Google Cloud Platform Podcast

Carter Morgan takes the guest seat today to chat with host Stephanie Wong about imposter syndrome in tech. The technology ecosystem is constantly changing, with new advances every day. To keep up, tech workers are learning and developing new skills so frequently that at times it can feel as though they don't actually know everything they need to know. Here is where self-doubt can really take hold. Imposter syndrome is most prevalent around transition points, Carter tells us. A new job or new responsibility, for example, opens tech workers to feelings of inadequacy. But there's hope, and he explains how we can learn and develop skills to overcome this difficulty. Through tales of his own experiences, Carter offers supportive tips he's learned, including how important it is to communicate with your manager and seek help rather than isolating. Unhealthy comparisons can foster self-doubt as well. Depth and breadth of knowledge are important factors to consider as well, and Carter points out that each has its benefits. Knowing when to go deep into a subject and when to obtain surface level knowledge can foster a sense of ease and adequacy in knowledge workers. Stephanie shares her experiences with imposter syndrome, highlighting the difference between self-perception and audience perception and why it's important to give yourself credit for what you've accomplished. Breaking into a new space can be intimidating. Carter walks us through important steps to take to start tackling imposter syndrome from the beginning, including the effects of positive mentorships. This month, Carter is giving a presentation at Cloud Learn (Dec 8-9, 2021), and he wraps up this episode with a sneak peak. Carter Morgan Carter Morgan is Developer Advocate for Google Cloud, where he creates and hosts content on Google's Youtube channel, co-hosts several Google Cloud podcasts, and designs courses like the Udacity course "Scalable Microservices with Kubernetes" he co-created with Kelsey Hightower. Carter Morgan is an international standup comedian, who's approach of creating unique moments with the audience in front of him has seen him perform all over the world, including in Paris, London, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with Joe White. And in 2019, and the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Previously, he was a programmer for the USAF and Microsoft. Cool things of the week Cloud Learn site 5 things not to do with Cloud Functions, and 5 things you absolutely should do instead blog Interview Cloud Learn site What do I really need to know to succeed at work? blog Hosts Stephanie Wong

Guest Jason Polites joins Stephanie Wong and Bukola Ayodele this week to talk about advances in serverless computing with Cloud Run and how developers and wallets are benefiting. Cloud Run, a managed service which allows developers to run containers, is now available in all GCP regions, offers increased resource access, global load balancing, and more. Jason tells us how this evolution of Cloud Run has led to the support of bigger, more complicated, and even legacy software fully and efficiently functioning in a serverless environment. The team at Google continues to expand offerings in order to afford the benefits of auto-scaling and other managed services to all workloads. Always On CPU, for example, supports projects with running background functions. Later, Jason gives us examples of projects that best fit a serverless infrastructure and the cost benefits of using Cloud Run. He offers cost-saving tips for projects, like committed use discounts and auto-scaling limits. Balancing cost efficiency with global reliability is important, and Jason tells us how this is easily achieved with Cloud Run features like scaling to zero. To limit the barrier to entry for new Cloud Run and container users, Jason and his team have been working on open source build packs. Developers can turn code into a container without creating Docker files. The containers running in Cloud Run are highly portable as well, giving companies the freedom to move their containers freely. Jason Polites Jason leads the Serverless Compute product team in Google Cloud, including products like Cloud Run and App Engine. Cool things of the week Illicit coin mining, ransomware, APTs target cloud users in first Google Cybersecurity Action Team Threat Horizons report blog Microservices architecture on Google Cloud blog Interview Cloud Run site Cloud Run CPU Allocation docs Run more workloads on Cloud Run with new CPU allocation controls blog Docker site Google Cloud Buildpacks site App Engine site Cloud Functions site GCP Podcast Episode 173: Cloud Run with Steren Giannini and Ryan Gregg podcast GCP Podcast Episode 203: Cloud Run GKE with Donna Malayeri podcast GCP Podcast Episode 261: Full Stack Dart with Tony Pujals and Kevin Moore podcast What's something cool you're working on? Bukola just finished Season 2 of the Click to Deploy series.

We're learning all about Vertex AI this week as Carter Morgan and Jay Jenkins host guest Erwin Huizenga. He helps us understand what is meant by Asia Pacific and how Machine Learning is growing there. APAC's Machine Learning scene is exciting for its enterprise companies leveraging ML for innovative projects at scale. The ML journey of many of these customers revealed challenges with things like efficiency that Vertex AI was built to solve. The Vertex AI platform boasts tools that help with everything from the beginning stages of data collection to analysis, validation, transformation, model training, evaluation, serving the model, and metadata tracking. Erwin offers detailed examples of this pipeline process and describes how Feature Store helps clients manage their projects. Using Vertex AI not only simplifies the initial development process but streamlines the iteration process as the model is adjusted over time. Pipelines offers automation options that help with this, Erwin explains. ML Operations are also built into Vertex AI to ensure everything is done in compliance with industry standards, even at scale. Using customer recommendations as an example, Erwin walks us through how Vertex AI can employ embedding to enhance customer experiences through ML. By using Vertex AI in combination with other Google offerings like AutoML, companies can effectively build working ML projects without data science experience. We talk about the Vertex AI user interface and the other tools and APIS that are available there. Erwin tells us how Digits Financial uses Vertex AI and Pipeline to bring models to production in days rather than months, and how others can get started with Vertex AI, too. Erwin Huizenga Erwin Huizenga is a Data Scientist at Google specializing in TensorFLow, Python, and ML. Cool things of the week Announcing Spot Pods for GKE Autopilot—save on fault tolerant workloads blog Indosat Ooredoo and Google Launch Strategic Partnership to Accelerate Digitalization Across SMBs and Enterprises in Indonesia site Indosat Ooredoo dan Google Luncurkan Kemitraan Strategis untuk Percepatan Digitalisasi UMKM dan Perusahaan di Indonesia site Interview Vertex AI site Google Cloud in Asia Pacific blog Introduction to Vertex AI docs What Is a Machine Learning Pipeline? site TensorFlow site PyTorch site Vertex AI Feature Store docs AutoML site BigQuery ML site Vertex AI Matching Engine docs ScaNN site Announcing ScaNN: Efficient Vector Similarity Search blog Vertex AI Workbench site Vertex Pipeline Case Study: Digits Financial site Intro to Vertex Pipelines Codelab site Vertex AI: Training and serving a custom model Codelab site Vertex AI Workbench: Build an image classification model with transfer learning and the notebook executor Codelab site APAC Best of Next 2021 site TFX: A TensorFlow-Based Production-Scale Machine Learning Platform site Rules of Machine Learning site Google Cloud Skills Boost: Build and Deploy Machine Learning Solutions on Vertex AI site Monitoring feature attributions: How Google saved one of the largest ML services in trouble blog What's something cool you're working on? Jay is working on APAC Best of Next and will be doing a session on sustainability! Carter is working on transitioning the GCP Podcast to a video format!

