preview Program, with more APIs launching in the next few weeks.
Google Cloud Next 2022 kicks off Tuesday. The world’s third-largest public cloud provider is hosting its annual event in person and virtually. And, as always, it’s making announcements that pertain to the channel.
Regardless, Next will feature a significant amount of activity and updates. Indeed, Tuesday’s opening keynote with Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian will mark the start of 24 hours of live broadcasts from New York, Sunnyvale, Tokyo, Bengaluru and Munich.
Overall, look for Google Cloud to emphasize data protection, cybersecurity, hybrid work and more. With that in mind, see the slideshow above for a first glimpse into new offerings coming out of the event with partners including Accenture and many others.
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