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Google Cloud Next London 2023: a recapView the full article

This week we’re delighted to welcome customers and partners to Next London ‘23, where we’ll highlight innovations from across Google Cloud’s portfolio of products and services, as well as from our ecosystem of customers and partners. In addition, today we’re announcing new and expanded work with global and UK-based customers who are transforming their businesses with Google Cloud’s data, productivity, security, and AI tools, like BT Group, Gymshark, Formula E, and Unilever. We’re also announcing important updates with our partners, including increasing our resources and incentives to reward partners who support customer success. Finally, we’re highlighting several new innovations from UK- and EMEA-based startups who are building with Google Cloud. Accelerating customers’ digital and AI-driven transformationsOver 40 of FTSE 100 companies are Google Cloud customers, and today we’re proud to announce several new or expanding UK customers who are benefiting from Google Cloud’s AI and cloud technologies, such as: BT, who is announcing a new partnership with Google Cloud to help its customers protect themselves from cyberattacks. BT will become a managed services delivery partner for Google’s Chronicle-based Autonomic Security Operations offering, so BT customers can benefit from Chronicle’s AI-powered tools and BT’s expertise implementing cybersecurity services.Formula E, who is growing its use of BigQuery and gen AI on Google Cloud, and is developing a new conversational interface that will allow teams to more quickly see and analyze data on their performance. This will also help fans get answers to questions about everything from build changes to track conditions.Gymshark, the fitness community and apparel brand, who is using Google Cloud’s data analytics and AI tools to help improve customer experiences during peak times like Black Friday. Gymshark is also exploring gen AI with Vertex AI to create expert assistants that can guide customers through product selection and in using its training app.Unilever, with whom we’ve partnered to launch its new app, My Unilever. Built on Google Cloud, it unlocks the opportunity for Unilever’s 53,000+ factory-based colleagues to have secure, quick and easy access to key Unilever systems all in one place, and enables one-click access to Google Workspace collaboration tools including email, chat, and document sharing.Expanding our rewards, resources, and initiatives for global partnersGoogle Cloud is a partner-led business. Our global partners have an opportunity to help customers create new value with AI technologies like Duet AI and Vertex AI, in critical areas like data modernization and cloud migrations, and to augment their own products and platforms with Google Cloud gen AI. Coming into 2024, the total amount of incentives and rewards available for our partners are increasing in order to help partners address this opportunity. For example, we plan to increase our funding by as much as 10X for both ISV and systems integrator partners to implement gen AI. We also plan to double our rewards for services partners who drive more workload adoption and accelerate adoption of strategic products. We’re also continuing to grow the initiatives, tools, and resources available to our partners to help them deliver optimal experiences for customers and create impactful, profitable businesses of their own. New updates announced today include: We’re adding a new cohort of partners to our Generative AI Partner Initiative, which helps our Build and Service partners more quickly implement Google Cloud’s gen AI capabilities. Today, we’re excited to welcome a new cohort of partners to the initiative, including Accenture, AI21 Labs, Automation Anywhere, BCG, Behavox, Capgemini, Cognizant, Deloitte, Elemental Cognition, HCLtech, TCS, Wipro, and Zeotap. Through the Gen AI Partner Initiative, these companies will have access to important resources like Gen AI journey maps and badging, and accelerated go-to-market tracks.The Google Workspace Sandbox Toolkit benefit now includes Duet AI at no cost to partners, so our partners can quickly help customers understand the benefits and capabilities of Duet AI while accelerating their sales cycles.We’re increasing the number of new partners who have earned our Google Cloud Ready - Sustainability designation, which recognizes those partners whose solutions help customers meet their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. For example, partner ESG Book is now enabling customers to access its ESG data management and disclosure platform on Google Cloud, and Snowfox.ai is providing customers with climate insights about their supply chains through its AI-based emissions management tool.We’re launching a new Partner Expertise designation: Google SecOps Services Delivery Expertise. This Expertise is for service provider partners who have demonstrated success implementing and onboarding customers to our Chronicle SIEM or SOAR solution. Our partners can learn more about how to earn this new Expertise through our Partner Advantage portal.Finally, we’re expanding the tools available to partners through the Delivery Readiness Index (DRI). DRI helps partners precisely identify the resources and skills they need to successfully complete any given customers’ project. Today, we’re adding more gen AI learning courses and tools to DRI, including a new course, “Implementing Generative AI with Vertex AI.” We now offer partners more than 45 Challenge Labs and more than 160 training courses, available through their DRI profiles.Of course, none of these new initiatives would be possible without innovative partners who bring Google Cloud solutions to life for our customers. Today, we’re excited to announce new partnerships with UK- and EMEA-based organizations that will help scale AI technology and services available to customers, including: Crayon, an IT services company operating across 46 countries, who is launching an important new Google Cloud AI Center of Excellence, which will help customers pilot and deploy products like Duet AI, Vertex AI and accelerate their time to value with AI overall.Weaviate is bringing its open-source, AI-Native vector database to Google Cloud Marketplace so developers can quickly build and deploy gen AI apps that meet enterprise needs with the convenience of being billed through Google Cloud.Supporting innovation from UK and EMEA startupsMany exciting startups are founded and headquartered in the UK. We’re proud that Google Cloud infrastructure, as well as products and services like BigQuery and Vertex AI, are helping these fast-growing businesses scale and succeed. In fact, half of all gen AI startups headquartered in the UK today are Google Cloud customers, including innovators like Mystic and VEED. Startups are partnering with Google Cloud to access our trusted and scalable infrastructure, powerful AI models and tooling, data cloud capabilities, and important routes to market like Google Cloud Marketplace. Today, we’re announcing several more innovative UK startups who have selected Google Cloud to build new products, platforms, and experiences: Callsign provides identity, fraud detection, and authentication solutions for banks and retailers, and has now selected Google Cloud as its cloud provider to build and launch its next-generation SaaS platform. It will also make its platform available on Google Cloud Marketplace.ComplyAdvantage, which provides AI-driven fraud and anti-money laundering risk detection solutions for financial services organizations, is now partnering with Google Cloud to utilize our data cloud and Vertex AI to develop important new capabilities that will help customers detect increasingly sophisticated financial crime strategies with gen AI.Gumtree operates a popular classifieds marketplace in the UK, and has migrated its entire data estate and infrastructure to Google Cloud to enable faster growth and improve their customers’ experiences.OnBuy.com, recently ranked as Europe's fastest growing ecommerce business, is now migrating its entire technology stack to Google Cloud. The OnBuy team will utilize Google Cloud infrastructure and products like Cloud Run, Google Kubernetes Engine, BigQuery, and Vertex AI to power its online marketplace, which connects thousands of small and medium-sized businesses as well as industry leading brands with more than 6 million consumers in the UK.Peak, an AI platform that optimizes inventories, pricing and customer personalization, has launched its new product, Co:Driver. Powered by Google Cloud’s Vertex AI and the PaLM 2 model, Co:Driver adds a new natural language interface to Peak's popular AI platform and AI applications.VEED, a UK-based online video editing startup with more than 7 million users, has chosen Google Cloud as a core component of its generative AI features. VEED is making investments in powerful models built on Vertex AI to usher in a new era of video creation and to further their mission of making video editing accessible to everyone.Last month, we also welcomed 13 AI startups in Europe and Israel to our new Google for Startups: AI First Accelerator. The Accelerator program is a 10-week, equity-free program for Seed to Series A startups focused on building AI, and will help high-potential startups based in Europe and Israel grow with the best of Google through a mix of in-person and virtual activities, Google Cloud credits, 1:1 mentoring, group-learning sessions, and workshops on product design, business growth, and more. You can learn more about Cloud Next London ‘23 here.

At Google Cloud Next, our global showcase for the latest technologies and customer success stories, public sector organizations shared their innovative work to support constituents. At the Moscone Center in San Francisco, government employees, state and local officials, education institutions, data security analysts, and Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) watched Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s keynote, where he described how generative AI is already transforming our daily lives–and how it could help someone renew a driver’s license at every step, from summarizing manuals on governmental websites to making an appointment at the local Department of Motor Vehicles. Over the course of three days we made 161 new product, customer, and partner announcements, including the roll out of digital watermarking, which can automatically detect and label AI-generated content. Attendees connected with each other and talked with hundreds of potential partner organizations to learn how gen AI could help them modernize their infrastructure and advance their missions. At the Innovation Hive, participants signed up for individualized help sessions to learn about Google Cloud’s latest tools and earned digital badges and certificates to level up their job skills. In the breakout sessions and technical demos, Google Cloud customers shared their stories of digital transformation with advanced cloud technologies, like Google Distributed Cloud Hosted (GDCH), an air-gapped private cloud solution built on open source standards with flexible scale to meet our government customers where they are. Here are some of the public sector highlights from a busy week: At Supercharging the Public Sector with AI, panelists from the Hawaii Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO), and California’s Government Operations discussed how they were leveraging AI to optimize efficiency and improve mission outcomes. With the help of their Climate Insights Platform on Google Cloud, Hawaii’s DOT is able to track water levels and analyze rock fall patterns to identify potential vulnerabilities, prioritize maintenance work, and plan proactively for the future. California’s Government Operations sponsors pilot programs to help their 150 departments democratize access to public services. The CDAO recently launched Task Force Lima to enhance its operations in areas such as warfighting, business affairs, health, readiness, and policy.At the Trusted Cloud for the Public Sector session, panelists from California’s Office of Data and Innovation and the cybersecurity training company Cybrary focused on the skills gap facing the public sector. The state of California has launched a Data and Innovation Fund to pilot internal projects to improve service delivery as well as train employees in next-level skills. Cybrary will use AI to help overburdened security analysts screen, assess, and analyze data threats.At Mind the Air Gap, panelists from the U.S. Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) and Europe’s Subsidiaries Benelux explained how they use GDCH to keep their sensitive data secure and private while still leveraging all the benefits of scale, speed, and storage in the cloud. The JWCC sees AI as a way to efficiently harness insights from their data. Subsidiaries Benelux plans to leverage GDCH’s flexibility to manage regional data with the fine-tuned controls required for digital sovereignty.At Achieve Digital Sovereignty with Google Workspace, panelists from Verizon, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) addressed how GDCH and gen AI can help them solve key challenges to their operations. PwC operates in 152 different companies, and requires infrastructure that can handle a wide range of regulatory environments and customer security needs. The GSA manages operations for the U.S. government and wants to lead the way in technology transformation–whether that’s being the first government agency to move their email to the cloud or using gen AI to generate meeting notes for employees working from home. Verizon believes gen AI can help them support employees by automating workloads and upskilling to improve hiring and retention.At the showcase for how State and Local Governments Are Using AI to Better Serve Their Citizens, representatives from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety and California’s Office of Data and Innovation described how AI can help support their core missions. The state of Minnesota developed an online virtual assistant so citizens can interact with the Department of Motor Vehicles in their own languages. Services are already offered in Hmong, Somali, and Spanish, with more languages and dialects to come. California’s Office of Data and Innovation funds a range of accelerators to apply the latest data analytics to service changes that will have the most impact on residents’ daily lives.All the Google Cloud Next ‘23 recorded sessions are now available on-demand. Click here to start exploring the best of Next. To find out more about how Google Cloud can help federal, state, and local governments and agencies fulfill their missions, register for the Google Public Sector Forum on October 17th in Washington, D.C. You’ll hear from top government officials as well as Google experts about how to approach the intersection of AI and security in the public sector.