This week, Stephanie Wong and Carter Morgan are talking about the recently released State of DevOps Report. Guests Dustin Smith and Nathen Harvey tell us all about DORA, the research group working to study DevOps, and the findings of their years-long study aimed at improving workplace environments, fostering sustainable increased productivity, and ensuring quality output across industries. During their years of research, the DORA team has developed ways to measure team results and workplace culture. Our guests tell us about the five measures they use, including deployment frequency and reliability. The shared responsibility and collaboration of teams at a company to optimize these five metrics is what makes good DevOps performance. Through a real-life example, we hear how the coordination of goals and incentives across departments can improve results of the DevOps metrics, thus improving the speed and stability of finished products. Once businesses identify problems, they need realistic expectations of the time and energy required to solve these issues. Learning from each change made and growing during the process is an important part of optimization, and our guests talk about the best practices their research has identified for facilitating smoother transitions. High quality documentation is a vital part of optimizing DevOps, and this year's report examined internal documentation for the first time. Nathan describes what makes good documentation, like clear ownership of the documents and docs that are regularly updated for easy sharing and scaling of up-to-date material across the company. Dustin elaborates, explaining other factors that make quality, reliable documents. Later, we talk SRE and how companies can measure and optimize Site Reliability Engineering. A supportive team culture and ensuring a secure product and supply chain are some important factors in optimal SRE, the DORA study found. Our guests offer advice for companies looking to get started with DevOps practices. Nathen Harvey Nathen Harvey is a developer relations engineer at Google who has built a career on helping teams realize their potential while aligning technology to business outcomes. Nathen has had the privilege of working with some of the best teams and open source communities, helping them apply the principles and practices of DevOps and SRE. Dustin Smith Dustin Smith is a UX Research Manager and the DORA research lead. He studies the factors that influence a team's ability to deliver software quickly and reliably. Cool things of the week Email is 50 years old, and still where it's @ blog Make the most of hybrid work with Google Workspace blog We analyzed 80 million ransomware samples – here's what we learned blog Interview DevOps site DORA site SRE site 2021 Accelerate State of DevOps report addresses burnout, team performance report

Mark Mirchandani and Max Saltonstall are back this week to learn everything there is to know about Assured Workloads with Bryce Buffaloe and Mikaela Misaka. Google's Assured Workloads helps companies and governments ensure secure projects and privacy protection in sectors with extensive compliance requirements while taking advantage of Cloud capabilities. Bryce and Mikaela start the show talking about the challenges faced when using a public cloud for projects with very specific regulations and how Assured Workloads was developed to help solve these issues. The easy setup steps and uncomplicated UI help customers move from their on-prem infrastructure to Google Cloud where scaling, local customer support, and other advantages can be easily leveraged while maintaining a secure, compliant environment. With so many compliance standards in sectors like finance and healthcare, our guests walk us through the process Assured Workloads clients go through from identifying the regulations of markets they participate in to planning their data security, keeping customer support local to maintain privacy, and using Google Cloud to put these plans into practice with their projects across the world. On the Google Cloud side, the team works to create regulation maps that organize the rules of potential markets so customers can click a button and rest easy knowing their projects are compliant. Bryce details what goes into making Google Services like GKE compliant for customers as well. Assured Workloads continues to grow as new client challenges are presented. In the future, monitoring support, audit management, and other features will be introduced. Global expansion and sovereign cloud capabilities are coming soon, and our guests tell us more. Bryce Buffaloe Bryce is the Assured Workloads Product Manager at Google. Mikaela Misaka Mikaela is a Customer Care Offer Lead at Google Cloud, focused on creating new customer care offerings and value-added services tailored to the needs of regulated customer segments. Cool things of the week Run your fault-tolerant workloads cost-effectively with Google Cloud Spot VMs blog 8 more things to love about the new Pixel phones blog Government and Education Summit site Interview Assured Workloads site Assured Workloads Documentation site New capabilities for Assured Workloads for Government blog GKE site New data sovereignty controls for EU customers blog T-Systems and Google Cloud partner to deliver sovereign cloud for Germany article What's something cool you're working on? Max has been sharing AI use cases from inside Google IT and tech support and was working on red panda and sith warrior Halloween costumes for his kids. Mark is planning some cool podcast updates for next year.

On the podcast this week, Mark Mirchandani and Carter Morgan host guests Chad Jennings and Joel Conkling in a fascinating discussion about Earth Engine and performing geospatial processing to help companies become more environmentally conscious. Google's geospatial functionality is some of the most advanced in the world, and with the Next announcements, commercial companies can now take advantage of this with tools like Earth Engine and in Cloud analytics offerings like BigQuery. Together, these tools make the three pillars of geospatial cloud: analysis of vector data with tools like CloudSQL or BigQuery, analysis of image data with Earth Engine, and taking advantage of the data assets. This geospatial analysis helps us understand the world and how it's changing, then apply this information to make important, environmentally friendly decisions. As a key part of this system, Earth Engine is a geospatial data-processing platform specializing in the analysis of satellite images and other image data. It provides access to over 800 datasets and processing software that scales to planetary-scale analysis. At Next, Google announced Earth Engine availability for commercial use. Our guests talk about the applications of this in the real world, from the effect of climate risk on a financial portfolio to locations most susceptible to forest fire. Chad and Joel tell us about the sources of Earth Engine's data, the pre-processing work done to the images collected, and the ease of data sharing between platforms. By working with BigQuery, users have access to additional datasets and analytics tools as well. Google clients are taking this data and creatively using the information to make meaningful decisions. Insurance companies, for example, analyze data to assess flood risk, while the U.S. Forest Service uses the platform to advance their mission of sustainable forest management. Unilever uses Earth Engine in their commitment to zero additional deforestation in their supply chain, and our guests talk more about the Next presentation with Unilever. Additional BigQuery announcements at Next can be leveraged in Earth Engine as well, and new features such as Analytics Hub make accessing datasets even easier. Google works to meet users where they are and make tools easy to use from day one. Earth Engine's data processing, scalability, and more make it easy for users to focus on the analysis rather than the prep work. Our guests offer advice for getting started with Earth Engine and BigQuery and share a little about Climate Engine. Chad Jennings Chad came to Google from the startup world doing big data navigation processing and research. Working at the intersection of geospatial and big data at Google Cloud is a marvelous place to work. Joel Conkling Joel is the Product Manager for both Earth Engine and Environmental Insights Explorer and has worked at Google since 2010. Cool things of the week BigQuery Omni now available for AWS and Azure, for cross cloud data analytics blog How geospatial insights can help meet business goals blog 9 things I freakin' love about Google Cloud identity and environments blog Interview Earth Engine site Earth Engine Development Guides site Big Query site CloudSQL site Climate Engine site Geospatial analytics and AI site Analytics Hub site Monitoring air quality with S5P TROPOMI data blog Visualizing geospatial data with pydeck and Earth Engine blog More accurate and flexible cloud masking for Sentinel-2 images blog NICFI's satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth Engine for analysis blog Earth Engine for Commercial Use: Now in Preview with Google Cloud site Next Session: Geospatial Innovation at Unilever video Next Developer Keynote: technology trends video What is Google Earth Engine? video Helping companies tackle climate change with Earth Engine blog Google has the cleanest cloud. Now it's helping other companies go green article

