Celebrating the winners of the 2023 Google Cloud Customer Awards

Editor’s note: We are pleased to share a deeper look at some of the impressive winners of our 2023 Google Cloud Customer Awards and the stories that captured our attention. Learn more via this PDF that celebrates their innovation.

It’s that time once again, where we announce the winners of our Google Cloud Customer Awards. These awards celebrate organizations around the world that are turning inspiring ideas into exciting realities. Whether it’s social enterprise experts like Singapore’s FairPrice Group, transformational talent backers like Ford Motor Company, environmental leaders like SAP, or diversity, equity, and inclusion game-changers like COTA—we are honored to celebrate innovators who are building new ways forward with AI, data, infrastructure, collaboration, and security technologies in the cloud.

This year, AI has demonstrated significant potential to help companies innovate and become more efficient. Google Cloud is supporting its customers in this ambition, like one of this year’s industry winners, Carrefour Belgium, which is using Google Cloud AI tools to extract value from its operational data to accelerate insights. AI research and development firm Kakao Brain in South Korea, meanwhile, is using Google Cloud’s AI/ML infrastructure to underpin the generative AI services it provides to its customers. 

Recognizing innovative thinking
Just like last year, we received a tremendous number of entries for the awards, which a panel of senior Google Cloud executives independently assessed according to select criteria. Specifically, judges looked for real-world metrics, examples of innovative thinking, and outstanding business transformation results. Regardless of who won, every organization that submitted an entry should be proud of what they have achieved with cloud technologies.

Google Cloud Customer Awards are given to companies from around the globe and across a number of industries, such as healthcare and life sciences, financial services, and government, using Google Cloud technologies to improve their operations, and their social and governance (ESG) measures. 

Congratulations to all the winners!

Technology for Good Awards

Sustainability
Environmental impact is a key priority for our global customers. We are excited to see growing momentum around implementing sustainability-focused solutions, which we introduced last year as a category in our Technology for Good Awards. 

Our Sustainability Customer Awards recognize customers with new and innovative solutions to accelerate sustainability within their own organizations and drive meaningful climate action. The winning team from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation—who used Google Cloud tools like BigQuery to implement the mobile monitoring of air quality and greenhouse gas emissions—shows one inspiring way this can be done.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
In an era when technology and data are reshaping the world, customers who won our DEI Customer Awards distinguished themselves for their commitment to using cloud tools to promote economic mobility and representation for historically underrepresented communities. The organizations below, and their partners, are leveraging the power of data and AI to transform and strengthen representation, progression, retention, and the inclusion of underserved or underrepresented groups in their organizations. By making a difference to their communities, they’re also leading the way for other organizations to drive for a more equitable world.

Social Impact 
The Social Impact Customer Award winners made a positive impact with technology projects that cultivated inclusion, openness, and community support. In a time of economic and climate uncertainty, these customers used Google Cloud solutions to create positive change at the scale the world critically needs. From government agencies encouraging public input on transportation planning, to supermarkets partnering with food banks, we applaud them for the work they are doing to improve their communities.

Talent Transformation 
When it comes to fostering digital skills for all employees, some of the world's most recognizable brands are leading the way. This includes our Talent Transformation Customer Award winners like General Motors, DataLab, and Equifax, who are empowering their workforces with hands-on learning opportunities to boost their technology skills. With the country facing a critical gap in technological capabilities, this kind of work is important to not only drive long-term business success, but also improve the lives and careers of employees.

Industry Customer Awards

Communications and Service Providers (CSP)
With our CSP Customer Awards, we are proud to recognize leading companies in the telecommunications sector who are finding new ways to improve customer experience. Whether it's leveraging Google Cloud tools like Dataflow to process millions of real-time records every hour, or using BigQuery to assess performance and optimize data, these winners are getting creative with the cloud to scale and meet the needs of their customers.

Cross-Industry 
Customers in the Cross-Industry category demonstrated innovation across multiple verticals. One of this year's winners, cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, built its cloud-first security platform, ADEM (Autonomous Digital Experience Management), on Google Cloud. ADEM is a digital experience management platform that helps Palo Alto customers proactively monitor and manage infrastructure, system, and application issues. ADEM has increased security visibility across networks, applications, and devices, ultimately reducing ticket escalations by 46%.

Education 
With schools racing to adapt to new ways of learning, winners of our Education Customer Awards are using cloud technologies to make education accessible. This year, educational institutions like FMU in Brazil are using Google Cloud to exponentially increase the number of students they are able to reach, while the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego unlocked entirely new areas of scientific enquiry by mining its data more efficiently. Both institutions demonstrated what a dramatic impact cloud technology can have on the world of learning.

Financial Services
We received hundreds of entries in every geography around the world for the Financial Services Award category, reflecting the high standard of business excellence in this industry. Financial services firms who won these awards undertook a number of successful projects, ranging from launching new apps and features to take customers’ experiences to the next level, to leading complex migrations and business transformations, to using automation to strengthen security.

Government 
Government organizations often ask themselves the same question: How can we better serve our citizens? It’s this people-centric mindset, combined with using data-driven  solutions and secure cloud platforms that enabled these Government Award winners  to accomplish their missions this year. More than ever before, governments are turning to cloud technologies to collaborate internally and with their citizens to support the people they serve in a more agile and helpful way.

Healthcare & Life Sciences 
Healthcare is a sector that creates extraordinary levels of innovation, and our Healthcare & Life Sciences Customer Award -winner showed how far it can push scientific boundaries. COTA is working with Google Cloud to transform the raw, unstructured data in electronic health records into a usable format that is driving a new era of data-driven cancer care. Google Cloud is proud to partner with COTA, who is saving lives by speeding up medical breakthroughs.

Manufacturing 
Manufacturers, particularly in the automotive vertical, are undergoing a sea change to more climate-focused solutions. A good example is our Manufacturing Customer Award winner, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), who is digitally transforming by investing in vehicle electrification and advanced autonomous driving. JLR has used Google Cloud solutions to help it understand and manage supply chain shortages in critical EV components, such as semiconductor chips, so that it can continue to deliver electric vehicles to a growing list of customers.

Media & Entertainment
By using cloud technologies, including AI/ML, data analytics, and more, our Media & Entertainment Award winners are modernizing content production and reinventing audience experiences with engaging and personalized insights. Combined with AI-infrastructure like TPUs, customers like Kakao Mobility can greatly accelerate ML insights at lower costs. Creating a more meaningful connection with viewers is one of this industry’s fundamental goals, and these customers are achieving it.

Retail
Our Retail Customer Award winners are facing a shopping world that has shifted from ecommerce (during the pandemic) to today’s omnichannel reality. By using the cloud to enable enhanced and seamless services, businesses like Carrefour Belgium, FairPrice Group, and Schnucks Markets are delighting their customers with highly personalized online and in-person shopping experiences made possible by cloud AI.

Supply Chain & Logistics
Innovation is critical in the supply chain and logistics sector. One of our Customer Award winners, the Finnish accounting software firm Snowfox, is taking advantage of the serverless nature of Google Cloud to automate the processes of its clients’ invoices. Snowfox has gone even further by setting up Carbonfox, which uses AI to calculate its customers’ carbon emissions—proving that supply chain and sustainability can go hand-in-hand.

What connects these Google Cloud customers? They're all building new ways forward with the cloud—whether it’s improving access to education, personalizing their customers’ experiences, or saving lives. We're proud to serve customers in more than 200 countries and territories, and we'll continue to help them forge new ways with ground-breaking technology, industry expertise, and relentless optimism. Discover today how customers are transforming their business through Google Cloud.