At Google Cloud Next, our global showcase for the latest technologies and customer success stories, public sector organizations shared their innovative work to support constituents. At the Moscone Center in San Francisco, government employees, state and local officials, education institutions, data security analysts, and Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) watched Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s keynote, where he described how generative AI is already transforming our daily lives–and how it could help someone renew a driver’s license at every step, from summarizing manuals on governmental websites to making an appointment at the local Department of Motor Vehicles. Over the course of three days we made 161 new product, customer, and partner announcements, including the roll out of digital watermarking, which can automatically detect and label AI-generated content. Attendees connected with each other and talked with hundreds of potential partner organizations to learn how gen AI could help them modernize their infrastructure and advance their missions. At the Innovation Hive, participants signed up for individualized help sessions to learn about Google Cloud’s latest tools and earned digital badges and certificates to level up their job skills. In the breakout sessions and technical demos, Google Cloud customers shared their stories of digital transformation with advanced cloud technologies, like Google Distributed Cloud Hosted (GDCH), an air-gapped private cloud solution built on open source standards with flexible scale to meet our government customers where they are. Here are some of the public sector highlights from a busy week: At Supercharging the Public Sector with AI, panelists from the Hawaii Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO), and California’s Government Operations discussed how they were leveraging AI to optimize efficiency and improve mission outcomes. With the help of their Climate Insights Platform on Google Cloud, Hawaii’s DOT is able to track water levels and analyze rock fall patterns to identify potential vulnerabilities, prioritize maintenance work, and plan proactively for the future. California’s Government Operations sponsors pilot programs to help their 150 departments democratize access to public services. The CDAO recently launched Task Force Lima to enhance its operations in areas such as warfighting, business affairs, health, readiness, and policy.At the Trusted Cloud for the Public Sector session, panelists from California’s Office of Data and Innovation and the cybersecurity training company Cybrary focused on the skills gap facing the public sector. The state of California has launched a Data and Innovation Fund to pilot internal projects to improve service delivery as well as train employees in next-level skills. Cybrary will use AI to help overburdened security analysts screen, assess, and analyze data threats.At Mind the Air Gap, panelists from the U.S. Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) and Europe’s Subsidiaries Benelux explained how they use GDCH to keep their sensitive data secure and private while still leveraging all the benefits of scale, speed, and storage in the cloud. The JWCC sees AI as a way to efficiently harness insights from their data. Subsidiaries Benelux plans to leverage GDCH’s flexibility to manage regional data with the fine-tuned controls required for digital sovereignty.At Achieve Digital Sovereignty with Google Workspace, panelists from Verizon, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) addressed how GDCH and gen AI can help them solve key challenges to their operations. PwC operates in 152 different companies, and requires infrastructure that can handle a wide range of regulatory environments and customer security needs. The GSA manages operations for the U.S. government and wants to lead the way in technology transformation–whether that’s being the first government agency to move their email to the cloud or using gen AI to generate meeting notes for employees working from home. Verizon believes gen AI can help them support employees by automating workloads and upskilling to improve hiring and retention.At the showcase for how State and Local Governments Are Using AI to Better Serve Their Citizens, representatives from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety and California’s Office of Data and Innovation described how AI can help support their core missions. The state of Minnesota developed an online virtual assistant so citizens can interact with the Department of Motor Vehicles in their own languages. Services are already offered in Hmong, Somali, and Spanish, with more languages and dialects to come. California’s Office of Data and Innovation funds a range of accelerators to apply the latest data analytics to service changes that will have the most impact on residents’ daily lives.All the Google Cloud Next ‘23 recorded sessions are now available on-demand. Click here to start exploring the best of Next. To find out more about how Google Cloud can help federal, state, and local governments and agencies fulfill their missions, register for the Google Public Sector Forum on October 17th in Washington, D.C. You’ll hear from top government officials as well as Google experts about how to approach the intersection of AI and security in the public sector.

Educators, researchers, IT professionals, student developers, and C-suite leaders showed up in full force in August for Google Cloud Next, our global showcase for the latest cloud technologies and success stories. They attended breakout sessions, product demos, and keynotes to explore the potential of new tools like generative AI and gain insights into how it is already transforming teaching, learning, and advanced research across the country. Gen AI offers particular benefits for the education community, which faces constant demands for speed and scale in their key missions of driving scientific breakthroughs and preparing the next generation for the workforce. It can generate cost efficiencies–the time to value for insights– for both research and operations. It can improve user experience for students, staff, and faculty. It can accelerate content development and customize large models to analyze the ever-growing mountains of data generated on campuses everywhere. Here are some of the top takeaways from the education sessions and demos: At Secure Your Organization with Zero Trust Controls and Google AI: IT leaders at the University of Notre Dame demonstrated how they used AI to gamify cybersecurity training for over a thousand students. By designing an interactive AI-based Google Wizarding College and a Cybersecurity Carnival they made security training fun and effective. “Security is everyone’s responsibility,” Chas Grundy, Director of IT Strategy and Transformation, says. “Google tools help us set defaults and automate controls to make that burden easier on students and admins.” The panelists at Responsibly Driving Student Success with AI began by pointing to some of the challenges facing higher education today: the learning losses in math and reading since the pandemic and the overwhelming need to retrain tomorrow’s workforce in new skills. Lev Gonick, Enterprise Chief Information Officer at Arizona State University, believes AI has the potential to recruit and retain students who haven’t been served by traditional education. Virtual tutors and personalized learning can help the 40 million students with Some College, No Credential (SCNC) reach their career goals. COO Miguel Amigot II of IBL Education described how their gen AI-based mentors can provide a one-to-one learning experience to students and professionals looking for tailored skills development. In collaboration with professors, IBL Education builds AI-based modules that can help students with everything from time management skills to social interactions. Anant Agawral, founder of edX, already uses AI to translate edX’s 4,000 online courses into over a dozen languages. “That used to be expensive,” he says, “but now the translations are so fast and so good that we can just focus on distributing them efficiently.” Google Customers Form Bio and Collegis Education are using AI to make research and student services more efficient. By analyzing how and when students, faculty, and staff interact with online services, Collegis can determine the best times and methods to reach each cohort. Form Bio builds AI into their scientific data platform to help researchers focus on their results. Making computational workflows user-friendly can save time and resources–and accelerate discoveries. Framing the three-day conference were two special events for higher educational professionals: the Higher Education Innovation Board on August 28 and the San Francisco AI & Research Day event on August 31. These events brought together researchers, CIOs, and IT leaders from campuses across the country to discuss how they are serving their communities, modernizing their infrastructure, and transforming their organizations with the latest cloud tools. Here are some of the key lessons learned at the higher ed events: At the Higher Education Innovation Board event, Matt Gunkel, CIO of the University of California, Riverside (UCR), shared the story of how UCR is transforming their operations and services through a pioneering fixed-cost agreement with Google Cloud. Now in its second year, Gunkel could point to significant impact already: researchers are moving workflows to the cloud with HPC Toolkit and some are accelerating their data analysis from 24 hours to 15 minutes. Soon the team intends to deploy gen AI and BigQuery to analyze Student Information System, Learning Management System, and financial data for qualitative insights into student satisfaction. At San Francisco’s Google Cloud AI & Research Day participants heard from Google experts and C-suite leaders about how Google Cloud technologies can facilitate collaboration, automate security and data governance, and make research and operations more efficient. They watched demos of how gen AI can sift through scientific literature to answer complex queries and generate laboratory protocol–or “ground” research citations in a customer-provided database. Stay tuned for upcoming AI & Research Days hosted at Google offices in other cities. All the Google Cloud Next ‘23 recorded sessions are now available on-demand. Click here to start exploring the best of Next. To find out how you can get started with gen AI for higher education, sign up for an interactive half-day workshop with Google Cloud and partners Nuvalence and Carahsoft. Participants will work with experts in small groups to design a gen AI strategy package customized for their needs. To learn more about funding opportunities, check out the eligibility for cloud training and academic research credits.

The last few weeks were very exciting for users of Cloud Spanner, Google’s fully managed, horizontally scalable database that offers up to 99.999% availability. We had several big announcements leading up to and at Google Cloud Next ‘23: breaking data silos between transactional and analytical data using Data Boost, integration with Google’s always-on, generative AI collaborator Duet AI, and enabling schema authors to push down critical identity logic into the database using auto-generated keys. Let’s dig deeper into each of these announcements. Run isolated analytical queries on transactional data with Data BoostDuring the show, we announced the general availability of Cloud Spanner Data Boost, a break-through technology that delivers high-performance, workload-isolated, on-demand processing of operational data to support analytics, reporting, ML, and more. Data Boost takes advantage of Google’s disaggregated compute and storage architecture to provide on-demand, isolated compute resources to process analytical queries directly on the storage layer, with virtually no impact to the existing transactional workload. And you retain all the things you love about Spanner, including the virtually infinite scale, global external consistency, and unmatched availability. With Data Boost, you can be confident about running batch or analytic workloads against your transactional database or enabling broad data sharing. Analysts and other users can get access to fresh data without impacting latency-sensitive transactional workloads, and without comprimising access controls. And the best part is, you can probably set everything up over coffee and potentially lower your overall operational costs before your second cup. To watch Data Boost in action check out the session from Next ‘23, read more about it in the blog, or learn how to enable Data Boost with the guidance in the documentation. Write SQL with Duet AI assistance in Spanner StudioWe also announced a preview of Spanner and Duet AI, which provides a robust, IDE-like experience with AI-assisted SQL capabilities that are tightly integrated into Cloud Spanner Studio running in your browser. Spanner users often rely on third-party IDEs and SQL clients to define tables, run ad-hoc queries, or update existing data. Not only do they have to choose, download and configure secure connectivity for these clients, but the context switching between the Google Cloud console and external clients can be distracting and slow down workflows. Developers working on large, complex projects spend a lot of time and cognitive effort to understand new code bases, languages, and dialects. Spanner users can now explore and manage their data more efficiently via three major improvements to Spanner Studio: Object Explorer - Navigate your database structure in a familiar tree-like hierarchy Improved SQL editor - Structure, modify, and query your data from a single interface Duet AI assistance - Duet AI in Cloud Spanner uses a specialized Large Language Model (LLM) to provide users with multi-line SQL completion and generation of SQL statements from natural language prompts. These features address long-standing requests for enhanced data management capabilities. And with Duet AI, Spanner provides new levels of power and ease in the Spanner console, putting users’ data at their fingertips. To watch Duet AI and Spanner in action, check out this session from the Databases keynote from Next. ‘23 Learn more about how you can use Duet-AI in Spanner by reading more about it in our documentation. Push identity logic into the database with auto-generated keysFinally, we announced support for auto-generated keys in Spanner, allowing schema authors to push down critical identity logic into the database. This simplifies application code and reduces opportunities for errors or inconsistencies. Auto-generated keys also help you migrate from relational databases that expect keys based on integer sequences. Like everything in Spanner, auto-generated keys are designed from the ground up not to compromise scalability, availability, or performance over the entire lifecycle of your applications. With the launch of auto-generated keys, Cloud Spanner has two new ways of generating primary keys in the database: UUIDs and integer sequences. The default recommendation for primary keys in Spanner is to use a Universally Unique Identifier, or UUID, 128-bit identifiers generated using a public specification (rfc-4122). A table can use the new GENERATE_UUID() function in PostgreSQL or GoogleSQL dialect databases in a primary key default value expression to automatically populate new rows with a UUID v4 value. For customers with an existing schema that uses an integer primary key, Spanner now offers a SEQUENCE object that generates unique integers as part of a primary key DEFAULT expression. However, unlike a monotonic sequence, the values generated by a Spanner sequence are distributed uniformly and thus won’t hotspot at scale. You can generate a value from that sequence in a default expression using the nextval() function in PostgreSQL or GET_NEXT_SEQUENCE_VALUE() in GoogleSQL. To learn more about auto-generated keys with Spanner, read the launch blog or our documentation here (GoogleSQL) and here (PostgreSQL) At Next ‘23,, we also shared stories about how customers are using Spanner to scale their business and serve their end users. We shared how CERC is using Spanner to disrupt the exchange receivables market using Spanner innovations — watch a recording of the session. We also shared how Google ads and Gmail run on Spanner to get the highest levels of availability and reliability; you can watch a recording of the session here. But we’re far from done. Watch this space for news about our latest Spanner innovations. In the meantime learn more about what makes Spanner unique and how it’s being used today. Or try it yourself for free for 90-days or for as little as $65 USD/month for a production-ready instance that grows with your business without downtime or disruptive re-architecture.