Mark Mirchandani is back this week with cohost Bukola Ayodele. We're talking with Eric Schmidt and Bruno Aziza about all the awesome new analytics, data, and AI launches from last week's Google Cloud Next conference. Our guests start the show outlining the challenges clients face when storing, organizing, and analyzing data in the cloud. These needs have inspired Google solutions that focus on simplifying data management for customers. Next announcements like BigQuery Omni, which helps customers achieve full data visibility with cross-cloud analytics, and DataPlex, which facilitates data management at scale, will change the way companies think about their data. BigQuery integration with AppSheets and the new Cloud Looker LookML let customers build once and access from anywhere. The new Looker and Tableau integration revolutionizes the use of the semantic model in Tableau, allowing things like company-established data governance and the Looker Blocks ecosystem to pull into Tableau analysis. New Looker Blocks specifically targeted to the healthcare industry were also introduced at Next. We talk about the ML announcements including Vertex AI Workbench, a fully-managed service used for data exploration aimed at simplifying the workloads of data engineers. Serverless Spark on Google Cloud shares these goals by making performance tuning, scaling, infrastructure provisioning, and other tasks fully-managed. The new PostgreSQL interface for Spanner lets clients use tools already developed in PostgreSQL while leveraging the global scaling and other benefits of Spanner. Bruno and Eric share some favorite customer stories as we wrap up this week's episode. Albertson's, Renault, and others have interesting data journeys on Google Cloud and our listeners can learn more in the YouTube series hosted by Bruno. Eric Schmidt Eric is the the Head of Advocacy for Data Analytics at Google and has been at Google for almost eight years. Previously, he was with Microsoft, where he led Advocacy and Evangelism there, too. He focuses on products like BigQuery, Dataflow, Dataproc and leads a team of advocates who help customers turn data into value. In his downtime, Eric is a DJ at 90.3 KEXP here in Seattle or online at kexp.org where he focuses on global music culture. You can find Eric on Twitter. His handle is "not that eric" - not to be confused with the 'other Eric Schmidt' here at Google. In fact, internally, people affectionately call him "cloud E". Bruno Aziza Bruno is the Head of Data & Analytics at Google Cloud. He specializes in everything data, from data analytics, to business intelligence, data science, and artificial intelligence. Before working at Google, he worked at companies like Business Objects when it went IPO and Oracle, where his team led a big turnarounds in the business analytics industry. Bruno also had the opportunity to help launch startups like Alpine Data (now part of Tibco). Sisense and AtScale and helped Microsoft grow its Data unit into a $1B business. He has been educated in the US, France, the UK, and Germany and has written two books on Data Analytics and Performance Management. In his spare time, Bruno writes a monthly column on Forbes.com on everything Data, AI and Analytics. Cool things of the week Next Reaction: Security and zero-trust announcements blog Next Reaction: New Data Cloud launches blog Next Reaction: Making multicloud easier for all blog Next Reaction: Features to reduce IT carbon emissions and build climate-related solutions blog Next Reaction: Monitor your conversations, get started with CCAI Insights blog Interview GCP Podcast Episode 266: Data Analytics Launches with Bruno Aziza and Eric Schmidt podcast BigQuery site Bringing multi-cloud analytics to your data with BigQuery Omni blog Google Cloud Next—Day 1 livestream - WalMart video Dataplex site AppSheet site Cloud Looker LookML site Tableau site Vertex AI site Vertex AI Workbench site TensorFlow site Apache Spark on Google Cloud site New PostgreSQL Interface makes Cloud Spanner's scalability and availability more open and accessible blog PostgreSQL site Cloud Spanner site Google Earth Engine site Google Maps Platform site Inside Industry Data Management 4.0 at Renault site Chess.com site Google Next Opening Keynote site Data Journeys with Bruno Aziza videos Cloud Next Catalog site Bruno's Cloud Next Playlist videos Cloud Next Data Analytics Playlist videos Bruno on Linkedin site Lak on Twitter site What's something cool you're working on? Bukola is working on the Click to Deploy video series.

On the podcast this week, Mark Mirchandani and Stephanie Wong hear all about the cool stuff happening at Cloud Next 2021. Brian Hall and Forrest Brazeal join the show to outline exciting announcements, fun partnerships, and what the future holds for Google Cloud. The immense prep and planning that went into Next shows through in the intentional and unified strategy of announcements and offerings at the conference. Our guests talk about this process and the challenges and decisions that went into the content choices and scheduling. The addition of Community Day, for example, was implemented to create a sense of in-person participation in an online-only event. Next kicked off this week with a Keynote presentation talking about the momentum of production and infrastructure innovation at Google Cloud, new product announcements across data cloud and open cloud infrastructure, security advancements, sustainability, and more. Our guests talk about important partnerships Google Cloud has fostered this year with clients like Ford, Univision, and GE using AI and other technologies to advance innovative ideas in their businesses. Announcements around AI and analytics at Google Cloud were plentiful, including Spark on Google Cloud that offers managed serverless data processing. Brian details the work Tableau and Google Cloud are doing to advance data visualization. Our guests talk about the work Google has done to embrace the multi-cloud culture with advancements in Anthos and BigQuery Omni. The newly announced Google Distributed Cloud lets clients use their multi-cloud infrastructures across edge locations. Forrest talks about the pragmatic evolution to the Google Distributed Cloud offering and how other announcements like security advancements through strategic European partnerships have positively affected multi-cloud customers. We talk more about the importance of the new security announcements, like the Google Cyber Security Action Team. The changing landscape of work brought on by the pandemic has lead to more and more remote work. Workspace is adapting to this new environment, and our guests tell us about the new features available to workers at home. As Google works to revolutionize technologies for clients, they also keep sustainability in mind. Next saw announcements in the clean cloud space and Google's continued commitment to a carbon-free existence. New carbon reporting for clients and new features in Google Earth Engine and Active Assist help Google clients with their sustainability goals, too. Brian Hall Brian is the VP of Product and Industry Marketing at Google Cloud. He was formerly a VP at AWS, CEO of Doppler Labs, and VP for Microsoft Surface with 20+ years at Microsoft. Forrest Brazeal Forrest is a cloud educator, author, speaker, and Pwnie Award-winning songwriter based in Charlotte, NC. Cool things of the week Cloud Next site Solving for What's Next blog Training more than 40 million new people on Google Cloud skills blog Interview Cloud Next site Next Catalog site Opening Keynote site Solving for What's Next blog GKE Autopilot site Workspace site Vertex AI site Apache Spark on Google Cloud site Tableau site Fivetran site HVR site Informatica site Trifacta site Anthos site Bringing multi-cloud analytics to your data with BigQuery Omni blog Google Distributed Cloud site NetApp site T-Systems and Google Cloud Partner to Deliver Sovereign Cloud for Germany press release Thales and Google Cloud Announce Strategic Partnership to Jointly Develop a Trusted Cloud Offering in France press release Google Cybersecurity Action Team site AppSheet site BeyondCorp site Google Earth Engine site Active Assist site Data Cloud Keynote site What's something cool you're working on? Stephanie is working on a video series with Eric Brewer.

