Start 2020 off right with these New Year’s tech resolutions

You may have already set some goals for yourself for 2020, but what about for your cloud architecture? We’ve assembled some New Year’s resolutions to guide the way toward operating a faster, more efficient cloud infrastructure, and making your role more valuable to the business, too.

1. Lose some data weight
This will be more fun than cutting out carbs, we promise. It’s data weight that lots of cloud and data center operators have to lose. For example, you might have unaccounted-for VMs or Compute Engine backups you don’t need anymore, or files stored in old formats to modernize. Consider taking inventory and finding workload owners to reclaim capacity and save costs.

2. Exercise your data more
The cloud is opening up lots of new avenues to explore all the data you collect. BigQuery is our serverless alternative to on-premises data warehousing and analytics, and its interface will be familiar to anyone who knows SQL. Try it out with our no-cost BigQuery sandbox, and explore publicly available datasets.

3. Save money to stretch your IT budget
The pricing model for cloud is a lot different from on-premises, and it can involve a learning curve when you’re getting started. Our GCP pricing calculator can help guide you through estimated costs for our range of products, so you can understand how pay-as-you-go works, then start budgeting for the year ahead. And check out our cost optimization guides for BigQuery, Cloud Storage, and networking.

4. Learn a new technology skill
If you want to hone your cloud technology skills, there are some pretty intriguing areas to explore right now. See how AutoML works, experiment with AI, or check out our hybrid cloud platform.

5. Make new friends, online and in-person
Lots of cloud tools entering the mainstream are largely based on the concept of openness and a community-driven mindset. Open-source tools mean your fellow developers are building the product in real time, and you can contribute code and improve products too. You can be part of a Google Cloud community, whether it means contributing on Github or becoming cloud certified with your peers.

6. Get more sleep while monitoring watches your cloud
With a cloud foundation in place, your next step is managing all these instances and applications. Google Cloud’s monitoring and logging tools lets you set up alerts and use collected data to make changes and improvements to your GCP systems. To keep making your infrastructure more reliable, learn more about what SRE is and how you can implement its principles.

Have a great 2020, and let us know about your resolutions on Twitter.