If it isn’t already clear, Google Cloud is invested in being FinOps-first. At Google Cloud Next 2023, we made some pretty exciting FinOps product announcements for Google Cloud Billing. Here are the top five: 1. Google Cloud continues to pioneer the FinOps movement: Through our strong roots in the FinOps Foundation, we announced our contributions to v 0.5 of the FinOps open billing standards FOCUS (FinOps Open Cost & Usage Specification) project. V 0.5 provides a common language and set of definitions for data dimensions, metrics, and attributes regarding billing data. Datasets conforming to FOCUS will enable FinOps practitioners to perform common FinOps capabilities, using a generic set of instructions, regardless of the dataset origin. Why do we want to participate in a project designed to level the cloud billing data playing field across all cloud service providers (CSPs)? First, being open is a part of Google’s DNA, having contributed to foundational open source internet technologies over the past 20 years. Second, we believe that customers who innovate faster actually save money faster. We don’t want you spending time trying to decipher your cloud bills! We want you to leverage your cloud billing data to make better business decisions that fuel innovation and drive industry changes.Open, high-quality cloud cost data is non-negotiable. In support of good quality cloud cost data, Google Cloud Billing announced support for App Engine, Spanner, Firestore, and BigQuery granular, resource-level cost data that comes out of the box with theBilling detailed big query data export. To further FinOps industry adoption, we also launched a spotlight on FinOps thought leadership series on the Transform with Google Cloud thought leadership blog. In this monthly series, learn how FinOps has been adopted through real-life illustrative examples at work today from industry leaders. 2. DuetAI is trained to a sample Certified FinOps Level. As part of Duet AI in Google Cloud, FinOps practitioners can also take advantage of AI integrated assistance for Billing based on models trained on Google Cloud best practices. Tailored for FinOps practitioners, you can use Duet AI to increase your Google Cloud billing proficiency. To measure Duet AI’s FinOps IQ, we partnered with the FinOps Foundation to put Duet AI to the FinOps test — literally: Duet AI passed a similar exam to the FinOps Certified Practitioner with flying colors. You can try it for yourself here. We have a robust roadmap for Google Cloud Billing has to unlock the power of generative AI that prioritizes accuracy first, but this is just the start. Look out for more innovations in this area. 3. New FinOps Hub helps you mature your FinOps practice with smarter cost optimizations, new FinOps score, and peer benchmark: We’re focused on removing the cognitive load for cloud Finops practitioners . But when it comes to optimizing cloud spend, one of the hardest parts is knowing where to start. That is where the FinOps hub comes in. We announced theFinOps Hub public previewat Next ‘23 to provide one pane of glass to identify, adopt, and measure all cost optimizations across an entire Google Cloud landscape. WIth advanced machine learning capabilities, the FinOps hub tells users what their FinOps score is — a tangible measure of how they are using Google Cloud billing data and tools to achieve maximum cloud value, with suggestions on how to improve. Peer benchmarks (with an opt-out option) provide context with respect to how users are performing with their FinOps practice and overall rate optimizations through committed use discounts (CUDs). Additionally Google Cloud cost optimizations have also gotten a lot smarter — they’re no longer just about rate optimizations like purchasing a CUD or rightsizing a VM; rather, we recognize that cost optimizations should be orchestrated across your entire cloud landscape, doing both rate and usage cost optimizations together through personalized prescriptions, always with the ability to personalize optimizations according to business needs. The FinOps Hub includes rate and usage optimizations for a variety of Google Cloud services. Finally, the FinOps Hub provides a realized savings ledger so cloud FinOps teams can track their return on investment (ROI) on all their cost optimizations in one place, easily. 4. Budgets gets extended to engineers: We also announced a great new tool for project users to keep track of their cloud costs through the extension of the rich Cloud Billing budgets tooling. Project owners, Project Editors and Project Viewers can now create budgets and Project owners get notifications about actual or forecasted budget alerts in the Google Cloud console or through the Cloud Billing Budget API. 5. Google Cloud Billing is building for FinOps 2.0: We’re building towards a future of FinOps automation, as seen through our latest API enhancements to get a head start including the new Pricing API in public preview. The new Pricing API allows you to not only get list prices on all the available services but also account-specific custom prices and discounts, with visibility into any internal SKUs that are available to your billing account as part of your contract or agreement. The Pricing API also provides additional metadata such as SKU to service mapping, a list of SKU groups, SKUs to SKU group mapping, and a geo and product taxonomy that allows you to further slice and dice the SKUs for improved analysis. This API, along with others such as the Commitments API, provide the basis for customers to advance their own advanced cost management applications. Learn how SAP leveraged Cloud Billing APIs and data in their journey to controlling costs and building financial resilience with automation through their Google NEXT session here. To stay up-to-date on all things cloud FinOps and Google Cloud Billing, sign up for our Billing Advisory cohort at billing-cohort@googlegroups.com, where you can gain access to early features, participate in user feedback sessions, and learn about our roadmap with a group of like-minded cloud FinOps professionals.

