The 10 most popular sessions from Google Cloud Next ‘20: OnAir

Google Cloud Next ‘20: OnAir looked a little different this year. Instead of a three-day conference, we launched a nine-week digital event series that brought together our global cloud community to discuss and collaborate on the most significant cloud technology challenges facing companies today. 

We may have gone virtual, but some things stayed the same—all of our sessions (over 200 to be exact) are now available on YouTube to watch and learn from. That’s a lot of content to sift through, so here’s a quick breakdown of our top 10 sessions from Next OnAir: 

1. Supercharge Productivity With No-Code Apps Using AppSheet
The road to building new applications in the digital age comes with a tough choice for business and technology leaders: buy or build. Packaged software is often too rigid to meet unique requirements, and building custom apps takes up too much time and resources. But is there a third option? In this session, Santiago Uribe Montoya, Google Senior Product Manager, and Richard Glass, Director of Information Technology at KLB Construction, discuss how AppSheet makes it possible to automate processes while leveraging existing Google Workspace data to build mobile and desktop apps—without coding. 

2. How PwC Migrated 275,000+ Users to Google Workspace
Ever wondered what it’s like to migrate to Google Workspace (formerly G Suite)? What about migrating over 275,000 users at a 150-year-old professional services firm operating in over 158 countries? PwC Global Change Director Adrienne Schutte, along with Google Technical Account Manager Regina Houston, shares the challenges, key lessons, management strategies, and long-term impact of PwC’s journey with Google Workspace.

3. The Future of Meetings in Google Workspace: Vision and Roadmap
The new normal is here—and so is the new work normal. In this session, Smita Hashim, Director of Product Management for Meeting Solutions and Time Management, and Greg Funk, Group Product Manager, share Google Workspace’s vision for the future of meetings as teams navigate an increasingly video-first world. You’ll also get a sneak peek into how Google Workspace is transforming the lifecycle of a meeting and reimagining teamwork so that people can stay connected no matter where they are working from.

4. Do it live! Fitbit's Zero-Downtime Migration to GCP
Moving a monolith without downtime is impossible, right? Think again. In this session, Fitbit’s Principal Software Engineer Sean Michael-Lewis explains how Fitbit migrated its production operations from managed hosting to Google Cloud Platform without impacting its real users. You’ll learn what made Fitbit’s migration challenge unique, how they created a user-centric migration plan, the technology and processes they used, and the key takeaways that have provided a foundation for their new multi-region architecture. 

5. What's New in BigQuery, Google Cloud's Modern Data Warehouse
Data is at the heart of many business transformations today. Organizations want to make real-time decisions and future predictions that keep them competitive, but traditional data warehousing wasn’t designed to scale fast or process emerging data processing patterns. In this session, Sudhir Hasbe, Google Cloud Director of Product for Data Analytics, and Tino Tereshko, Google Product Manager, talk about how Google BigQuery addresses the needs of data-driven enterprises and share demos of the latest feature innovations.

6. Communication in Google Workspace: The Future of Gmail, Chat, Meet, and More
How is communication changing as work goes remote and becomes more flexible? See how new improvements to Gmail, Chat, and Meet are making it easier for modern workers to communicate and collaborate anywhere they are working from—on the web or from an Android or iOS device. In this session, Tom Holman, Google Senior Product Manager, and Dave Loxton, Google Product Manager, share the latest updates, what’s up next, and why Google is more excited than ever about the future of these products in Google Workspace.

7. Building Data Lakes on Google Cloud
Traditional approaches to building data lakes often land organizations with data swamps.   In this session, Google Product Manager Nitin Motgi discusses how Google Cloud makes it easy for enterprises to create and maintain data lakes, allowing customers to aggregate their data and analyze it using cloud-native and open source tools. He’ll also share the most common use cases for how companies use data lakes on Google Cloud.

8. Data Catalog for Data Discovery and Metadata Management
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to easily search through your enterprise data assets with the same search technology that powers Gmail and Drive? Many enterprises struggle with data discovery and metadata management across disparate systems and silos. Shekhar Bapat, Google Product Manager, discusses how Data Catalog helps accelerate time to insight by providing discoverability, context, and governance for all of your data assets. He is joined by Shruti Thaker, Head of Alt Vendor Data & Alpha Capture at Blackrock, who shares how Data Catalog helped BlackRock create an effective metadata solution for its data assets. 

9. Analytics in a Multi-Cloud World with BigQuery Omni
While data is a critical component of decision making across organizations, for many, this data is scattered across multiple public clouds. So, how do you help analysts and data scientists handle data from all the tools, systems, and silos? Meet BigQuery Omni, a flexible, fully-managed, multi-cloud analytics solution that lets you analyze data across public clouds without ever leaving the familiar BigQuery user interface. In this session, Google Product Manager, Emily Rapp, shows you how to break down data silos right in your environment and run analytics in a multi-cloud world.

10. Master Security and Compliance in the Public Cloud
Unlocking the promise of the public cloud often brings security and compliance challenges—especially if you’re a leading market-infrastructure provider under the highest level of supervisory scrutiny in Europe. In this session, Christian Tüffers, Senior Cloud Architect at Deutsche Boerse Group, and Grace Mollison, Google Head Cloud Solution Architect, discuss ways customers can work with Google Cloud to create security blueprints to help them deploy workloads that meet regulatory and compliance requirements. 

Do you want to watch more sessions? You can browse the full session roster from Google Cloud Next ‘20: OnAir here.