Google Cloud Cortex Framework Overview

Google Cloud Cortex Framework provides reference architectures, deployable solutions, and packaged implementation services to kickstart your Data and AI Cloud journey. Everything you need to rapidly design, build, and deploy data and AI solutions for your business.

Cortex Framework focuses on solving specific problems and offers pre built solutions for business areas like Marketing, Sales, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Finance, and Sustainability. For more information, see Data sources and workloads.

Google Cloud integration

Cortex Framework builds on top of Google Cloud tools to provide a unified environment for managing your entire data journey. The following diagram describes how Cortex Framework uses various components to provide a unified platform for storing, managing, and analyzing data from diverse data sources:

Google Cloud Cortex Framework Technical Stack

Figure 1. Google Cloud Cortex Framework Technical Stack.

Multiple tools are responsible for extracting, transforming, and loading (ETL) data from various sources into the database for later visualization and analysis. Depending on the needs of your business, you can use some of the following:

  • Data Storage
    • Cloud Storage: for storing data from other data sources.
    • BigQuery: serverless, managed data warehouse for storing and analyzing large datasets. Cortex uses BigQuery for storing raw, transformed, and reporting data.
    • Secret Manager: secure storage service for sensitive information like passwords, API keys, and certificates. Cortex uses Secret Manager to protect your sensitive data and ensure its responsible use within your data and AI projects.
  • Data Integration and Processing
    • Cloud Build: service that automates building, testing, and deploying your software. Cortex uses Cloud Build for customizing and deploying pre built solutions.
    • Dataflow: managed service for building and running data pipelines. Cortex uses Dataflow to automate certain data ingestion, transformation, and loading tasks.
    • Cloud Composer: managed orchestration service for workflows. Cortex uses Cloud Composer to manage and schedule complex data pipelines.
  • Data Transformation and Analysis
    • BigQuery: serverless environment for building and deploying ML models within BigQuery. Cortex uses BigQuery for data transformations, and BigQuery ML for certain data analysis tasks.
    • Dataproc: managed Hadoop and Spark service for large-scale data processing. While less common for Cortex's pre built solutions, Dataproc could be used for custom data processing needs.
    • Looker: business intelligence platform for data exploration and visualization. Cortex integrates with Looker to provide user-friendly dashboards and reports.
  • ML and AI
    • Vertex AI: unified platform for building, training, deploying, and managing ML models. Cortex might use prebuilt Vertex AI components within its solutions.

Data Foundation

The Cortex Framework Data Foundation defines the structure and organization of the data to ensure consistency and facilitate data analysis across different applications. Cortex Framework simplifies data management, streamlines development, and offers prebuilt solutions for various business domains through its Data Foundation. Data Foundation incorporates tools and services that help ingest, transform, and load data.

Marketing, operations, and sustainability are all business areas that can be benefited from Cortex Framework. It includes predefined workloads that can be used to collect, analyze, and use data. Data can come from various data sources such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud, some Google platforms (like Google Ads and CM360), TikTok, Meta, SAP, and more. For more information, see the Data sources and workloads.

Deployment

For Cortex Framework deployment instructions, see the following guides:

Support

For any Cortex Framework requests or issues, reach out to the Cortex team.

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