This week we hosted Google Cloud Next in San Francisco! It was great to be back together in-person with the Google Cloud community and ecosystem. Highlights included the opening keynote, packed with breakthrough product announcements and customer stories, which you can also watch in just 13 minutes. Also check out the fun and inspirational developer keynote, complete with an original song and cool demos. We hosted 250+ educational breakout sessions, and thousands of developers were buzzing around our Innovators Hive. On top of that, we loved having partners integrated throughout Next, from the show floor to the sessions, to the evening parties throughout the week. APPROVED - NEXT2023_0829_104040-9470_ALIVECOVERAGE.jpgImages from Google Cloud Next ‘23NEXT2023_0829_130334-4818_ALIVECOVERAGE.jpgImages from Google Cloud Next ‘23 NEXT2023_0830_104327-5811_ALIVECOVERAGE.jpgImages from Google Cloud Next ‘23 NEXT2023_0830_133802-2592_ALIVECOVERAGE.jpgImages from Google Cloud Next ‘23 Generative AI was a big focus throughout, particularly the many new offerings across Vertex AI and Duet AI, highlighting all the new ways to cloud. The new way to cloudOpening video for Google Cloud Next ‘23 KeynoteToo much happened this week to share it all here, but we’ve pulled together a summary of all of the announcements so you can feel like you were there. Read on for the complete list of 161 (!) announcements. Data and AI CloudAI platforms and tools1. Duet AI in Google Cloud is now in preview with new capabilities, and general availability coming later this year. 2. Vertex AI Search and Conversation, formerly Enterprise Search on Generative AI App Builder and Conversational AI on Generative AI App Builder, are both generally available to make it fast and easy to build generative chatbots and custom search engines. 3. New multi-turn search in Vertex AI Search supports follow-up questions without starting the interaction over. In addition, we built out the Vertex AI platform: 4. We added new models to Vertex AI Model Garden including Meta’s Llama 2 and Code Llama and Technology Innovation Institute's Falcon LLM, and pre-announced Anthropic’s Claude 2. 5. The PaLM 2 foundation model now supports 38 languages, and 32,000-token context windows that make it possible to process long documents in prompts. 6. The Codey chat and code generation model offers up to a 25% quality improvement in major supported languages for code generation and code chat. 7. The Imagen image generation model features improved visual appeal, image editing, captioning, a new tuning feature to align images to guidelines with 10 or fewer samples, and visual questions and answering, as well as digital watermarking functionality powered by Google DeepMind SynthID. 8. Adapter tuning in Vertex AI is generally available for PaLM 2 for text. 9. Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) is now in public preview. 10. New Vertex AI Extensions let models take actions and retrieve specific information in real time and act on behalf of users across Google and third-party applications like Datastax, MongoDB and Redis. 11. New Vertex AI data connectors help ingest data from enterprise and third-party applications like Salesforce, Confluence, and JIRA. 12. Grounding in Vertex AI roots generative outputs in your enterprise data, to increase confidence in your generative AI search and conversational applications. 13. Vertex AI now supports Ray, an open-source unified compute framework to scale AI and Python workloads. 14. We announced Colab Enterprise, a managed service in public preview that combines the ease-of-use of Google’s Colab notebooks with enterprise-level security and compliance support capabilities. 15. Next month, we’ll make Med-PaLM 2, our medically-tuned version of PaLM 2, available as a preview to more customersin the healthcare and life sciences industry. And to enhance MLOps for generative AI, we announced: 16. Automatic Metrics in Vertex AI lets you evaluate a model based on a defined task and “ground truth” dataset. 17. Automatic Side by Side in Vertex AI uses a large model to evaluate the output of multiple models being tested, helping to augment human evaluation at scale. 18. A new generation of Vertex AI Feature Store, now built on BigQuery, helps you avoid data duplication and preserve data access policies. Data analyticsWe announced a wealth of features across our data analytics offerings: 19. Duet AI is in preview across a variety of products in the data analytics portfolio such as Looker, BigQuery, and Dataplex. 20. BigQuery Studio, in preview, is a single interface for data engineering, analytics, and predictive analysis to simplify end-to-end data workflows. 21. We announced enhanced support for open source formats like Hudi and Delta Lake within BigLake, and added performance acceleration for Apache Iceberg. 22. BigLake can now be your single lakehouse, with cross-cloud materialized views and cross-cloud joins in BigQuery Omni. 23. Spark integration on Google Distributed Cloud extends the power of fast analytical query processings to on-premises to support data residency requirements. 24. New governance capabilities in Dataplex for data lineage, quality, and metadata management help users understand what data to analyze, and train ML models on trusted data sources to help improve accuracy. 25. BigQuery data clean rooms can help you understand your Google and YouTube campaign performance. 26. Now you can access Vertex AI foundation models, including PaLM 2, directly from BigQuery. 27. New model inference in BigQuery lets you run model inferences across formats like TensorFlow, ONNX, and XGBoost, and new capabilities for real-time inference can identify patterns and automatically generate alerts. 28. For model tuning, we added vector and semantic search in BigQuery. 29. You can automatically synchronize vector embeddings in BigQuery with Vertex AI Feature Store for model grounding. 30. Now you can access thousands of datasets from hundreds of providers including Acxiom, Bloomberg, Equifax, Nielsen, and Zoominfo directly in BigQuery. DatabasesTransactional and operational databases are the lifeblood of the organization. 31. AlloyDB AI is available in preview via downloadable AlloyDB Omni to help you build enterprise gen AI applications everywhere. 32. AlloyDB Omni, the downloadable edition that runs on Google Cloud, AWS, Azure, on premises, and on your laptop, is moving from technology preview to public preview. 33. Duet AI in Database Migration Service provides AI-assisted code conversion to automate the last mile conversion of Oracle database code to PostgreSQL. Sign up for the preview. 34. Duet AI in Cloud Spanner is in preview to help with generating code to structure, modify, or query your data using natural language. 35. Support for Oracle in Database Migration Service with Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL as the target is now GA. 36. Cloud Spanner Data Boost, now GA, lets you to analyze your Spanner data via services such as BigQuery, Spark on Dataproc, or Dataflow with virtually no impact on your transactional workloads. 37. Support for auto-generated keys in Cloud Spanner allows schema authors to push down critical identity logic into the database. 38. A new BigQuery Export to Bigtable Reverse ETL feature in preview lets you serve analytical insights from your applications without having to touch any ETL tools. 39. The fully managed Memorystore for Redis Cluster is available in preview. This is an easy-to-use, open-source compatible Redis Cluster service that provides up to 60 times more throughput than Memorystore for Redis, with microseconds latencies. 40. The new Google Cloud Ready for Cloud SQL program recognizes partner solutions that have met integration requirements with Cloud SQL. 41. The Bigtable change streams feature allows you to capture data changes to a Bigtable table as the changes happen, letting you stream them for processing or analysis, and is now GA. 42. Cloud Bigtable request priorities, in private preview, let you execute large workloads that are not time-sensitive e.g. analytical queries, as low priority jobs on a Bigtable cluster, thus minimizing the impact of batch processing on serving workloads. 43. You can now create a copy of a Cloud Bigtable backup and store it in any project or region where you have a Bigtable instance, and retain your backups for up to 90 days. Business IntelligenceWe extended our Looker business intelligence ecosystem and showed that the future of Looker is powered by AI. 44. Duet AI in Looker is now in preview. 45. The Looker semantic layer is now open to Tableau in preview, and to Microsoft Power BI in general availability. 46. Looker Studio users now have native access to the Alteryx Designer Cloud for data preparation, and enhanced cloud connectivity, starting with Microsoft Excel and CSV files from storage platforms including Sharepoint and OneDrive. 47. An integration with Looker partner Sisu Data will be generally available later this quarter, helping customers determine the root cause of changes, spot data outliers, and identify next steps for analysis. Dev CloudGoogle Cloud’s Dev Cloud covers all our infrastructure — compute, network, storage, regions, etc. — as well as platforms and developer tools. ComputeWe talked about chips that are optimized for AI workloads: 48. A3 VMs, based on NVIDIA H100 GPUs and delivered as a GPU supercomputer, will be generally available next month. 49. The new Google Cloud TPU v5e, in preview, has up to 2x higher training performance per dollar and up to 2.5x inference performance per dollar for LLMs and generative AI models compared to Cloud TPU v4. 50. New Multislice technology in preview lets you scale AI models beyond the boundaries of physical TPU pods, with tens of thousands of Cloud TPU v5e or TPU v4 chips. 51. Support for Cloud TPUs in GKE is now available for Cloud TPU v5e and Cloud TPU v4. 52. Support for AI inference on Cloud TPUs is in preview. We enhanced our general-purpose Compute Engine families with new models and features: 53. The Arm-based C3A, powered by AmpereOne processors will be in preview next month. 54. A preview of AMD-based C3D VMs is coming next month, and will offer the largest instance sizes in our general-purpose portfolio, with up to 360 vCPUs and 2.8TB of DDR5 memory. 55. We unveiled Titanium, a system of purpose-built, custom silicon and multiple tiers of offloads that enables offerings like Hyperdisk and our 3rd generation C3 VMs. 56. C3 VMs support for Hyperdisk Extreme is now in preview and supports 500K IOPS. 57. The SSD-based Hyperdisk Balanced is now in preview, with up to 2x the performance of previous generation Persistent Disk SSD. 58. Hyperdisk Storage Pools is now in preview, allowing customers to provision capacity and performance in aggregate Pools, and then thinly provision Hyperdisk volumes from those pools. 59. Our VMs have new uptime SLAs: a 99.95% uptime SLA for memory-optimized VMs, and 99.9% (up from 99.5%) for all other VM families. 60. Future reservations, now in preview, is a new Compute Engine feature that allows you to reserve compute capacity for a future date. 61. C3 is now certified for SAP. 62. Workload Manager has new capabilities for securing and deploying SAP workloads, in preview. 63. In preview in October, we’ll offer a new VMware Engine node with 2TB RAM and options from 64 - 128 vCPUs and up to 50TB storage for Google Cloud VMware Engine, as well as three new storage options: NetApp Volumes, Filestore, and Storage-only (VSAN) nodes. Networking 64. We announced Cross-Cloud Network, an open and programmable global cloud networking platform. 65. Private Service Connect now supports 20+ different Google and partner managed services. 66. The Cloud Firewall Plus tier is in preview, a cloud-first next-generation firewall, or NGFW. 67. The new Network Service Integration Manager simplifies the setup and operation of partner NGFWs from Checkpoint, Cisco, Fortinet, and Palo Alto Networks. 68. VPC Spokes support in Network Connectivity Center in preview lets you scale VPC connectivity, providing reachability between a large number of VPC spokes. 69. The internal Application Load Balancer now supports global access, which allows private clients from any Google Cloud region to access internal load balancers residing in any other Google Cloud region, and global backends, which allow internal Application Load Balancers to health-check and send traffic to globally distributed backend services. 70. New Service Extensions callouts for Cloud Load Balancers let you customize services such as specialized monitoring, logging, traffic steering, or authentication. 71. A new automation solution toolkit for the Google Cloud Load Balancers global frontend lets you integrate and automate products including Cloud Armor, Cloud Load Balancing, and Cloud CDN into popular CI/CD platforms. 72. Cloud Application Load Balancers now support cross-project service referencing. 73. New mTLS client-side authentication is available for global external Application Load Balancers. 74. Auto-deployment for Cloud Armor Adaptive Protection is now generally available. 75. Palo Alto Networks is integrating its Prisma Access natively in Google Cloud. 76. Broadcom is integrating its Secure Web Gateway natively in Google Cloud. 77. The Titanium Network Adapter, part of our Titanium system of offloads and available in A3, C3, and H3 VMs, delivers up to twice the throughput and three times the packet processing speed of prior VM generations. Hybrid and multi-cloudWe added capabilities and features to our Google Distributed Cloud family, GDC Edge and GDC Hosted: 78. GDC Hosted now offers pre-trained models for speech, translation, optical character recognition (OCR), and Workbench. 79. Vertex Prediction and Vertex Pipelines are coming to GDC Hosted in preview in Q2 2024, as is Document Translation API service. 80. Database Service for GDC Hosted will now support AlloyDB Omni as a new managed database engine in preview. 81. GDC Edge will support Dataproc in preview in Q4 2023. 82. The new GDC hardware stack features the 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors and high-performance network fabrics with up to 400 Gbps throughput. 83. We introduced new hardware configurations for GDC Edge that are ruggedized and optimized for retail stores and restaurants. 84. GDC Hosted now offers support for new guest operating systems, customer-managed VM images, a package repository for VM runtime configuration, simplified networking, backup and restore tooling, a CLI and streamlined APIs. 85. The new GKE Enterprise will be included in all Google Distributed Cloud deployments at no additional cost. 86. ElasticSearch, MongoDB Enterprise Advanced, and SAP on Google Distributed Cloud are available through Google Cloud Marketplace. 87. Boundary proxy on GDC Edge in preview provides visibility and auditability by inspecting and logging all management traffic between Google Cloud and GDC Edge (in preview). 88. New Bastion host on GDC Edge, in preview, enables you to easily view and control Google Cloud's access to GDC Edge for troubleshooting purposes, supporting you with operational sovereignty and compliance requirements. 89. Now you can automatically create and provide the resource mapping for all your managed keys with key tracking on GDC Hosted, in preview. 90. BYO-certificate on GDC Hosted enables you to upload certificates issued by a third-party certificate authority, in preview. 91. With new survivability mode on GDC Edge, you can continue on-prem operations on GDC Edge even if you lose connectivity to Google Cloud, now in preview. Platforms 92. GKE Enterprise, a new premium edition of our flagship container orchestration platform, lets platform teams can manage large Kubernetes deployments across multiple clusters and multiple teams around the world, all from a single management console. 93. GKE now supports Cloud TPU v5e, A3 VMs with NVIDIA H100 GPUs, and Google Cloud Storage FUSE on GKE (GA). 94. Duet AI in GKE (preview) provides generative AI assistance specifically trained on GKE documentation to help platform teams cut down on time it takes to learn and operate Kubernetes. Developer experienceWe took our commitment to an exceptional developer experience up a notch: 95. Jump Start Solutions application and infrastructure solutions, are now GA. 96. Application Integration — a no-code integration platform as a service (iPaaS) designed to empower you to weave together your applications — is now GA. 97. We partnered with GitLab to offer a secure DevOps solution with integrated source management, artifact management, CI/CD, and enhanced security features. 98. Duet AI is available console-wide, including in GKE, Cloud Run, and Cloud operations suite. It will also be available in Apigee API Management and Application Integration in preview for trusted testers here. Migration and Management99. We’ve revamped (re-RaMPed?) our Rapid Migration Program, including the new Cloud Capability Assessment (CCA) for RaMP online assessment and a detailed new migration-planning dashboard. 100. Migration Center, a unified migration service within Google Cloud console, is now GA, and includes the new SAP Cost Estimator. 101. Google Cloud VMware Engine is now available in 18 regions, most recently in Turin, Italy (europe-wst12), Santiago (southamerica-west1), and Delhi (asia-south2). 102. The new flexible ve2 node platform powered by 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors (formerly named Ice Lake) and next-generation VMware Engine networking are now available for Google Cloud VMware Engine. 103. Event-driven transfer in Storage Transfer Service is now GA. 104. Storage Transfer Service now offers support for transferring data from on-premises Hadoop Distributed File Systems (HDFS) sources to Cloud Storage, currently available to trusted testers. 105. SAP Security Validation, now available in public preview for Google Cloud Workload Manager, provides SAP-specific infrastructure and application-level security checks. 106. Workload Manager’s Guided Deployment Automation service is now available in public preview and generates custom automation code to modernize to S/4HANA. Geo and sustainability107. The Google Maps Platform team introduced a suite of Environment APIs for solar, air quality, and pollen. Security Cloud108. Duet AI in Mandiant Threat Intelligence in preview helps surface the most prevalent tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by threat actors against organizations by summarizing our frontline threat intelligence. 109. Duet AI in Chronicle Security Operations in preview aids in threat detection, investigation, and response for cyber defenders by simplifying search, complex data analysis, and threat detection engineering. 110. Duet AI in Security Command Center in preview offers near-instant analysis of security findings and possible attack paths. 111. Mandiant Hunt for Chronicle, now in preview, provides continual threat hunting by Mandiant experts on Chronicle data. 112. Agentless vulnerability scanning, powered by Tenable, has been integrated into Security Command Center to detect operating system, software, and network vulnerabilities on Compute Engine virtual machines, now in preview. 113. Security Command Center now allows organizations to design their own customized posture findings (GA) and threat detectors (in preview). 114. Confidential Computing running on 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs with TDX technology is now in private preview. 115. We expanded the coverage footprint of our Sensitive Data Protection offerings with enhanced integration for Dataplex and Dialogflow (now GA), and in preview for Cloud SQL. 116. Assured Workloads Japan Regions is now in preview, offering customers controlled environments that enforce data residency in our Japanese regions, options for local control of encryption keys, and administrative access transparency. 117. The official Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Security Engineer Exam Guide is now available. Collaboration Cloud: Google Workspace118. Duet AI for Google Workspace is generally available, and you can get started with a no-cost trial. 119. Duet AI for Google Workspace can create a whole new presentation in Slides, complete with text, charts, and images, based on your relevant content in Drive and Gmail. 120. Duet AI in Google Meet helps you look and sound your best with new AI-powered enhancements, including studio look, studio lighting, and studio sound, as well as dynamic tiles and automatic face detection so remote attendees can see everyone in a meeting room, with each in-person attendee getting their own video tile with their name. 121. Duet AI in Google Meet can capture notes, action items, and video snippets in real time with the “take notes for me” feature, and send a recap to attendees after the meeting. It can even catch latecomers up with “summary so far,” or attend a meeting in your place with “attend for me.” 122. We’re enhancing smart reply in Gmail with Duet AI, allowing you to draft longer personalized replies with a single tap. 123. The enhanced Google Chat experience is available with powerful new features, including Duet AI in Google Chat. To help you keep up with messaging, we’re bringing direct messages and spaces together into a unified conversation list, with a chronological home view, @-mentions, and starred conversations, with intelligent prioritization of your messages, based on your communication patterns, coming early next year. 124. Google Chat will soon support up to 500,000 participants in a single space, to help build thriving communities, even in the largest organizations. 125. Huddles in Chat are a new way for teams to communicate in real time, using quick-to-join audio and video conversations, powered by Google Meet. With huddles, instead of jumping out of the conversation into a meeting, the meeting integrates directly and smoothly into the Chat experience. 126. More third-party and Google Workspace apps are supported in Chat, including an updated Google Drive app that lets you respond to comments and sharing requests, as well as new support for Workday, Loom, Zoho, and LumApps. Mio will provide support for message interoperability with other major platforms. 127. In the lead up to Next, we announced new capabilities, including those powered by AI, to help prevent cyber threats, provide safer work with built-in zero trust controls, and better support for our customers’ digital sovereignty and compliance needs. Customers 128. We announced the winners of our Google Cloud Customer Awards. 129. AdoreMe, a direct-to-consumer brand, uses generative AI in Google Workspace to improve customer experiences, create production-worthy marketing materials, and speed up innovation. 130. Bayer Pharmaceuticals is working with Google Cloud to use gen AI, including testing Med-PaLM 2. 131. Canoo, a leading advanced mobility company, will deploy a range of Google Cloud’s AI, data management and security technologies to maximize the value of the data coming from its electric vehicles. 132. CAPCOM is harnessing Google Cloud’s infrastructure to support its global player base for AAA game launches like Street Fighter 6. 133. Dun & Bradstreet is collaborating with Google Cloud on gen AI to drive innovation across multiple applications. 134. The Government of El Salvador announced a multi-year deal with Google Cloud to digitally transform the country with Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) Edge, as well as to establish an office presence and Center of Excellence (CoE) in the country. 135. The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (ELC) and Google Cloud announced an expansion of their strategic partnership to pioneer new uses of gen AI for online consumers. 136. Fox Sports will use Google Cloud’s gen AI capabilities to quickly search footage from more than 1.9 million videos and create custom video content in near-real-time to delight and engage its audiences. 137. GE Appliances (GEA) is expanding its partnership with Google Cloud to enhance and personalize consumer experiences, like recipe creation and appliance maintenance, with gen AI. 138. General Motors and Google Cloud will share new details on how the two companies are collaborating to bring conversational AI technology into millions of GM vehicles. 139. Ginkgo Bioworks, which is building the leading platform for cell programming and biosecurity, and Google Cloud announced a five-year strategic cloud and AI partnership, intended to enable Ginkgo to develop and deploy AI tools for biology and biosecurity. 140. Hackensack Meridian Health will leverage Google Cloud’s gen AI technologies to develop and deploy solutions that will help clinical staff to focus more on care, improve overall decision-making, and better personalize the patient experience. 141. HCA Healthcare and Google Cloud will improve workflows on time-consuming tasks such as clinical documentation so physicians and nurses can focus more on patient care with gen AI. 142. Huma will use Google Cloud’s gen AI to enhance its regulated disease management platform. 143. Infinitus is using Google Cloud’s gen AI to streamline provider-payor interactions, simplify resource-intensive operations, and improve response times. 144. Meditech is working with Google Cloud to empower employees, and ultimately better serve its healthcare provider customers with gen AI, including Med-PaLM2. 145. MSCI is expanding its partnership with Google Cloud to accelerate the development of gen AI solutions for the financial services industry. 146. Runway has chosen Google Cloud to build, accelerate, and manage model deployment and bring gen AI to more creatives. 147. Six Flags will use Google Cloud’s gen AI to create an in-park app that helps improve visitor experience and park operations in real time. Startups and Public Sector 148. Eleven more leading generative AI startups have chosen Google Cloud to develop gen AI and bring their products to market. 149. The new Google for Startups Startup School: AI is a six-week in-depth online AI training course that will launch in January 2024. 150. A new VC AMA ebook, Startup Advice from VCs: 10 Lessons from the Trenches, for startups contains valuable takeaways from the VC AMA Series, and is available for download. 151. Nine startups in the Startup Lounge announced new products based on Google Cloud in the Startup Lounge. 152. We announced the winners of the 2023 Google Cloud Customer Awards in Government and Education Congratulations to: Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), United States Postal Service (USPS), United States Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), State of Hawaii DHS, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT), New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NY DEC) and Minnesota Department of Public Safety (MN DPS). Partners 153. We recognized our annual Partners of the Year. 154. A new Google Cloud Generative AI Partner Initiative provides partners with AI journey maps and learning assets, and separate “Services” and “Build” tracks for partners working with gen AI. 155. DocuSign is working with Google Cloud to pilot how Vertex AI could be used to help generate smart contract assistants that can summarize, explain and answer what’s in complex contracts and other documents. 156. SAP is working with us to develop new solutions utilizing Google Cloud foundation models via Vertex AI and SAP data, beginning with solutions to enhance customers’ sustainability initiatives and improve safety and manufacturing processes for the automotive industry. 157. Workday’s applications for Finance and HR are now live on Google Cloud, and they are working with us to develop new gen AI capabilities within the flow of Workday. 158. We forged new or expanded partnerships with data providers such as Acxiom, Bloomberg, CoreLogic, Dun & Bradstreet, Equifax, NIQ and TransUnion to provide access to their datasets from BigQuery. 159. Technology and solutions in the new Data and AI Cloud for Supply Chain helps customers build data-driven supply chains. 160. The new Industry Value Networks (IVN) initiative combines expertise and offerings from systems integrators (SIs), independent software vendors (ISVs) and content partners to create comprehensive, differentiated, repeatable, and high-value solutions that accelerate time-to-value and reduce risk for customers. Next ‘24!Last but not least, we’re excited to do it all over again, but even bigger next year so please save the date: 161. Google Cloud Next ‘24 will take place April 9-11 in Las Vegas. That was a lot! A huge thank you to our Google Cloud team, customers, and partners who came together to make this all happen. Together, we’re building the new way to cloud.