This week, Mark Mirchandani and Brian Dorsey welcome Perry Pierce and JoAnn Brereton of Major League Baseball to the show to talk sports and cloud. Baseball teams are independently owned franchises, Perry explains, with MLB acting as the oversight corporation. This keeps game play fair and consistent. Like most large corporations these days, technology has become a vital business tool for MLB. Their partnership with Google facilitated a shift from on-prem to the cloud, allowing MLB to take advantage of advanced capabilities like scaling and managed services in a safe environment. JoAnn talks about the process of this shift and the teams at Google that helped make it happen. She details the systems that MLB has moved to GCP, like game scheduling, umpire management, backend systems, and especially the draft. The amateur draft, a multi-day event, has a special set of challenges that MLB and Google had to overcome. Analyzing player statistics and updating which players have been picked and who is still available are important information for teams. These stats must update quickly and accurately. On the backend, the Electronic Baseball Information System (EBIS) is the MLB software making this all happen, and JoAnn helps us understand the technical side of this Kubernetes-built platform. Google monitoring and EBIS-specific tools keep the draft running smoothly. Our guests take us through this list of tools employed and why they were chosen. We hear more about the process of moving such a complicated system to the cloud and what MLB did to make the shift easier. Perry and JoAnn talk about the testing done before draft days to ensure a smooth experience for all and important lessons they learned. To wrap up the show, our guests offer advice, stressing the importance of observability and starting small. Major League Baseball trademarks used with permission. Perry Pierce Baseball is what Perry Pierce loves and tech is what he does. Living at the intersection of sports and tech is a cool place to be! JoAnn Brereton JoAnn loves baseball and tech, so she's happy to be working at a job where she gets to do both. Cool things of the week Cloud NAT explained! blog Build your data analytics skills with the latest no cost BigQuery trainings blog Introducing Workflows callbacks blog Interview MLB site MLB Draft site Kubernetes site Grafana site Inside Baseball: How MLB Transactions Actually Get Done blog LBi Software site What's something cool you're working on? Brian has been working on a YouTube series on VMs with Carter Morgan. Next week is Google Cloud Next!

Alexandrina Garcia-Verdin and Stephanie Wong host this week's episode all about managing non-REST APIs. Guests Nandan Sridhar and Dave Feuer start the show introducing our listeners to Apigee, a full life cycle API management tool, and the three tenets of Apigee that streamline the relationship between producers of APIs and their users. APIs have come a long way as technologies have changed, and David explains the evolution of API development and how it relates to the newer non-REST APIs. The consumption of applications has significantly changed, but Nandan points out that developer strategies and experiences have also changed. These advances have led to the popularity of non-REST APIs. APIs are being used in new ways David tells us, and through examples, we hear how Apigee is helping these companies realize their cutting-edge API goals. Nandan helps our listeners understand the difference between REST and non-REST APIs and the advantages of the latter in today's technological environments. Each of the four main types of non-REST APIs have their specialities, he explains, like GraphQL which is great for experiences, and gRPC, which has special communication features that increase efficiency. Our guests elaborate on the exciting features of these two protocols and how their uses will continue to innovate business and consumer interactions into the future. Our guests offer advice for companies and developers looking to take advantage of these non-REST APIs and help us understand the role Apigee plays in protecting the quality of all types of APIs. Dave Feuer Dave Feuer is Senior Product Manager at Apigee, a part of Google Cloud Platform. Previously, Dave ran the Platforms & Strategies practice at a boutique consulting firm, designing and implementing developer programs for Fortune 100 companies. Prior to that, Dave ran enterprise product development and software engineering at IDT and Net2Phone, a telecommunications and payments company. Dave started his career as an embedded software development engineer, and frequently questions how he ended up spending so much time in Google Slides. Nandan Sridhar Nandan Sridhar works in the Product Management team at Google Cloud, Apigee. Nandan's expertise includes API design standards, API security and microservices. Cool things of the week What's your org's reliability mindset? Insights from Google SREs blog Climate TRACE site Interview Apigee API Management site GraphQL site GraphQL Documentation docs Announcing Apigee's native support for managing lifecycle of GraphQL APIs blog Getting started with Apigee API management using Apigee videos gRPC site What's something cool you're working on? Alexandrina has been working on the Getting Started with Apigee API Management YouTube series. Next is coming up soon, too!

On the podcast this week, our guests Brian Schwarz and Sean Derrington discuss the ins and outs of the new storage launches with your hosts Stephanie Wong and Jenny Brown. Brian gives light introductions to the five facets of Google's data storage portfolio, like the primary storage solutions for files, storage of backups of data, and data transfer software and hardware. Lately, the Google team has been enhancing existing data solutions and building new ones. Cloud Storage's multi-region and custom dual-region options easily let customers keep data safe and accessible. Our guests explain what happens behind the scenes to make these features so effective. Brian and Sean describe the user experience, including how clients can see when data is being replicated and where. New capabilities like Turbo Replication allow more modernization for clients moving to the cloud as well. Sean talks about the new Filestore Enterprise, which allows companies to move critical apps to the cloud quickly and securely, and we learn why accurate, fast file and data replication is so important for these large customers. If there is corruption or accidental deletion of a file, Brian and Sean tell us about the fail-safes that are in place and the process for recovery. Filestore Enterprise, Filestore Basic, and GKE working together offer a more customized approach for large clients, allowing them to allocate their critical projects to Enterprise and other less important applications to Basic. Stateful applications in containers are becoming more popular as well, and our guests tell us how Backup for GKE is the easiest way to protect GKE workloads. Brian Schwarz Brian has had 20 years in product management in data center infrastructure. Before Google, he spent time at Veritas, Cisco, and most recently Pure Storage. Sean Derrington Sean has spent 20 years in storage product management. Before Google, he spent time at Veritas, Exablox, and StorageCraft. Cool things of the week Run code samples directly in the Google Cloud documentation blog Why representation matters: 6 tips on how to build DEI into your business blog Google Cloud announces new Cloud Digital Leader training and certification blog Google Cloud Next site Interview GKE site Google Cloud Storage site Filestore site Filestore Enterprise docs New storage features help ensure data is never lost blog Announcing Filestore Enterprise, for your most demanding apps blog Announcing Backup for GKE: the easiest way to protect GKE workloads blog Webinar: What's New with Storage at Google Cloud site What's something cool you're working on? Jenny is working on Google Cloud Reader and further audio formats for all your favorite cloud content.

Mark Mirchandani and Brian Dorsey are together again this week for an episode all about cloud migration using Txture and Accenture. Our guests Matthias Farwick of Txture, Patrick Niesel of Accenture, and Jason Purvor of Google help us understand their roles in cloud migration with some formal introductions to start the show. Txture helps companies assess their migration capabilities, providing insights to what will be necessary in the process and how viable cloud migration is as an option. Accenture works with Txture to augment the planning of migration strategies for clients. Jason helps us understand how Google uses the information gleaned from these assessments to help customers understand what the journey to Google Cloud will look like for their business. Txture provides good data which helps Google and clients make better decisions, not just in migration, but for the future health of the project while operating in the cloud. Our guests share the challenges of cloud migration and detail how these three powerhouse companies work together to overcome hurdles. From information gathering and budgeting to security and implementation, Txture, Accenture, and Google help companies understand their specific obstacles and develop a plan. Matthias uses a large banking client as an example to walk our listeners through a typical cloud migration process that takes advantage of Txture, Accenture, and Google. Jason details the process customers go through with Google as they establish their cloud environments and make decisions about the future of their projects. Through the analysis of four layers, Google helps customers think through this highly technical and involved migration process. Matthias describes the three assessment steps Txture applies to the process as well, and how these multiple-company analyses work together to create a solid cloud project now and continue to improve the project in the future. Matthias, Patrick, and Jason offer advice for companies considering a shift to the cloud, stressing the importance of preparing good data and keeping time predictions realistic. Company-wide cooperation is an important tool in the success of a cloud migration as well. Matthias Farwick Matthias Farwick co-founded Txture, a software for large scale cloud application assessments and modernization programs that is currently expanding to the US. Matthias is an avid mountaineer and skier. Patrick Niesel Patrick Niesel has been working within Accenture focusing on cloud transformations and in particular on application assessments. Jason Purvor Jason Purvor is a data centre exit strategist engaged in large scale migrations and "all in" transformations. He formerly ran CloudPhysics EMEA supporting Googlers with high resolution data center assessments. Cool things of the week What is Cloud SQL? blog Save money and time with automated VM management and suspend/resume blog Cost optimization using automated VM management docs Interview Txture site Accenture site Cloud Insider site Txture Cloud Transformation site Data Centre Transformation with Google site Cloud Maturity Assessment site Google Cloud Adoption Framework whitepaper Accenture-Google Business Group site The Txture Cloud Transformation Platform site Cloud Center of Excellence blog The 6Rs of Cloud Transformation blog Cloud-to-Cloud Assessment blog What's something cool you're working on? Brian is working on a video series called VM End to End with Carter Morgan.

