Google Cloud Next 2023: If You Like Generative AI, You’re in Luck
From infrastructure and foundation models to collaboration and security, AI is powering upgrades.
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Here’s a look at some of what Google Cloud is unveiling on he infrastructure side:
• A3 Virtual Machines. They will be generally available in September. As large language models, which are critical to generative AI, grow, hyperscalers such as Google Cloud have to keep up on the processing side. Look for enhanced capabilities soon, thanks to infrastructure from Nvidia, said Mark Lohmeyer, vice president and general manager of compute and ML infrastructure at Google Cloud. The A3 VMs are built with Nvidia H1000 GPUs for what Google Cloud calls “demanding” generative AI workloads and LLMs. “If you think about our customers’ and partners’ ability to innovate faster and faster on models, this is huge,” Lohmeyer said.
• Cross-Cloud Network. This is a new platform for connecting and securing applications across clouds. That’s a big deal for channel partners managing customer workloads, whether that’s hybrid or multicloud environments. Cross-Cloud Network is “really fun and helping to ease … operational requirements,” Lohmeyer said. Cross-Cloud Network “reduces network latency by up to 35% … and can reduce TCO up to 40% and provides a 20 times higher threat protection efficacy compared to other environments,” he added. Cross-Cloud Network provides secure, high-performance connectivity among clouds. It does not replace other, similar platforms such as the one VMware provisions for similar purposes, Lohmeyer said. Instead, Cross-Cloud Network operates at “a different level of the stack” and focuses on bandwidth performance and security.
• Google Distributed Cloud. This offering now lets users run AI and data workloads anywhere by integrating certain Vertex AI services and AlloyDB Omni. Capabilities extend to data centers at the edge, “while still bringing all the benefits of the cloud to bear in those more distributed environments,” Lohmeyer said.
For more on Vertex AI news, go to the next slide.
Let’s start with some context and insights around Vertex AI’s growth.
“AI is undergoing a major shift with the rise of foundation models,” said June Yang, vice president of cloud AI and industry solutions at Google Cloud. “Now you can leverage these foundation models for a variety of use cases … and with little to no training data. This is really a game-changer for AI, especially for the enterprises, and truly is accelerating time to value for enterprises adopting AI.”
As Google Cloud releases more generative AI capabilities, Yang noted that demand for Vertex AI “has just been overwhelming. We have seen tremendous growth across all the different metrics.”
To that point, Yang said the number of generative AI customer accounts has grown by more than 15 times in just the last quarter.
“And the Gen AI projects we’re seeing on GCP has grown by over 150 times — really just staggering amount,” she added.
Go to the next slide for specific Vertex AI updates.
Some of these Foundation Models updates are pretty arcane, but for channel partners interested in the deep details, here you go:
• PaLM. The upgraded version of PaLM, features input token length increased by four times, with 38 languages now generally available. More than 100 languages are available in preview.
• Codey. The new version provides up to 25% quality improvement in major supported languages for code generation and code chat.
• Imagen. The updated model “significantly” improves the quality of generated images,” Google Cloud said. There’s also a new adapter tuning method for images called Style Tuning. This will let users create images aligned to their brand with as few as 10 reference images.
• Meta’s LLAMA 2, Anthropic’s Claude 2 and TIl’s Falcon. These additions bring to more than 100 the number of models available in Model Garden.
• Vertex Al Extensions. Fully managed tools that help developers connect models to proprietary data or third parties.
• Vertex Al Data Connectors. These enable developers with read-only data access from various Google data sources such as cloud storage, BigQuery, and third-party data sources including Salesforce, JIRA and Confluence.
• Vertex Al Search. Now generally available, cloud customers can add Google Search to their business data.
• Vertex Al Conversation. Now generally available, users may build and deploy chatbot and voice bots. “Having spoken with hundreds of enterprise customers, two of the most frequently requested use cases for general AI are really focused around search and chat experiences,” Yang said.
• Colab Enterprise. A managed service that combines Google’s Colab notebooks with enterprise-level security and compliance capabilities. “Data scientists can use Colab Enterprise to collaboratively accelerate Al workflows with access to the full range of Vertex Al platform capabilities, integration with BigQuery for direct data access, and even code completion and generation,” said Nenshad Bardoliwalla, director of product management, Vertex Al, and Warren Barkley, senior director of product management, cloud AI, in an Aug. 29 blog.
“We are democratizing AI to really meet the needs of various user personas across business users, developers and AI practitioners,” Yang said.
Next, enhancements to Google Cloud’s collaboration portfolio.
There’s quite a bit happening on the collaboration side, and it’s all powered by generative AI advancements.