Don't just dream big, live it at Google Cloud Next '23. We're thrilled that thousands of startups have registered for Cloud Next and are looking to learn how Google Cloud can help them scale. This year, we've built out a dedicated experience for startups, which comes to life at the Startup Lounge. The Startup Lounge is a place where startups will be inspired by AI-powered content, attend exclusive networking events with other startup founders, VCs and Google Cloud executives, and collaborate in a coworking area. In the Startup Lounge, we’ll offer three days packed with immersive experiences from startups such as Dialpad, Cockroach Labs, and Sentry.io, inspiring sessions, 1:1 expert office hours, and the Founder's Reception, a celebration for startups at the conclusion of Next. We're excited to have a space and atmosphere to help startups take advantage of Google Cloud's resources and supercharge their growth. A new startup takeover experience in the Startup LoungeGet up close and personal with successful startups who have been a part of the Google for Startups Cloud Program. The startup takeover experience showcases the immersive experiences created by successful founders that are built on Google Cloud. On day one, Tuesday 29th, we’ll be featuring how Dialpad uses AI to help certain basketball teams stay connected anywhere throughout the world. We’ll also give startups a chance to win tickets to a basketball game for this upcoming season. Woof will also be in the lounge with positive dog trainers and their dogs performing tricks and other fun experiences. They’ll also promote the launch of an exciting new feature that will bring you closer to your pet. You’ll be able to grab some gear for your pet while learning how Google Cloud helps Woof AI make it easier to train your animal. On day two, Wednesday 30th, Cockroach Labs and Aiven will transform the lounge into a gaming experience that you will not want to miss, followed by Sentry.io and Vercel who will whisk attendees away into an unforgettable and relaxing experience, complete with a chance to win $1,000 in airfare to a weekend paradise. But, how these two activations show up is a complete secret and you will have to stop by the lounge to find out and participate. And each day, as a special treat, Dapper Labs will be in the lounge to demonstrate how Google Cloud powers the Flow Blockchain. Dapper Labs has built an immersive experience that lets attendees collect up to 12 exclusive NFTs built on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI solution. Plus, there will be an NFT Gallery on display each day showcasing some of the most popular collectible moments in the NBA, NFL, and UFC. Supercharge your startup with custom-built programming at Next ‘23. To ensure you get the best out of Next ‘23, we’ve created a playlist covering some of the most important topics facing startups today. Through these sessions you can learn how to solve your startup’s biggest challenges using AI, how to scale using Google Cloud, and give you practical advice on monetization strategies and how to secure venture capital funding. There is something for everyone including a well-deserved spotlight on female-founded and led sessions and inspirational founder stories. To register, simply click on “Add to Agenda”. Can’t attend in person? Register for a digital passIf you can’t attend Google Cloud Next '23 in person, don't worry! You can still access the sessions by registering for a digital pass. This gives you unlimited access to all keynotes (live — as they happen!) and breakout sessions the day after they floor. Register for your digital pass today. We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco or online at Digital Next, as well as at upcoming physical and digital events in your community. If you want to learn more about how Google Cloud can help your startup, visit our page here to get more information about our program, and sign up for our communications to get a look at our community activities, digital events, special offers, and more.

