Week 1 recap of Google Cloud Next ‘20: OnAir
Alison Wagonfeld
Chief Marketing Officer, Google Cloud
Google Cloud Next ’20: OnAir kicked off this week, and we couldn’t be more excited. From inspiring words from Google and Alphabet CEO, Sundar Pichai, to a deep dive into the future of cloud with Thomas Kurian, to dozens of industry-specific breakout sessions, this week set the tone for what’s to come during our nine-week series, with plenty of resources to get started.
Spotlight on customers
We’re continually inspired by the ways Google Cloud customers are growing and transforming in the cloud. Here are just a few of the Google Cloud customer stories we’ve recently shared.
We also heard directly from our innovative customers and partners during our industry keynotes, including MLB, Lowe’s, Capital One, Activision Blizzard King, New York State Department of Labor, Mayo Clinic Platform and Groupe Renault who each shared stories about how Google Cloud is helping them adapt to the current environment.
Key announcements from the week
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, kicked off Next OnAir with an overview of Google Cloud’s strategy and how we’re helping businesses grow and transform digitally. Read Thomas’ blog post and watch the keynote.
Data is a critical component of decision making across organizations, but is often scattered across multiple public clouds, resulting in a fragmented user experience, multiple copies of data across different environments, siloed IT and varying levels of access and controls needed. This week we announced BigQuery Omni, a flexible, multi-cloud analytics solution that allows you to cost-effectively access and securely analyze data across Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure (coming soon), without leaving the familiar BigQuery user interface. BigQuery Omni is powered by Anthos, and is an extension of our continued innovation and commitment to multi-cloud. BigQuery Omni is currently in private alpha. Learn more in our blog post, or read our recent Forbes BrandVoice piece on the future of multi-cloud.
At Google, we believe the future of cloud computing will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services that give users confidence that they are always in control over the confidentiality of their data. To complement our encryption in-transit and at-rest, Google Cloud will now offer the ability to encrypt data in use—while it’s being processed. This is called Confidential Computing and our first product in this space, Confidential VMs is now in beta. Learn more in our blog post.
As US government agencies, and the enterprises that serve them, adopt cloud technologies, security and compliance requirements around data locality and personnel access are key considerations. Many cloud providers have built separate environments to run government workloads, requiring users to operate two distinct application and operation supply chains. To provide a better way, this week we announced Assured Workloads for Government (private beta) to help you serve government workloads without the compromises of traditional “government clouds.” Learn more in our blog post or read our recent Forbes BrandVoice article.
The need for flexible work has increased the volume of demands on everyone’s time, and many of us want the tools we already use to be even more helpful. That’s why we introduced a better home for work in G Suite that integrates core tools like video, chat, email, files, and tasks. This makes them better together, so you can stay on top of things from anywhere. Learn more in our blog post, or check out G Suite Vice President and General Manager Javier Soltero’s keynote, available on demand starting next Tuesday, July 21.
Thomas’s keynote also included recaps of key announcements made in the past month including Filestore High Scale (beta), Cloud VMware Engine (GA), Active Assist, Data QnA (alpha), and our expansion of Bare Metal Solution in five more regions.
Our partners play a critical role in supporting the needs of our customers. At our Partners Summit this week, we announced updates to our Partner Advantage program which helps partners differentiate themselves through certification, expertise, and specialization. We also announced the Google Cloud ISV/SaaS Center of Excellence (CoE), a new resource to help independent software vendor (ISVs) transform their applications with open, cloud-agnostic architectures, improve user experience through AI/ML and voice, and deliver intelligent insights from their applications by providing rich analytics to business users.
Industry-focused demos to help you get hands-on with the cloud
As part of our broader Next OnAir program, we also launched 18 industry-focused demos this week, where attendees could explore AI/ML for manufacturing use cases, how to fuel growth with retail market insights, how to transform customer service with Contact Center AI, and more. You can find the complete list on the Demos page.
Looking ahead to Week 2: Productivity and collaboration with Google Cloud
Next OnAir started off with a bang, and we can’t wait to share more in the eight weeks ahead. Next week we’ll be giving you a deeper look into productivity and collaboration with Google Cloud. Here’s where you can browse the complete session catalog.
COVID-19 accelerated the shift to flexible work faster than we ever thought possible, and an organization's success has never been more reliant on virtual collaboration. In our solution keynote, Helpful and Human: G Suite’s Vision for Your Future Workspace, Vice President and General Manager Javier Soltero will share what the future of G Suite means for teams and organizations. You’ll get a deep dive on our newest, most exciting innovations and hear how G Suite is helping our customers navigate what’s next.
We're also excited to be bringing you weekly live technical talks and learning opportunities, aligned with each week's content. Click “Learn” on the Explore page to find each week's schedule. Haven’t yet registered for Google Cloud ’20 Next: OnAir? Get started at g.co/cloudnext and check out the 200+ sessions over the coming weeks.
See you next week!