• Duet Al in Google Workspace. “We’re fundamentally reshaping AI’s role as your collaborative partner across Workspace, putting Duet AI’s capabilities at the forefront of everything you do,” said Kristina Behr, vice president of products for Google Workspace. This capability is now generally available.
• Google Meet. Duet Al in Meet provides studio look, sound and lighting. The new “take notes for me” command means Duet AI will capture action items, video snippets and even attend a meeting for you. Also look for real-time teleprompting and automatic translated captions.
• Google Chat. Duet Al in Chat can answer queries by searching messages and files, summarizing documents and providing recaps of missed conversations. There’s a new user interface, as well as shortcuts and search.
• Security, Compliance and Privacy. Google Workspace now comes with new security and compliance controls to help enterprises and public sector organizations as they enforce zero trust, digital sovereignty and account protection. “As we embed Duet AI into Workspace, protecting the confidentiality and privacy of customer data continues to be our top priority,” Behr said. “Customers of Duet AI for Workspace can rest assured that their interactions with Duet will stay within their organization and their existing Workspace protections are kept intact and automatically applied.”
Go to the next slide for more Duet AI news as it relates to developers and data.
There’s a lot going on at Google Cloud for developers, and it largely centers around infusing Duet AI into various platforms. Here’s a look (you’ll hear a lot more during Google Cloud Next):
• Duet Al in Google Cloud. Expect expanded capabilities in Duet Al in Google Cloud preview, with general availability coming later this year. Duet Al now provides Al assistance across a range of Google Cloud products and services for users including developers, operators, data practitioners and cybersecurity professionals.
• Duet Al in BigQuery (Preview). This “collaborative” experience integrates directly into the BigQuery interface for contextual assistance writing SQL queries and Python code. This lets data teams focus more on analyses and outcomes. It can auto-suggest code in real-time and generate full functions and code blocks, as well as recommend fixes.
• Duet Al in Looker (Preview). Look for conversational queries, automatic presentation creation with summaries and formula assist for calculations.
• Duet Al in Database Migration Service (Preview). Google Cloud is announcing the support of Oracle to PostgreSQL migrations with Duet Al-assisted Database Migration Service to support the last mile of migrations.
• BigQuery Studio (Preview). Gerrit Kazmaier, vice president and general manager of databases, data analytics and Looker, at Google Cloud, billed BigQuery Studio as “a single workbench for data and AI users where they can work collaboratively and collectively on the entire end-to-end change from data to AI activation. When I think about activating data, I also think about business applications and databases.”
• BigQuery integration with Vertex Al (Preview). Bringing Vertex Al models to customer data in BigQuery will speed up processes.
• AlloyDB Omni (Preview). This downloadable edition of AlloyDB runs anywhere — on Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, on-premises, and even laptops.
• AlloyDB Al (Preview). These integrated capabilities help enterprises build generative Al applications and generate embeddings from within a database. It fully integrates with Vertex Al.
• Cloud Spanner Data Boost (General Availability). This technology delivers high-performance, on-demand processing of operational data with near-zero impact on applications, Google Cloud said.
• Developer Tools. Look for general availability of Jump Start Solutions and general availability of Application Integration. Google Cloud also is talking up an expanded partnership with GitLab to offer a secure DevOps solution, giving developers integrated source management, artifact management, CI/CD and enhanced security features. Expanded developer tooling in Duet Al now includes Duet Al in Cloud Workstations and Duet Al in Application Integration.
We turn next to Google Cloud’s updates on the security side.
As cybersecurity grows ever more imperative, Google Cloud is beefing up its capabilities with generative AI’s help. This not only helps protect users, it can also feel like adding more skilled experts amid the ongoing IT talent shortage, said Jeff Reed, vice president of products, security, at Google Cloud.
“I’ve never met a CISO that says they have enough talent and people on their team, and so I think gen AI offers a lot of opportunities to help scale talent,” Reed said. “So level one operators can be as productive as level two, level two and level three.”
With that in mind, here’s a look at Google Cloud’s security enhancements:
• Duet Al in Mandiant Threat Intelligence. Generative Al features expedite threat assessment and operationalize threat intelligence across an organization. Available now in Preview and expected to be generally available this year.
• Duet Al in Chronicle Security Operations. Generative Al features that let every user uncover threats quickly. Available now in Preview and expected to be generally available this year.
• Duet Al in Security Command Center. Generative Al features to help understand risk assessments and recommend remediation steps. Available now in Preview and expected to be generally available this year.