Google Cloud's flagship cloud conference — Google Cloud Next — is back and once again HashiCorp will be there in full force. (Although the conference passes are sold out, you can still watch all the great sessions from Next '23 on demand, at your convenience with a free Digital Pass) For both in-person and remote attendees, we’re pleased to share the latest news on our long-standing relationship with Google Cloud, and how we help organizations provision, secure, run, and connect applications running in Google Cloud. In this post, we’ll share some highlights of our partnership and our plans for the event, Tuesday through Thursday, Aug. 29 - 31, in San Francisco. HashiCorp-Google Cloud developments this year include: Google provider for Terraform passes 350 million downloads Control and secure Terraform workflows on Google Cloud with dynamic provider credentials Validate the health of Google Cloud infrastructure via continuous validation Automate Terraform Cloud from Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Create Terraform self-hosted Cloud agents on Google Cloud Manage Google Cloud resources with Terraform and Infrastructure Manager Automate networking across Google Cloud runtimes with HashiCorp Consul and Apigee Google Cloud provider for Terraform surpasses 350 million downloads As of the publication of this post, the download count for the Google Cloud Platform provider for Terraform stands at 359 million downloads, half of which occurred in the past 12 months. While hundreds of millions of downloads represent a major milestone, Google Cloud and HashiCorp continue to develop new integrations to help customers work faster, use more services and features, and provide developer-friendly ways to deploy cloud infrastructure. Control and secure Terraform workflows on Google Cloud with dynamic provider credentials Terraform Cloud's dynamic provider credentials let you establish a trust relationship between Terraform Cloud and Google Cloud. They limit the blast radius of compromised credentials by using unique, short-lived credentials for each Terraform run. Dynamic provider credentials also allow you to scope fine-grained control over the resources that each of your Terraform Cloud projects and workspaces can manage. When you use dynamic provider credentials, Terraform Cloud begins each run by authenticating with Google Cloud, passing it details about the workload, including your organization and workspace name. Your cloud provider then responds with temporary credentials that Terraform Cloud uses to provision your resources for the run. This workflow is based on the OpenID Connect (OIDC) protocol, an open source standard for verifying identity across different systems. You can use Terraform Cloud’s native OIDC integration with Google Cloud to get dynamic credentials for the Google provider in your Terraform Cloud runs. To get started, learn how to configure dynamic credentials with the Google Cloud provider. Validate the health of Google Cloud infrastructure via continuous validation The continuous validation feature in Terraform Cloud allows users to validate the health of their infrastructure beyond the initial provisioning. This helps users to identify issues at the time they first appear and avoid situations where a change is identified only once it causes a customer-facing problem. Users can add checks to their Terraform configuration using check blocks. Check blocks contain assertions that are defined with a custom condition expression and an error message. When the condition expression evaluates to true the check passes, but when the expression evaluates to false Terraform shows a warning message that includes the user-defined error message. Custom conditions can be created using data from Terraform providers’ resources and data sources. Data can also be combined from multiple sources; for example, you can use checks to monitor expirable resources by comparing a resource’s expiration date attribute to the current time returned by Terraform’s built-in time functions. This guide provides multiple use cases of how to use Terraform check blocks and continuous validation with Google Cloud. Automate Terraform Cloud from Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) The Terraform Cloud Operator for Kubernetes provides first-class integration between Kubernetes and Terraform Cloud by extending the Kubernetes control plane to enable lifecycle management of cloud and on-premises infrastructure. This operator provides a unified way to manage a Kubernetes application and its infrastructure dependencies through a single Kubernetes CustomResourceDefinition (CRD). After the infrastructure dependencies are created, pertinent information such as endpoints and credentials are returned from Terraform Cloud to Kubernetes. Terraform Cloud Operator for Kubernetes helps automate the provisioning of infrastructure from Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and lets users manage Terraform Cloud with Kubernetes custom resources. Create self-hosted Terraform Cloud agents on Google Cloud Terraform Cloud agents allow Terraform Cloud to communicate with isolated, private, or on-premises infrastructure. By deploying lightweight agents within a specific network segment, you can establish a simple connection between your environment and Terraform Cloud which allows for provisioning operations and management. Google Cloud Terraform Cloud agents are Terraform modules that create self-hosted agents on Google Cloud. Using Terraform modules you now can quickly create and deploy agent pools for your Terraform Cloud workflows on Google Cloud. Google Cloud agents are available in the Terraform Registry now and include: Terraform Cloud agents on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Managed instance groups using virtual machines Instance groups using container virtual machines Manage Google Cloud resources with Terraform and Infrastructure Manager Google Cloud Infrastructure Manager (Infra Manager) automates the deployment and management of Google Cloud infrastructure resources using Terraform. Infra Manager allows you to use infrastructure as code to manage the lifecycle of Google Cloud resources. Terraform is defined declaratively in a Terraform blueprint that describes the end state of your infrastructure. You can version the Terraform blueprint, either in a public Git repository or in a Cloud Storage bucket, and use object versioning to version blueprints. To learn more, check out the newly published Terraform and Infrastructure Manager guide. Automate networking across Google Cloud runtimes with Consul and Apigee HashiCorp Consul is how teams automate networking across Google Cloud runtimes. Consul now includes several extensions for Envoy. Consul’s Envoy extension capability allows operators to offload service-to-service authorization to external tools and platforms. This allows more options to authorize traffic based on more conditions like allow/deny based on business hours. Apigee’s AuthZ integration is an example of using the external AuthZ extension. Apigee’s implementation requires an API key to be passed between services in order to allow traffic. You can get started with the Consul AuthZ - Apigee repo. If you are using Apigee today or considering an Apigee deployment, check out how to use the Apigee Adapter for Envoy with an Apigee hybrid deployment. Join us at Google Cloud Next and learn what’s next after Next If you are attending Google Next in person or following along virtually, please sign up for the Seamless Infrastructure Deployment and Management with Terraform session, where HashiCorp and Google will cover why Terraform is an integral component of many teams’ infrastructure and applications, and to Google Cloud. The talk will focus on how Terraform is used to build and operate resources as infrastructure as code. You’ll view Google Cloud projects that use Terraform as their foundation and learn Google's guidance on using Terraform to deliver the best user experience, time to value, and efficiency for Google Cloud customers. The session takes place on day two of Google Next, August 30th at 8 a.m. PT. And if you are on site, be sure to join us at booth #1645 for demos and meet 1:1 with our technical experts to learn more about our product suite, and check out the latest on HashiCorp integrations with Google Cloud. After Google Next, join our upcoming webinar series covering Google Cloud projects that use Terraform as their foundation, with guidance on using Terraform to deliver the best user experience, time to value, and efficiency. View the full article

Imagine a world where you can see some of the most powerful hardware on the planet. Now imagine a place that combines high-performance hardware and interactive experiences together, for you to see, feel, and touch? When you come to Google Cloud Next, be sure to enter the Hardware-verse, our showcase area that brings experiences to life with the latest in Google Cloud hardware offerings, including Google Distributed Cloud (GDC), and Cloud Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). What’s behind the blinking lights?The Hardware-verse showcases Google Cloud infrastructure products designed for edge, private data center, and hybrid cloud deployments. Here’s a peak at what you’ll see: Google Distributed Cloud is a fully managed hardware and software product that delivers modern applications equipped with AI, security, and open source at the edge. Available for enterprises and the public sector, customers can leverage GDC for best-in-class AI, security, and open-source workloads with data independence and control. We’ll be using GDC to demonstrate: Vertex AI Vision, showing you how to easily build, deploy, and manage computer vision applications with a fully managed, end-to-end application development environment that reduces time to build computer vision applications from days to minutes at one tenth the cost of current offerings. Learn more about GDC here, and Vertex AI here. Cloud TPUs: Google’s custom hardware lets you develop large and complex deep learning models such as large language models (LLMs). Cloud TPUs optimize performance and cost for all AI workloads, from training to inference, while providing high reliability, availability, and security. Learn more here. NetApp: Simplify how you migrate and run enterprise workloads in the cloud with innovative data services from NetApp. Realize cloud advantages faster with integrated solutions tailored to your unique needs. Learn more about NetApp and Google Cloud here. Intel: See 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors power Google Distributed Cloud Hosted and 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors power Google Distributed Cloud Edge. Learn more about Intel and Google Cloud here. Get hands-on with with real AI use cases and powerful hardwareIn the Hardware-verse, you’ll see and experience first-hand how Google hardware can unlock the potential of AI and your data. You’ll see the same types of hardware that Google Cloud uses to run its applications, and experience how to leverage it in a series of expert-led demonstrations for three real-world applications: Experience real-time visual inspection at the edge. Learn how to use Google Distributed Cloud Edge to scale quality control, inventory analysis, and staff health and hygiene with best-in-class AI, security, and open ecosystem. Add to your agenda here. Address compliance needs with an air-gapped cloud solution. See how to leverage the best-in-class AI and analytics services in a fully disconnected environment, for highly regulated industries and use cases such as emergency preparedness, response, and recovery. Add to your agenda here. Develop generative AI models with Cloud TPUs. Watch how Google Cloud TPUs accelerate the training and inference of machine learning models with optimized performance-to-cost efficiencies at scale. See how they operate in tandem with an open and robust software ecosystem. Add to your agenda here. “Organizations often face challenging decisions such as data residency requirements, connectivity demands, low-latency needs, strict regulatory compliance, and massive scale compute resources for AI,” says Sally Revell, Director, Modern Infrastructure Product Marketing. “The Hardware-verse experience at Google Cloud Next 2023 is designed to give customers a unique opportunity to get hands-on with the most common use cases and see what's under the hood of Google Distributed Cloud and Google’s Tensor Processing Units.” See you at Next ‘23Join the experts from Google Cloud, customers, and partners as we come together to share challenges, solutions, and game-changing technologies in San Francisco at Next ‘23 from August 29-31! If you’re unable to attend in-person, please get your digital pass here and view these sessions: Running AI at the edge to deliver modern customer experiences Session ARC 101 Mind the air gap: How cloud is addressing today’s sovereignty needs Session ARC100 What’s next for architects and IT professionals Spotlight SPTL202 Related Article How to build and execute AI use cases at the edgeGoogle Distributed Cloud enables customers to run AI and other modern workloads in the edge locations and data centers. Read Article

Google Cloud Next ‘23 kicks off August 29! A global community of builders, innovators, developers, learners, and leaders will come together to shape the future of cloud computing. And this year's event will be packed with exciting updates for data professionals, from keynotes by Google Cloud experts to customer and technical breakouts. If you want to learn from industry experts and real-world customers on how to make data-driven decisions that impact your business all while building unified, open, and intelligent applications that help deliver great customer experiences, then look no further. Here are 10 can’t miss sessions for data professionals at Google Cloud Next ‘23: What’s next for Google Cloud databases • SPTL204Learn more about the latest innovations that help you break free from legacy and proprietary databases, help you unify your transactional and analytical workloads, and enable you to bring AI and machine learning to your database workloads. This session will also include our vision for Google Cloud databases and generative AI, highlighting ways to help you accomplish your data management tasks faster. >> Click Here To Add To Your Agenda << What’s next for data and AI • SPTL203Generative AI represents a paradigm shift for digital transformation, and harnessing its power in a responsible way can unlock new possibilities. But many organizations are unable to activate data and AI due to fragmented data systems for analytics, AI, and machine learning, which aren’t designed to work together and instead slow innovation. In this session, learn how leaders are accelerating transformation with Google’s data and AI cloud. >> Click Here To Add To Your Agenda << Run impact-less ad hoc queries and data exports on Cloud Spanner • DBS209Learn how you can run ad hoc batch queries or export terabytes of data on demand from your Cloud Spanner database without impacting your business-critical applications. This session will go over how the latest innovations in Spanner allow you to open up valuable operational data to all users – how and when they need it – to make real-time business decisions. >> Click Here To Add To Your Agenda << What’s new with BigQuery • ANA100Learn how BigQuery is fueling transformations and helping organizations build data ecosystems. Along the way, you’ll hear about the latest product announcements for BigQuery, upcoming innovations, and its strategic roadmap. >> Click Here To Add To Your Agenda << The future of databases with generative AI • DBS301Generative AI is empowering developers to build new user experiences directly into their existing applications by leveraging pretrained models and without requiring machine learning expertise. As a result, every application is going to become an AI application and every application developer is going to need to become proficient in AI. This session will showcase the future of Google’s managed databases that will power AI application development while also leveraging AI to become fundamentally easier to use. >> Click Here To Add To Your Agenda << What’s new for open lake • ANA105In this session, learn how Google is extending the benefits of the lakehouse architecture into an end-to-end analytics lakehouse, enabling organizations to both extract data in real time – regardless of which cloud or datastore the data resides in – and to use it in aggregate for greater insight and AI with tools and features anchored on openness, choice, and simplicity. >> Click Here To Add To Your Agenda << PostgreSQL the way only Google can deliver it: A deep dive into AlloyDB • DBS210Join us for a deep dive on AlloyDB for PostgreSQL, our fully compatible PostgreSQL database that offers superior performance, availability, and scale. We’ll go over some of the challenges we’ve seen from customers running PostgreSQL and how AlloyDB solves these challenges. We’ll also focus on AI and machine learning-based autopilot management systems, intelligent storage, and advanced caching and dynamic workload-aware data organization. >> Click Here To Add To Your Agenda << How Alaska Airlines is transforming customer experience using data and AI • ANA119In this session, we will learn from Alaska Airlines, the fifth largest airline in the United States, about their digital innovation strategy and how they are leveraging Google Cloud’s data and AI capabilities to deliver personalized experiences throughout the travel experience. >> Click Here To Add To Your Agenda << Five best practices to enable highly available applications with Cloud SQL • DBS303Run your critical applications on Cloud SQL with confidence using time-tested best practices that top Google Cloud customers rely on for their enterprise workloads. In this session, we’ll dive deep into best practices for rightsizing your Cloud SQL instances for optimum performance, as well as setting up high availability and disaster recovery with seamless connectivity and backup management for business continuity. >> Click Here To Add To Your Agenda << What’s new in business intelligence for today’s GenAI world • ANA212Business intelligence done right delivers insights to your users and customers in your environment and your applications. The generative AI revolution is bringing answers faster and accelerating actions in practically every industry. Hear Google's Kate Wright talk about the future of Looker, and our approach to the generative AI wave as we help prepare you for what's next in the world of analytics and discovery. >> Click Here To Add To Your Agenda << Don't miss your chance to connect with the brightest minds in cloud and be a part of the future of data. See you soon at Google Cloud Next ‘23.