Carter Morgan and Guillaume Laforge co-host this week's episode about what it took to develop the Google I/O Adventure Game. Our guest Valentin Deleplace and Guillaume introduce us to the game designed to encourage interaction with I/O attendees at the virtual conference held this year. Adventure takes the look of a 90s role-playing game. The online world facilitates the meeting of hundreds of conference attendees and presenters to mimic the in-person conference setting and facilitate meaningful conversations. With avatars, text chatting capabilities, and mini games, attendees' experiences go beyond simply watching online technical presentations. The development of Adventure Game required scalability to handle varying attendee numbers. It takes advantage of many GCP products, including Compute Engine and Cloud Run. Valentin describes why he and the team chose Cloud Run and how they used it to to stress test the game. He talks about challenges the team faced and how they overcame them to produce a smooth, enjoyable experience for conference-goers. Being a game that's live for specific periods of time rather than indefinitely presented different challenges as well. Valentin explains that scaling down, for example, is treated differently for this type of game. Adventure will be available at future conferences. Valentin Deleplace Valentin Deleplace is a developer advocate at Google. He's also a senior cloud backend engineer, interested in performance and UX, and an enthusiast Gopher. Cool things of the week New Cloud Functions min instances reduces serverless cold starts blog What's the key to a more secure Cloud Function? It's a secret! blog Shift security left with on-demand vulnerability scanning blog All you need to know about Cloud Storage blog Interview Google I/O site Chrome Dev Summit site Join the Adventure at Google I/O video Google's I/O Adventure was almost as good as being there article Set Snail site Compute Engine site Cloud Run site Using WebSockets docs App Engine site Agones site What's something cool you're working on? Carter is working VM End to End. Guillaume is working on new features for Cloud Workflows and helping with the Serverless Expeditions videos.

Your hosts Stephanie Wong and Alicia Williams talk about BigQuery Admin Reference Guides with guest Leigha Jarett. Leigha tells us a bit about the origins of the Admin Reference Guide, which was developed to address frequent customer questions. The series of guides and videos covers onboarding topics from resource hierarchy and APIs to BigQuery tables and storage in an effort to help new admins get started. The team's Reference Guide on tables helps admins understand the difference between federated and native tables, and Leigha tells our listeners some tips for using each type. Slots and reservations for workload management in BigQuery can be challenging to understand, but these Reference Guides and accompanying videos offer clear explanations. Optimizing projects for speed and monetary efficiency are important topics for any client, and Leigha and the optimization team have addressed these concerns as well. Tips for monitoring, data governance, and the secure sharing of data are also included in their video series, BigQuery Spotlight. We wrap up with a discussion on BigQuery APIs and how easy it is to integrate BigQuery and other Google products. Leigha Jarett Leigha is a developer advocate on the Google Cloud Data & Analytics team. She focuses on making sure developers using tools like BigQuery and Looker are getting the most possible value from their data. Cool things of the week Analyze Cloud Spanner data in BigQuery with federated queries docs Release notes dataset in BigQuery docs and XML feed Google Cloud release notes docs and XML feed Release notes in Cloud Console site Top 25 Google Search terms, now in BigQuery blog Interview BigQuery Admin Reference Guide Blog Recap site BigQuery Admin Reference Guide blog posts site BigQuery Spotlight Video Series videos BigQuery site BigQuery Documentation docs Cloud Spanner site Data Catalog site Apps Script site Looker site What's something cool you're working on? Alicia is building new BigQuery architectures in order to understand the journey and identify potential pain areas that may need more support.

This week on the podcast, we welcome guest Megan O'Keefe to talk about KRM and Kubernetes with your hosts Mark Mirchandani and Anthony Bushong. To start the show, Megan gives us a quick rundown of Kubernetes, an open-source tool to orchestrate containers and manage other GCP resources. She explains the difference between declarative and imperative to help us better understand the basics of Kubernetes. We tackle the challenges people face when beginning their Kubernetes journey and how it works with other open-source projects, like Anthos. This year, Megan and her team have been working to help developers understand the Kubernetes Resource Model, a concept that helps define how companies can organize and run clusters, enforce policies, and more for improved standardization across multiple teams. Megan explains GitOps, a deployment model for Kubernetes focusing on Git, and takes us through examples of implementation. We learn about Config Sync and how it helps with optimizing and automating GitOps. Megan goes over some other valuable tools, including Open Policy Agent and Gatekeeper, which help developers specify not just which resources are allowed, but also what kinds of things are allowed within each resource. We wrap up the show with a discussion on streamlining the development process with strategic use of Kubernetes and the help of open-source tools like Skaffold. Megan also talks about controllers like Config Connector that help with deploying to a GCP project and the things she finds most exciting about this space. Megan O'Keefe Megan O'Keefe is a Developer Relations Engineer at Google Cloud, helping developers build platforms with Kubernetes and Anthos. Cool things of the week Listen up! Google Cloud Reader reaches 50 episodes blog Private Pools Overview docs Interview Kubernetes site GKE site KRM site KRM Tutorial Demos site Build a platform with KRM: Part 1 - What's in a platform? blog Build a platform with KRM: Part 2 - How the Kubernetes resource model works blog Build a platform with KRM: Part 3 - Simplifying Kubernetes app development blog Build a platform with KRM: Part 4 - Administering a multi-cluster environment blog Build a platform with KRM: Part 5 - Manage hosted resources from Kubernetes blog I do declare! Infrastructure automation with Configuration as Data blog Multi-cluster Use Cases docs CNCF Kubernetes Overview site Anthos site Anthos Technical Overview docs Anthos Config Management site Config Sync Overview docs Guide To GitOps site Policy Controller Overview docs Kustomize site Cloud Code site Config Connector Overview docs Crossplane site Skaffold site Open Policy Agent site Backstage site What's something cool you're working on? Anthony shared info about GKE on the podcast last week and he's been working on his video series on GKE cost optimization. The solutions guide and white paper are great resources for this topic.