• Mandiant Hunt for Chronicle. Mandiant experts perform threat hunting on Chronicle data using Google intel to search for undetected attacks. “This is a way to augment the customer’s security team today with the world’s best incident response investigators,” Reed said. “We’re really excited about this. And the beauty of this is because Chronicle brings in data from so many different sources, we’re able to leverage not just endpoint data, but network data, identity, etc., to run these queries.” Available now in Preview.
• Platform Security Advancements. Multiple new capabilities for posture management, threat detection, network security, data security and digital sovereignty.
Finally, we’ll switch gears on the next slide and discuss Google Cloud’s partner ecosystem growth as Google Cloud Next goes live in San Francisco.
As Google Cloud spokespeople already noted, the company’s ecosystem of partners (which includes vendors, not just managed service providers, system integrators, consultancies and the like) is thriving. For CEO Kurian, this reflects Google Cloud’s traction among enterprises.
“We’ve achieved some noteworthy milestones, including in Q2 2023, reaching a $32 billion annual revenue run rate and seeing our second quarter of profitability, which is all based on the success of our customers across every industry,” he wrote in the Aug. 29 blog.
To be sure, Google Cloud has homed in hard on the enterprise market, particularly with its data-heavy focus. It also has continued its commitment to acting as a partner-first cloud vendor. Both of those aims have made Google Cloud attractive to a number of MSPs, including SADA, which four years ago became a Google Cloud-only partner. In a multicloud market, that’s a significant step and one that seems to be paying off all the way around — not just for SADA, of course, but for Google Cloud as well. And given generative AI’s impact on the channel, Google Cloud could be a standout contender for landing more such partners.
In the meantime, expect to see a number of announcements related to companies teaming up with Google Cloud. There’s news from big names including SAP, GE Appliances, Plainsight and many more coming out in tandem with Google Cloud Next. Kurian summed up all the activity this way: “Together we are creating a new way to cloud.”
As Google Cloud spokespeople already noted, the company’s ecosystem of partners (which includes vendors, not just managed service providers, system integrators, consultancies and the like) is thriving. For CEO Kurian, this reflects Google Cloud’s traction among enterprises.
“We’ve achieved some noteworthy milestones, including in Q2 2023, reaching a $32 billion annual revenue run rate and seeing our second quarter of profitability, which is all based on the success of our customers across every industry,” he wrote in the Aug. 29 blog.
To be sure, Google Cloud has homed in hard on the enterprise market, particularly with its data-heavy focus. It also has continued its commitment to acting as a partner-first cloud vendor. Both of those aims have made Google Cloud attractive to a number of MSPs, including SADA, which four years ago became a Google Cloud-only partner. In a multicloud market, that’s a significant step and one that seems to be paying off all the way around — not just for SADA, of course, but for Google Cloud as well. And given generative AI’s impact on the channel, Google Cloud could be a standout contender for landing more such partners.
In the meantime, expect to see a number of announcements related to companies teaming up with Google Cloud. There’s news from big names including SAP, GE Appliances, Plainsight and many more coming out in tandem with Google Cloud Next. Kurian summed up all the activity this way: “Together we are creating a new way to cloud.”
Generative AI is all the rage at this week’s Google Cloud Next 2023
Google Cloud’s Thomas Kurian
“We are in an entirely new era of digital transformation, fueled by gen Al,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud in an Aug. 29 blog discussing Google Cloud Next 2023. “This technology is already improving how businesses operate and how humans interact with one another. It’s changing the way doctors care for patients, the way people communicate and even the way workers are kept safe on the job. And this is just the beginning.”
As you head to San Francisco for the annual event hosted by the world’s third-largest public cloud provider, nearly everything you’ll hear has to do with generative AI. You’ll encounter that throughout this preview of Google Cloud Next 2023.
There’s so much hype and buzz around generative AI that its spotlight-hogging status really comes as no surprise. What may catch you off guard is some of the stats and facts Google Cloud is touting ahead of Google Cloud Next 2023. Check out these tidbits:
Hundreds of partners (often known as vendors in the indirect channel world) are now enrolled in Google Cloud’s generative AI partner program, per Google Cloud
More than 100,000 people have taken the training for Google generative AI technology. That represents “the highest efficacy of training that we’ve ever released from Google,” Philip Moyer, global vice president of AI and business solutions at Google Cloud, said during an Aug. 25 media briefing.
More vendors are teaming with Google Cloud to build generative AI into their applications. Examples include Canva, Dialpad, Salesforce and SAP.
Expect even more generative AI talk at Google Cloud Next 2023, across Google Cloud’s portfolio. That includes Workspace and cybersecurity, as well as general enhancements to processing and more. Find out what’s in store at this year’s Google Cloud Next. Click the image above to get started.
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