Google Cloud Next ‘23 is coming to the Moscone Center in San Francisco starting Tuesday, August 29th. This year, we’re featuring a packed Security Professionals track, with more than 40 sessions covering the latest in threat intelligence, modern security operations, and advanced cloud security. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet with the engineers and product leaders building the next generation of cybersecurity solutions. Security executives and practitioners can learn from an exciting lineup of speakers, including experts from Google Cloud and leaders from Goldman Sachs, Mayo Clinic, Snap, Uber, and more. Register here and get ready to defend your business with the latest in frontline intelligence and cloud innovation. Here is just some of what security professionals can expect at Next ‘23: Security keynoteWhat’s next for security professionals Leaders from Google Cloud and Mandiant will share our latest insight into the evolving threat landscape and how generative AI and other new innovations across our portfolio can help organizations better stop threats, eliminate toil, and empower our collective talent to improve our security. Featured speakers: Sunil Potti, Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Security, Google Cloud Kevin Mandia, CEO Mandiant, Google Cloud Steph Hay, Director of User Experience, Cloud Security, Google Cloud Security breakout sessions1. Generative AI for defenders with Sec-PaLM 2 and Duet AI Learn how Google Cloud’s generative AI capabilities for cybersecurity can help defenders address threat overload, toilsome tools, and leveling up talent, and explore how new Duet AI capabilities across the Google Cloud security portfolio help classify malware, concisely explain behavior of suspicious scripts, and generate threat detections and responses. Featured speakers: Eric Doerr, Vice President, Engineering, Google Cloud Jay DePaul, Chief Cybersecurity and Technology Risk Officer, Dun & Bradstreet 2. A blueprint for modern security operations This session will outline how Google Cloud is thinking about modern threat detection, investigation, and response. We’ll outline how organizations can combine reactive and proactive techniques, gain context into threat actor activity, and leverage AI as a force multiplier to keep themselves safer. Featured speaker: Chris Corde, Director of Product Management, Google Cloud 3. The five indispensable technologies for securing your Google Cloud environment Learn about the must-have security and risk management technologies for Google Cloud. Understand how to get asset visibility, configuration and vulnerability management, threat detection, and risk-based security remediation to protect your cloud environment. Featured speakers: Sarah Fender, Director of Product Management, Google Cloud Nav Jagpal, Principal Engineer, Google Cloud 4. Cloud security threat briefing with Mandiant This threat briefing explores the methods employed by malicious actors to compromise cloud services, including the exploitation of misconfigurations, weaknesses in identity and access management, and shared resources. Attendees will learn how the threat landscape is shifting and how to be more proactive by understanding evolving tactics, techniques and procedures. Featured speaker: Andrew Kopcienski, Principal Analyst, Google Cloud 5. How Goldman Sachs uses Security Command Center to protect their Google Cloud environment Learn how Goldman Sachs depends on built-in security solutions to protect their Google Cloud environment. Find out how their technology risk and security architecture team uses Google Cloud’s Security Command Center to implement preventative controls, manage risks from misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, and respond to cyberthreats. Featured speakers: Connor Hammersmith, Security Engineer, Google Cloud Anton Pleshakov, Vice President, Technology Risk and Security Architecture Team, Goldman Sachs 6. Full-stack Identity and Access Management (IAM) - your options on Google Cloud Learn how Google Cloud enables identity-first, AI/ML-powered, policy-based security to help protect your users, infrastructure, data, and applications. You’ll hear about the latest enhancements in the Google Cloud identity platform, policy-based access controls, and how we place zero trust principles at the core of your infrastructure. Featured speaker: Abhishek Hemrajani, Director, Product Management, Google Cloud 7. Five (and a half) actions you can take to mitigate software supply chain threats According to Mandiant’s M-Trends 2022 report, 17% of all security breaches started with a supply chain attack. In this session, we’ll explore threats that specifically target your software supply chain and offer five (and a half) actions to mitigate them. You’ll also learn how Commerzbank is using Google Cloud’s Assured Open Source Software (Assured OSS) to reduce their risk from open source dependencies. Featured speakers: Andy Chang, Group Product Manager, Google Cloud Mark Chmarny, Product Manager, Google 8. Detecting, investigating, and responding to threats in your Google Cloud environment In this session, we’ll cover how security teams can best detect and respond to cloud-born threats and showcase how Chronicle Security Operations seamlessly integrates with your Google Cloud environment to enable unified threat detection, investigation, and response to make your cloud safer. Featured speakers: Anton Chuvakin, Advisor at Office of the CISO, Google John Stoner, Global Principal Security Strategist, Google 9. Leverage sensitive data intelligence to protect your structured and unstructured data In this session, you’ll learn how Google Cloud customers have reduced risk and increased their users' trust using AI-powered sensitive data protection. We’ll also show you how to leverage the tools available in Google Cloud to discover, classify, and manage your own structured and unstructured data and to develop more proactive data governance strategies. Featured speakers: Jordanna Chord, Senior Staff Software Engineer, Google Scott Ellis, Senior Product Manager, Alphabet Register today for a complimentary digital pass to watch all Google Next ‘23 keynotes and get unlimited access to on-demand sessions.

There’s been an explosion in demand for generative AI skills in the past six months, and it just keeps growing. The productivity savings from gen AI alone could add trillions of dollars in value to the global economy.1 That’s why this year at Google Cloud Next, we’ve made learning new generative AI skills a top priority, with the latest cloud technology front and center stage! Check out everything we have available for developers to learn at the Innovators Hive during Next, covering all the in-demand cloud skills and new technology you need to be successful today and in the future. This August 29-31, join us at Next in San Francisco to gain access to these unique learning opportunities, from training workshops and certification renewals, to demos and learning challenges. Come and collect special swag, get hands on with the latest cloud technology, and connect with experts in the community. We have so much planned that you do not want to miss! Secure your ticket and register today. Already have your ticket? Here are ten ways to accelerate your learning at Google Cloud Next. 1. Complete your no-cost Generative AI skill badge and pick up limited edition swag Time to show off your knowledge and skills by earning the new, no-cost Generative AI Fundamentals skill badge before or during Next. Watch the videos, and complete the short quizzes, earn the skill badge, and share on your social channels with #GoogleCloudBadge. Show us your skill badge at the Learning & Certification booth to pick up your limited edition swag at Next. Get started on the skill badge today. 2. Boost your brainpower - Add a training workshop to your agenda Whether you’re conjuring your first VM and meandering through the mysterious mazes of gen AI, or showcasing a shiny new Associate Cloud Engineer certification on your wall, you can help turbocharge your career by attending one of our training workshops. Individuals who get Google Cloud trained and certified report higher salaries and greater confidence in their work2, so prioritize the time to invest in yourself. Sessions are available for a variety of skill levels, and will be delivered as gamified competitions, hands-on learning, in-person training, in-person presentations, and re-certification testing. With swag available for learning leaders, you’ll come away with new cloud skills that will help advance your career. Book your training workshop seat today - seats are filling up fast! 3. Say hi to us at the Learning & Certification booth in the Innovators Hive Is it just us, or does it feel like it’s been way too long since we met in real life? Drop by the Learning and Certification booth to chat with training experts, interact with the latest learning materials, pick up swag, find out the latest skills credentials, and even snap a photo at our photowall (props included!). 4. Unlock great learning benefits with Innovators Plus Spoiler alert: If you have a full three-day conference pass for Next, you already have amazing learning benefits at your fingertips through Innovators Plus. These include access to all the on-demand training available on Google Cloud Skills Boost, a certification voucher, $500 in Google Cloud credits, with a bonus of $500 additional credits when you get Google Cloud certified. You also get access to invite-only events including quarterly technical briefings, live learning events, and the opportunity to schedule up to two 1:1 consultations with Google Cloud experts. Be sure to link your Developer Profile to your Next registration (review the “Google Developer Profile” tab of the Next FAQs if you need help with this), and look out for an email from Innovators Plus to unlock these additional benefits. 5. Join the 2023 Google Cloud Fly Cup Challenge Are you ready to take your Google Cloud skills to the next level? Join the Google Cloud Fly Cup Challenge, created in collaboration with The Drone Racing League (DRL), where you can predict drone racing results using DRL data, provide tips to DRL pilots, and help them enhance their season performance. The Challenge opens on August 15th at 12:01 AM PDT to all developers, regardless of skill level, and lets you explore the power of Google Cloud’s AI and analytics tools. Through the challenge, you can: Analyze real-world data with BigQuery and Dataflow Create predictive models with AutoML and TensorFlow Deploy a trained model using Vertex AI Compete against fellow data enthusiasts Register for Next to participate in the 2023 Google Cloud Fly Cup Challenge. 6. Renew your Associate Cloud Engineer certification If your Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer certification expired in 2023 — or is about to — we have an exciting opportunity for you: renew your Associate Cloud Engineer certification onsite at Next ‘23! Take 90 minutes to complete a hands-on lab to test your skills, and renew your certification. If you’re interested in participating in the preview, register for Next and include your Associate Cloud Engineer certification link in your Next registration profile (See image 1). If you’re already registered, navigate to your Next profile by clicking on your avatar in the top right. On your Next profile page, click on the “Champions/Cloud Certification” box and include the requested information. This will allow you to pre-register for the Associate Cloud Engineer public preview. Next online registration form to identify you are Google Cloud Certified and express interest in renewing your Associate Cloud Engineer certification.7. Complete the Cloud Quizathon in the Persona Areas Find your Persona Area in the Innovators Hive and take 10 minutes to play the Google Cloud Quizathon, where you can test your Google Cloud knowledge and win prizes. This fun and interactive quiz-based game will test your knowledge of basic Google Cloud concepts. Answer as many questions as you can and earn your spot on the leaderboard. Top winners on each leaderboard will get prizes including swag, button pins, stickers, and more. 8. Join a Cloud Learning breakout session Interested to learn more about the impact training and certification can have on your organization’s culture? Learn how customers have transformed their teams through investing in training and certification with Google Cloud. Explore how to prepare for the most in-demand Google Cloud certification exams and find out about the latest generative AI learning resources available from Google Cloud. Review the Cloud Learning and Certification playlistand add sessions to your schedule. 9. Learn the latest and make new connections at the Community HubPrepare to embark on a quest for connections in Innovators Hive. Dive headfirst into the latest on Google Cloud at our lightning talks stage in the Community Hub and feel free to come chat, connect, and learn about different Google communities to find the right one for you. Be sure to add the Community Hub lightning talks to your agenda. 10. Live it up at the Champions and Certified Lounge Exclusively for Champion Innovators and the Google Cloud Certified community, come visit the lounge to relax or network. There will be light refreshments and snacks, curated lightning talks, and a photowall to capture and share your experiences. Make sure to identify yourself as a Champion Innovator or Google Cloud Certified when you register for Next on your Profile page (see image 1). We are counting down the days to our biggest event of the year. Are you in? Come learn with us at Next in San Francisco — we hope to see you there! Register today. 1. McKinsey Digital, June 14, 2023. ‘The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier’ 2. Based on survey responses from the 2020 Google Cloud certification impact report.