Kaslin Fields and Mark Mirchandani host this week's episode of the podcast as we celebrate one of our favorite Google products, Google Kubernetes Engine! Anthony Bushong and Gari Singh join the party to talk about GKE's life journey, what's new, and what's coming up for the service. Each guest brings their unique perspective to the show starting with their definitions of Kubernetes and GKE, tailored to a six year old. How does Kubernetes relate to cookies, Disney World, and Pokemon? Kaslin, Anthony, and Gari break it down. Next, each guest talks their favorite GKE features and what makes the service different. Kaslin loves the persistent storage feature, among others. Anthony appreciates the evolution of GKE to a place where it supports many different workloads and situations for clients and how easy it is to get started with GKE. GKE's ability to connect easily to other GCP products and features and GKE Autopilot are some of Gari's favorite things about the service. Best practices and advice for new users are shared by our guests. From practical tips for project planning to encouragement with long-term problem solving, our guests offer listeners resources and ideas for a successful GKE project. Kaslin, Anthony, and Gari share their favorite customer stories with us and talk about the fun, interesting events Google has hosted for GKE customers. The future of GKE looks bright, with new options for Windows containers, expanded Autopilot uses, and multicluster support. KubeCon is coming up soon, so keep an eye out for more Kubernetes and GKE news! Anthony Bushong Anthony Bushong has been working in the field with production GKE users, both large and small, for almost 5 years now. In Kubernetes time, since Kubernetes v1.3! Gari Singh Gari Singh is an Outbound Product Manager focused on GKE and Anthos. In this role, he has the opportunity to work with many customers and help align their needs with overall product direction. Kaslin Fields Kaslin Fields is a Developer Advocate at Google Cloud, a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Ambassador, and a contributor to Open Source Kubernetes. As a Developer Advocate, she engages with Open Source communities both as a member, and as an advocate for their needs as users (or potential users) of Google Cloud's products. She is passionate about making technology accessible to a broad audience through making the information available in many forms, such as videos, blogs, documentation, and even comics which she illustrates herself! Cool things of the week Try a tutorial in the Google Cloud Console blog GCP Podcast Episode 180: Firebase with Jen Person podcast Migrate, Manage & Modernize: Windows Workloads Powered by GKE and Anthos site Interview GKE site Kubernetes site Explain Like I'm 5: Containers VS VMs blog Introducing GKE Autopilot: a revolution in managed Kubernetes blog Best practices for running cost-optimized Kubernetes applications on GKE docs Discover and invoke services across clusters with GKE multi-cluster services blog The evolution of Kubernetes networking with the GKE Gateway controller blog Bringing Pokémon GO to life on Google Cloud blog Bayer Crop Science seeds the future with 15000-node GKE clusters blog Helping researchers at CERN to analyze powerful data and uncover the secrets of our universe blog Optimize costs in GKE with monitoring systems video Monitoring for efficient cluster binpacking in GKE video Monitoring for app right-sizing in GKE video Cloud Next 2021 site KubeCon site GCP Podcast Episode 210: Kubernetes Config Connector with Emily Cai podcast GCP Podcast Episode 234: GKE Turns Five with Alex Zakonov and Drew Bradstock podcast GCP Podcast Episode 252: GKE Cost Optimization with Kaslin Fields and Anthony Bushong podcast GCP Podcast Episode 257: GKE Autopilot with Yochay Kiriaty and William Denniss podcast What's something cool you're working on? Kaslin is working on a ton of things, including Kube Essentials and GKE Essentials (coming soon), KubeCon panel and keynote addresses, and Fields Tested - CNCF Twitch - CTF.

Guest Ryan Przybyl is back this week to tell hosts Lorin Price and Stephanie Wong more about service networking and what the future holds for the networking field. Picking up from last week, Ryan starts by detailing the products and features Google has developed to help enterprise customers shift to a service networking architecture. He walks us through an example scenario and explains how a company might work with Google to gradually shift. Google continues to grow in the service networking space. As client requirements are identified or changed, Google continually develops products to satisfy the varying networking needs. Ryan talks about tools like Network Intelligence Center, which allows network visibility and aims to ease the transition for traditional networking specialists. He talks about the Grow with Google Model, a term he coined to describe the step-by-step path his team helps enterprises take in the journey to full service networking. The process can take years and Ryan encourages clients to revisit their models periodically to take full advantage of new Google product offerings. He addresses the financial aspects of the networking shift as well. Ryan offers advice for companies looking to move to the cloud and tells our listeners his thoughts on the future of networking. Ryan Przybyl Ryan Przybyl is a Networking Specialist at Google Chicago, and has held roles in both Cloud Customer Engineering and Google's Network Operations. Prior to Google, Ryan was the Senior Director of Sales Engineering for Level 3 Communications. Ryan's focus is on helping customers understand Google Cloud's networking technologies while ensuring customers make use of Google Cloud best practices. When not talking with customers, Ryan is usually working with product and engineering teams to ensure Google Cloud is developing the right networking products for the future. Cool things of the week Consume services faster, privately and securely - Private Service Connect now in GA blog Elevate your security with new Secret Manager features and integrations blog Google named a Leader in 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services again blog Interview Google Cloud Networking Products site Private Service Connect docs Private Service Connect and Service Directory: A revolution to connect your application in Cloud video Migration to Google Cloud: Getting Started docs What's New in Networking videos The future of service networking video Traffic Director site Envoy Proxy site Network Intelligence Center site What's something cool you're working on? Lorin is working on Private Service Connect docs. Stephanie is working on new episodes of What's New in Networking.

This week on the show, Lorin Price and Stephanie talk about the differences between traditional and service networking with guest Ryan Przybyl. Ryan starts the show telling us how customer needs and advancing cloud technologies have shifted the conversations he has with customers from a traditional networking focus to an emphasis on cloud services. Ryan describes how he helps different sized companies approach networking, whether they're cloud native or shifting to a cloud approach from a traditional background. For example, companies that take advantage of Google Cloud and its services can deploy environments quickly, allowing developers to work without infrastructure constraints. Enterprise companies using more traditional networking that move into the cloud will need to make some changes, Ryan says, comparing apples to oranges. They want to move in a way that takes advantage of the cloud without negatively impacting performance. Later, Ryan tells us all about service-oriented networking and how it's possible for companies to choose pieces to shift to a service-oriented architecture without re-doing the entire project. We learn about Google's Private Service Connect which handles things like routing for companies connecting to third party services. Ryan offers some advice for companies considering this move and regales us with interesting anecdotes from his time helping clients. Ryan Przybyl Ryan Przybyl is a Networking Specialist at Google Chicago, and has held roles in both Cloud Customer Engineering and Google's Network Operations. Prior to Google, Ryan was the Senior Director of Sales Engineering for Level 3 Communications. Ryan's focus is on helping customers understand Google Cloud's networking technologies while ensuring customers make use of Google Cloud best practices. When not talking with customers, Ryan is usually working with product and engineering teams to ensure Google Cloud is developing the right networking products for the future. Cool things of the week Private Service Connect is GA blog Securing the software development lifecycle with Cloud Build and SLSA blog Container Security: Building trust in your software supply chain site Introducing Cloud Build private pools: Secure CI/CD for private networks blog Interview Google Cloud Networking Products site Private Service Connect docs Private Service Connect and Service Directory: A revolution to connect your application in Cloud video Migration to Google Cloud: Getting Started docs What's New in Networking videos What's something cool you're working on? Lorin is working on Private Service Connect docs.

