IT pros’ top 5 challenges, ranked — and how Google Cloud Next can help you slay them
Tom Nikl
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Cloud Migration
As an IT architect or IT professional, you are essential to the success of your organization, responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the IT systems that your businesses and governments rely on. As if that wasn’t enough, you’ve also got to constantly learn and adapt to keep up with the demand of an ever-changing IT landscape — especially when technologies like generative AI suddenly emerge and become a crucial part of your business. Did you know that 77% of companies are using or plan to use AI in the future? And that’s growing year over year. Then there are the constant firedrills, a contributing factor in 40% of IT professionals being at risk of burnout. So, the fundamental question you’re asking yourself is: how can I do my job successfully, but with less toil and stress?
Well, we come with good news! First, Google Cloud has a plethora of ways to help you evolve your IT landscape quickly, easily, and effectively. And second, our upcoming event, Google Cloud Next ‘23 from August 29th to 31st, is exactly what you need to learn more about capitalizing on those opportunities. But if you’re still on the fence about going, let’s power through five scenarios that might be on your plate right now, and how Next ‘23 can help you
#1 — Architect infrastructure for AI workloads
Chances are good that you’ve been asked to spin up new resources to run emerging AI-based applications on. At Next ‘23, we’ll show you how you can innovate, scale and optimize workloads quickly, safely, and cost effectively with purpose-built infrastructure that has AI efficiencies baked-in. Google is an AI-first company, so our AI-optimized infrastructure is built to deliver the global scale and performance demanded by our own products such as YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Play, and Android, all of which serve billions of users. It’s also designed for intensive workloads like training and serving large language models like PaLM 2, the basis of generative AI features and tools Bard and the PaLM API.
Google’s deep experience in AI and cloud computing means that Google Cloud is uniquely positioned to present one of the strongest AI infrastructure offerings on the market. Here’s a few ways you can learn about our AI infrastructure during Next ‘23:
Watch our exciting spotlight session “What’s next for architects and IT professionals,” where our GMs will explore what’s coming for infrastructure and AI/ML.
Attend our “Build your organization’s future on Google AI and machine learning infrastructure” breakout session, or check out dozens of others on AI/ML.
Visit our AI Innovation pavilion within our Demo Showcase.
Get hands on (literally!) with some of our AI infrastructure at our Hardware-verse.
Upgrade your AI/ML skillsets with our live training workshops at the Innovators Hive.
#2 — Build and run modern container-based applications quickly and securely
Your org has no doubt been using containers and Kubernetes for years, but are they Google Cloud containers and Kubernetes? Google Cloud provides one of the best places to run modern containerized workloads, packaging more than a decade’s worth of experience launching several billion containers per week into our offerings, so that developers and businesses of many sizes can tap the latest in container innovation.
IT pros who are building modern, container-based applications often choose Google Cloud because of its managed services and range of database options, so developers can quickly build applications securely and at scale. For these types of use cases, here’s where you should spend some time during Next ‘23:
Watch our GM Spotlight session “What’s next for IT operations,” which will dive deep into everything from containers to AI.
Learn how legendary gaming company CAPCOM is running Street Fighter 6 on Google Cloud in this breakout session “The future of modern enterprise applications with Google Kubernetes Engine,” and browse all our other great container sessions.
Come and mingle with your friends and peers in our Innovators Hive Community Hub.
Watch our Innovator Hive Lightning Talk “How to run ML workloads in GKE with Cloud TPU and GPU.”
Visit our Containers area at the Demo Showcase.
#3 — Boost traditional enterprise applications with high reliability, scale, and price-performance
Cloud-native workloads are great and all, but traditional enterprise workloads such as ERP, databases, web apps, and mainframes continue to be the lifeblood of the organization. These workloads will likely not disappear. They are evolving into more modern versions of themselves — often with major opportunities for modernization using data analytics and AI. Now more than ever, CIOs have to ensure these workloads are healthy and thriving.
Google Cloud ensures that our platform design and choices are centered on real-world workloads like SAP and VMware. We simplify the migration and modernization decision-making process so customers can get to the cloud confidently with an intuitive set of options and prescriptive solutions that deliver better reliability, security, scale, performance, and cost. At Next ‘23, there are a ton of ways to learn more about solving these challenges:
No matter what you’re looking to deploy or migrate, we’ve got a breakout session for you. For starters, check out “How Sabre migrated their apps and data centers to Google Cloud with speed and ease,” “Accelerate innovation with SAP on Google Cloud,” or any of these others.
Explore how our customer ADT successfully migrated their VMware estate to Google Cloud by visiting their interactive story in our Demo Showcase.
Click through Migration Center, our unified service for end-to-end migration and modernization, as well as other demos at our Architect’s Corner of Innovators Hive.
#4 – Run on high performance, distributed infrastructure
Google Cloud's infrastructure isn’t limited to what we run in our data centers. If your business or government needs infrastructure designed for sovereignty, scale, security, and high-intensity compute workloads, we’ve got exactly what you need:
For governments and highly regulated businesses, we have unique offerings and services including Google Distributed Cloud Hosted and Google Cloud Sovereign Solutions for organizations with specific sovereignty and security needs.
For Telecommunications, we have purpose-built telecom offerings to help Communication Service Providers (CSPs) digitally transform their networks with hybrid cloud principles and identify new revenue opportunities. In addition, we have Google Distributed Cloud Edge which provides an open, Kubernetes-based offering tuned for telecom network workloads.
Telecoms should also be sure to check out “How Google Cloud helps shape and transform Telecom Network deployment and monetization models” and live on the edge at the Demo Showcase.
And for Distributed Cloud, make sure you attend “Running AI at the edge to deliver modern customer experiences” and “Mind the air gap: How cloud is addressing today’s sovereignty needs”, or visit our area at the Demo Showcase.
#5 — Save money and help meet sustainability ambitions
Everyone knows that AI can help you do more, faster, but did you know that our AI-assisted recommendations and cost optimization tools can help you save money and to plan for strong financial resiliency? Take control of your cloud spending and optimize costs through APIs, Cloud Scheduler, and with Committed Use Discounts (CUDs). Complementary to these cost optimization capabilities, we've also built a collection of tools to help you accurately report on the carbon emissions associated with your Google Cloud usage and take action to reduce your carbon footprint and costs. Looking to learn more at Next ‘23, here’s what you need to explore:
For sustainability, register for our “GreenOps: Drive carbon and cost efficiencies with a new wave of developer tools” breakout session.
And for cost savings, check out “Creating a FinOps culture change through cloud automation” and “Unlock cloud value for everyone with Google Cloud FinOps tools”, and also visit our cost optimization area at the Demo Showcase.
So, what do you think: are any of those challenges on your plate right now? If they are, we hope you’ll join us at Next ‘23 starting on August 29th, so that we can show you how we live up to your motto: your cloud, your way. See you soon!