In just a few days, Google Cloud Next returns to San Francisco as a large, in-person, three-day event. There, you’ll learn all about the technologies you need to build, connect, and secure all your cloud-first, Kubernetes, and AI/ML workloads. You’ll gain hands-on experience on the latest cloud networking and network security technologies, and you’ll expand your peer network. If your role involves designing cloud networks, implementing cybersecurity, or you just want to keep your tabs on the latest network connectivity and security trends, Next ‘23 is the place for you. Here is a list of specially curated content for the networking professional. Click on the links to add these sessions to your schedule. Spotlight KeynoteSPTL 202 What’s next for architects and IT professionals How do you ensure you’ve got the right infrastructure to power all the applications that enable your business? How are you preparing to innovate with generative AI and the latest in ML? How are you deploying modern apps with containers? How are you addressing your data sovereignty requirements? Get your questions answered in this Spotlight Keynote showcasing the latest Infrastructure advancements and hear from customers that are achieving their cost, sustainability, reliability, and security goals on Google’s planet-scale infrastructure. Breakout sessionsARC 201 What's new in cloud networking: AI-optimized infrastructure, ML-powered security, and more Whether you’re running AI/ML, data and analytics, web, media, and HPC workloads, cloud networking is delivering simplified and more resilient services to help you connect and secure the workloads. Join this session with our product team for the latest innovations in cloud networking and meet Walmart, Sharechat, and Palo Alto Networks over a fireside chat. ARC 202 Design secure enterprise networks for a multi-cloud world With the shift to a hybrid workforce and distributed application deployment across multiple cloud providers, enterprises are having to build complex network architectures for reliable any-to-any connectivity, enabling optimal user-to-app and app-to-app experience. Get a deep dive from our product team on enterprise cloud network design with Priceline, and Palo Alto Networks. ARC 203 Elevate end user experience with planet scale Google Cloud CDN Delivering engaging content while ensuring quality of experience (QoE) at global scale is becoming a critical differentiator. Discover how Google Cloud helps enable scalable content delivery with our planet-scale network and hear from SonyCrunchyroll on how they’re leveraging Google Cloud. SEC 203 Network security fundamentals: Creating layered network defenses with built-in tools Security has become a top of mind concern for line-of-business executives and practitioners alike. Learn how to implement network security and enforce security controls and hear from Wix on how they are using Google Cloud’s built-in network security tools. SEC 301 Innovations for securing workloads with Google Cloud next-generation firewalls Firewalls are a critical component of any network security. In the cloud, organizations want advanced threat protection from cloud-first and best-of-breed third-party solutions. Hear about the latest in next-generation firewall innovations from Google, and how our customers, McKesson Inc., CoverMyMeds, and Salesforce implemented advanced threat protection to protect their workloads in their organizations. Network live and in-personEveryone is excited to be back in person. Support your fellow customer speakers by stopping by the Showcase Theater at Moscone South: 8/29 Tue @ 12:30 - 1 PM: How Walmart simplified multi-cloud adoption with Cross-Cloud Interconnect Walmart runs a seamless platform across multiple cloud providers to accelerate innovations. Join this session featuring Walmart and Google speakers to learn how Walmart built a global network to connect, secure and consume multi-cloud services through Cross-Cloud Interconnect. 8/30 Wed @ 4:30 - 5 PM: How Broadcom blocks DDoS attacks with Cloud Armor Broadcom is a global provider of enterprise security solutions and have migrated their flagship cybersecurity solutions to Google Cloud. Join this session to hear from Symantec/Broadcom on how Cloud Armor with ML-powered protection prevented intense DDoS attacks, and how it continues to mitigate these threats, while strengthening Broadcom's infrastructure. Add these exciting sessions to your schedule. We’re looking forward to seeing you in San Francisco!

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-performanceCloud-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 infrastructureGoogle 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 ambitionsEveryone 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!

In the rapidly changing world of technology, it is essential for professionals in the DevOps, IT Ops, Platform Engineering, and SRE domains to stay up-to-date on the latest innovations and best practices. Google Cloud Next, is the ideal place to do just that! Think of it as a golden opportunity to gain insights, expand your knowledge, and connect with like-minded peers. Read on for five compelling reasons why attending Next ‘23 is a must for operations professionals this year. 1. Uncover the potential of generative AI for operationsA recent IDC survey1 found that IT operations is the area with the most potential to benefit from generative AI assistance. From automating routine tasks to predicting and preventing potential issues, generative AI could revolutionize the way IT teams work. At Next ‘23, you'll have the chance to delve into the latest AI breakthroughs and explore how they can help supercharge IT operations. Our expert speakers will share real-world success stories of building an AIOps platform on Google Cloud, revealing the immense potential AI holds for optimizing workflows, enhancing system reliability, and driving efficiency in IT environments. 2. Embrace platform engineering Platform engineering has emerged as a crucial discipline for organizations aiming to build robust, scalable, and efficient software delivery platforms. Next ‘23 is a great place for professionals to dive deep into the principles and practices of Platform Engineering. Through sessions such as a panel with industry-leading thought leaders, and platform engineering customer success stories, you’ll gain the expertise you need to architect and build your own software delivery platform for your developers. 3. Learn about the latest innovations in GKEGoogle Kubernetes Engine fans, you don't want to miss out on this opportunity to gain insights into the latest GKE features, best practices, and real-world use cases from your peers. As the first managed Kubernetes offering, GKE has won the hearts of countless customers, and at Next ‘23 this year, you'll get the chance to discover why! GKE customers like ANZ Bank, Equifax, Ordaōs Bio, Etsy, and Moloco will share their success stories. More than that, we’ll also unveil the latest innovations that we’re adding to GKE to help you run modern workloads. 4. Get inspired by your peersLearning from peers is invaluable for technology professionals. At Next ‘23, you’ll be exposed to customer success stories about how leading organizations have leveraged Google Cloud's solutions to drive business growth and innovation. Hear from Charles Schwab on their best practices operating Google Cloud services; learn from SAP about how they control cost and build financial resilience with automation; listen to Wayfair on how they cut costs by 64% by moving from open source to Google Cloud operational tools. Snap will share their approach to observability; Priceline will discuss how they optimize Kubernetes for reliability and cost-efficiency; and Uber will show you how they build an AIOps platform with Google Cloud services. 5. Network and build communityNetworking and community building are an integral part of the Google Cloud Next experience, and this year, it gets even better! For the first time since the pandemic, our premier event is going back to its roots as an in-person gathering. Engage with your peers at the Innovator Hive’s specialized zone for the DevOps and IT Ops professionals. Get your hands on the interactive demos, try the micro-challenges, throw yourself into immersive learning, play the games, and meet with Google experts and your peers for architecture deep dives. We’re confident these interactions will open doors to new perspectives, ideas, and future partnerships. Google Cloud Next is not just another tech event; it's an immersive experience that has the power to transform your career and ignite your passion for all things cloud and technology. From exploring the latest GKE innovations to discovering the magic of AI in IT operations, from embracing platform engineering to learning from your peers, Next ‘23 is brimming with opportunities to expand your horizons and elevate your skills. So, don't miss your chance to be a part of this extraordinary event. Mark your calendar, pack your enthusiasm, and join us at Google Cloud Next. Together, we'll unleash the full potential of cloud technology and pave the way for a brighter, more innovative future. 1: US – Generative AI, IDC, April 2023; N=200; Base=All Respondents; Notes: Managed by IDC’s Global Primary Research Group; Data Not Weighted. Use caution when interpreting small sample sizes.

San Francisco, here we come. Starting today, you can now register at the Early Bird rate of $899 USD* for Google Cloud Next ‘23, taking place in person, August 29-31, 2023. This year’s Next conference comes at an exciting time. The emergence of generative AI is a transformational opportunity that some say may be as meaningful as the cloud itself. Beyond generative AI, there are breakthroughs in cybersecurity, better and smarter ways to gather and gain insights from data, advances in application development, and so much more. It’s clear that there has never been a better time to work in the cloud industry. And there’s no better time to get together to learn from one another, while we explore and imagine what all of this innovation will bring. Returning to a large, in-person, three-day event opens up so much opportunity for rich experiences like hands-on previews, exclusive training and on-site boot camps, and face-to-face engagement with each other and our partners across our open ecosystem. Our teams are busy designing experiences for you focused on six key topics: Data cloud AI & ML Open infrastructure Cybersecurity Collaboration DEI And of course, in addition to dedicated AI and ML sessions, we’ll weave AI, including generative AI, throughout the event sessions to reflect the role these technologies play in innovations across nearly everything in cloud. No matter your role or subject matter expertise, Next has content curated especially for you, including tracks for: Application developers Architects and IT professionals Data and database engineers Data scientists and data analysts DevOps, SREs, IT Ops, and platform engineers IT managers and business leaders Productivity and collaboration app makers Security professionals Registerfor Next ’23 before May 31st to take advantage of the $899 USD early bird price – that’s $700 USD off the full ticket price — normally $1,599.* We can’t wait to come back together as a community to welcome you to Next ’23. *The $899 USD early bird price is valid through 11:59 PM PT on Wednesday, May 31, or until it’s sold out.

Google Cloud Next is back in person August 29–31, 2023, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Make the most of this must-attend event, where you can: Learn about the latest Google advancements in AI, data, security, productivity, and more Explore keynotes, breakout sessions, and demos Take part in hands-on labs, training, and certification opportunities on site Hear updates on product roadmaps Connect with Google thought leaders in the executive meeting center We really hope you can make it live and in person in San Francisco. Space is limited, so mark your calendar for August 29–31. If you aren’t able to attend live, select Next ’23 experiences will be made available digitally and on demand. Sign up here for the latest information about Next ’23, and be among the first to know when registration opens. See you in San Francisco!