Philip O'Toole and Reed Taylor talk with Stephanie and guest host Terry Ryan all about the new features in Google Cloud Logging on this episode of the podcast. Cloud Logging provides users with management and analyzation of project logs, the reports that describe the state of every system in a project. Reed walks us through Cloud Logging, including a list of features and how other GCP products integrate well with Logging. Once logs are sorted, Cloud Logging also provides tools for detailed query and analysis of log data. But storage and management of logs is as important as sorting and analyzing, and Reed tells us why this third component is vital. New features in storage and management promise to streamline the process. Log Buckets, for example, allow the separation of routing and storage, while Log Views make secure field-level access possible. Log Retention means users can dictate how long different types of logs are stored. These new features help users comply with standards and regulations in the data space. Our guests give more examples of how these tools improve logging tasks. Philip O'Toole Philip O'Toole is an Engineering Manager at Google Pittsburgh, leading development teams working on GCP's Cloud Logging Platform. Prior to Google he led development teams at InfluxDB, Loggly, and Riverbed Technology. You can find him on the web at https://www.philipotoole.com. Reed Taylor Reed Taylor is a Senior Product Manager at Google Pittsburgh, just last week marked his 10th "Googleversary" since starting at the office. In that time he's worked on a range of products including Google Search, Google Shopping, and AdWords. Reed joined GCP just this Spring, and is now focused on Logging products within the Cloud Operations suite. Cool things of the week Grow your ML skills with free offer from Coursera blog Advancing our trusted cloud with engineered-in, invisible security blog Interview Google Cloud Logging site Google Cloud Logging Documentation docs Managing log buckets docs Managing log views on your log buckets docs Data Governance for Log Data Whitepaper site Principles for Security and Managing Logs Whitepaper site What's something cool you're working on? Terry has been working on tutorials for the Cloud Ops team. His recent Cloud Logging tutorial is available now.

This week on the podcast, hosts Stephanie Wong and Bukola Ayodele speak with Nikhil Kaul and Victor Szalvay about security in the software supply chain. Cloud OnAir will be offering a virtual event on supply chain software security on July 29th, and our guests start the show by telling us more about it. The recent cyber attacks on US companies have brought to light the importance of cyber security. A new set of guidelines for securing these components and software as a whole will be released soon, impacting not just software developers but the users as well. The Cloud OnAir event will breakdown these new guidelines and educate attendees on steps to take to ensure more secure software and software components. Internally, Google has been optimizing their software supply chain security for years with solutions like BeyondCorp and internally developed solutions that Google has since adapted for their clients. These solutions will be discussed in detail in the Cloud OnAir event. Victor goes on to explain the three areas of supply chain security and how they fit into the overall security of online platforms. Software projects are often built using many small pieces of software sourced from third parties, which can create vulnerabilities. The new guidelines will help ensure quality and security at all levels of development for software and its pieces, thus strengthening security at every level of the supply chain. Nikhil and Victor talk about issues that contribute to supply chain security, including the risks that a microservices architecture can introduce and the use of open source software and their dependencies. We hear about Google's contributions to the supply chain security effort, like OpenSSF that strives to bring the open source community together toward the goal of cyber security. Our guests give listeners tips on starting the supply chain security journey. Join the Cloud OnAir talk to learn more! Nikhil Kaul Nikhil leads a team of product marketers focused on driving and building messaging, positioning, and go-to-market strategy for Google Cloud's DevOps portfolio. Victor Szalvay Victor is an Outbound Product Manager with Google Cloud focused on helping customers get the most from the cloud. Previously he has been a tech entrepreneur and leader, with a concentration on DevOps and app dev team productivity. Cool things of the week Helping you pick the greenest region for your Google Cloud resources blog Optimizing your Google Cloud spend with BigQuery and Looker blog Interview Container Security: Building trust in your software supply chain site OpenSSF site Deps site SLSA site Cloud Build site BeyondCorp site Binary Authorization for Borg docs GKE Autopilot docs GCP Podcast Episode 251: BeyondCorp with Kiran Nair and Ameet Jani podcast What's something cool you're working on? Bukola is working on the new season of Security Command Center set to be released next month!

Brian Dorsey and Mark Mirchandani are talking intro to Firestore this week with fellow Googler Allison Kornher. Allison, a Cloud Technical Resident, starts the show telling us about the program and how it brought her to Firestore. Allison takes us through the differences between SQL and NoSQL databases and describes the four categories of NoSQL databases: family, document, key value, and graph. Firestore is a scalable, flexible NoSQL document database. To illustrate the uses and benefits of Firestore, Allison walks us through a delicious pizza example. Each document in the database belongs to a collection, which is used to organize these documents. Firestore documents are assigned an identifier and can be quickly changed and called within their collections. Because these documents are stored in an implicit schema in key value pairs, developers have control over the details of database organization and data change and growth are easy to manage. The availability of subcollections further adds to the flexibility of Firestore database design. Choosing a database type will depend on the situation, and Allison suggests this starts with a look at CAP theorem. If a document database is your database of choice, Allison gives our listeners tips for getting started with Firestore and clearing any hurdles along the way. Allison Kornher Allison is a Cloud Technical Resident and has worked helping startups looking to join GCP and in the Premium Tier Cloud Support organization with a focus on Storage. Cool things of the week BigQuery admin reference guide: Tables & routines blog Top 25 Google Search terms, now in BigQuery blog Three security and scalability improvements for Cloud SQL for SQL Server blog GCP Podcast Episode 247: Cloud SQL Insights with Nimesh Bhagat podcast GCP Podcast Episode 163: Cloud SQL with Amy Krishnamohan podcast Interview Cloud Firestore site Cloud Firestore Documentation docs Cloud Firestore explained: for users who never used Firestore before blog Gabi on Twitter site Datastore site BigTable site Firebase Realtime Database site Memorystore site Cloud Spanner site GCP Podcast Episode 248: Cloud Spanner Revisited with Dilraj Kaur and Christoph Bussler podcast All you need to know about Firestore: A cheatsheet blog What's something cool you're working on? Brian has been working on sharing a persistent disk between Google Compute Engine VMs. Cloud Storage site Cloud Filestore site Cloud SQL site

Stephanie Wong and Jenny Brown are your hosts this week, discussing data analytics with the yin and yang of the field, Bruno Aziza and Eric Schmidt. Our guests introduce us to three new Google offerings, BigQuery Omni, Dataplex, and the Analytics Hub, and discuss the uses and implications of each and how they work together to achieve goals. Bruno and Eric describe challenges in data analytics and how Google uses these as opportunities to create problem-solving systems that solve real client problems. Through real-world examples from companies like Equifax, we see how companies are getting more information from their data in a way that creates actionable opportunities to improve customer experiences. For multi-cloud companies, BigQuery Omni gets the most out of data that exists in multiple clouds. To accomplish this, Google takes the analytics to the data and is able to reach all appropriate data across clouds without having to move it. This allows for cheaper analysis with much less system downtime. Support for Azure was added this year. The new Dataplex software helps customers intelligently manage data assets, especially in distributed systems. Dataplex lets companies automatically discover data, make data secure without having to move it, and apply governance and policies centrally so the data is accessible. Rather than sit unused, data can now be found easily, analyzed securely, and put to work for companies no matter where their data lives. For analytic asset sharing, Analytics Hub lets companies coordinate with others to get the most use out of their data efficiently. Analytics Hub gets to data value as quickly and easily as possible. Companies can publish, discover, and subscribe to shared assets, create exchanges that combine data sets, and curate exchanges of data and insights for full information sharing. Eric Schmidt Eric is the Head of Advocacy for Data Analytics at Google and has been with us for almost 8 years. He comes to us from Microsoft, where he led Advocacy and Evangelism there, too. Eric is an expert in products like BigQuery, Dataflow, Dataproc and leads a team of leaders who help customers turn data into value. In his downtime, Eric is also a Dj at KEXP 90.3 Seattel - KEPX.ORG where he guest hosts a modern global music show. You can find Eric on Twitter. His handle is @notthateric - not to be confused with the 'other Eric Schmidt' here at Google. In fact, internally, we affectionately call him "cloude". Bruno Aziza Bruno is the Head of Data & Analytics at Google Cloud and specializes in everything data, from data analytics, to business intelligence, data science, and artificial intelligence. Before working at Google, Bruno worked at companies like Business Objects when it went IPO and Oracle, where his team led one of the fastest turnarounds in the business analytics industry. He led the launch of startups like Alpine Data (now part of Tibco), Sisense and AtScale and he helped Microsoft grow its Data unit into a $1B business. Bruno has been educated in the US, France, the UK, and Germany. He has written two books on Data Analytics and Performance Management. And he has a monthly column on Forbes.com on everything Data, AI and Analytics. Cool things of the week BigQuery row-level security enables more granular access to data blog Expanding access to quantum today for a better tomorrow blog Expanding partner solutions at the network edge blog Interview Data Cloud Summit site Bringing multi-cloud analytics to your data with BigQuery Omni blog Dataplex site Analytics Hub site Intelligent Data and Analytics Fabric video GCP Podcast Episode 253: Data Governance with Jessi Ashdown and Uri Gilad podcast Public Data Sets site Smart analytics reference patterns site Data and Analytics Sharing at Equifax: Immediate, Interconnected, Scalable, and Secure video BigQuery ML site Learn more about these launches site What's something cool you're working on? Jenny has been working on Google Cloud Reader episodes on BigQuery Explained.

On the podcast this week, Stephanie Wong and Abdel Sghiouar are joined by guest Jan Harasym of Sharkmob Games, who starts the interview describing how he and his team designed the infrastructure for The Division. With the game's sequel, The Division II, in development, Jan and his team made the decision to use a cloud provider. Jan describes the differences between on-prem and cloud, outlining the benefits of GCP for game development and hosting, including better reliability and development environments. Scaling a cloud project can be much more efficient, and Jan tells us some tricks for doing it well. We talk about the process of migrating this large game to Google Cloud and how they choose the software and development tools they used. When Sharkmob migrated to the cloud, Jan worked to convince the company that GCP was the way to go. He tells us more about how he persuaded the team, how they planned the migration, and the overall success of the process. Sharkmob is working on two new projects for the future and soon will be releasing a new game, Vampire Masquerade Blood Hunt. Jan Harasym Jan has helped make online games work for eight years. Most recently, he helped release Tom Clancy's The Division 2 with online infrastructure on top of GCP. Cool things of the week New Tau VMs deliver leading price-performance for scale-out workloads blog Introducing container-native Cloud DNS: Global DNS for Kubernetes blog Google for Games Developer Summit 2021 site Interview Sharkmob site The Division 1 site The Division 2 site Massive site Unreal site Zookeeper site Agones site Kubernetes site GKE site Blood Hunt site What's something cool you're working on? Abdel is working on GKE Network Recipes.

Our old pal Mark Mirchandani is back this week, joining Stephanie Wong and our guests Steve McGhee and Yuri Grinshteyn to talk about Site Reliability Engineering. SRE is Google's way of helping companies of all sizes create consistent, predictable, and functional projects. It helps clients approach operations from a software engineering stand point so that growing systems can be managed efficiently. We talk about the challenges of implementing best SRE practices and how companies can overcome these. Though the benefits of SRE are many, it can be difficult for clients to grasp. Steve and Yuri tell us the process they go through with customers to help them set realistic goals and work to make reliable, scalable projects with little downtime. By starting small and taking wins early, Steve says clients reap the rewards of SRE and are encouraged to push forward. Yuri's customer-centric approach encourages companies to prioritize alerts that affect the user experience, thus limiting inbox mayhem and keeping customers happy. Alerts based on symptoms, Steve says, help accomplish this goal. Later, Yuri and Steve describe the best ways for companies to get started with SRE. Realistic goals and specific detailed plans can make the journey less bumpy for clients, and Google's SRE team can help. Steve McGhee Steve was an SRE at Google for about 10 years, then left to help a company build reliable systems on the Cloud. Now he's back at Google, helping more companies do that. Yuri Grinshteyn Yuri works with Google Cloud Platform customers to help them design, architect, build, and operate reliable applications and services. He also advocates for SRE principles and practices on YouTube and elsewhere. Cool things of the week Fresh updates: Google Cloud 2021 Summits blog Why you need to explain machine learning models blog GCP Podcast Episode 260: Responsible AI with Craig Wiley and Tracy Frey podcast GCP Podcast Episode 249: ML Lifecycle with Dale Markowitz and Craig Wiley podcast GCP Podcast Episode 214: AI in Healthcare with Dale Markowitz podcast Interview Site Reliability Engineering site Reliability Architecture Framework site Site Reliability Engineering: Measuring and Managing Reliability on Coursera site Developing a Google SRE Culture on Coursera site How Lowe's meets customer demand with Google SRE practices blog GCP Podcast Episode 68: The Home Depot with William Bonnell podcast GCP Podcast Episode 213: The Art of SLOs with Alex Bramley podcast GCP Podcast Episode 127: SRE vs Devops with Liz Fong-Jones and Seth Vargo podcast GCP Podcast Episode 72: Customer Reliability Engineering with Luke Stone podcast GCP Podcast Episode 38: Site Reliability Engineering with Paul Newson podcast GCP Podcast Episode 59: SRE II with Paul Newson podcast What's something cool you're working on? Yuri has been working on Engineering for Reliability. Stephanie has been working on her new series What's New in Networking.

Max Saltonstall and Carter Morgan co-host the podcast this week and talk APIs with our guests, Dave Feuer and Benjamin Schuler. Apigee, an API management platform that is a part of Google Cloud, focuses on all steps of the digital product life cycle to make API management easy for clients. The software company SAP provides data storage and other business support for different types of companies across the world. Together, Apigee and SAP allow data to be collected, stored, organized, and securely accessed and shared with other applications. The shift to e-commerce and the desire for tailored experiences has driven the need for more API usage and therefore better API management. SAP and Apigee, with their myriad features, allow businesses to keep up with these increasing demands efficiently. We hear examples of how companies are leveraging these tools and use cases where the power of SAP and Apigee benefit customers most. Our guests describe the developer experience as well. We talk about the process of creating a project with both SAP and Apigee and why both tools working together makes the developer's job easier. Planning your project with an "API first" mindset means choosing APIs and SAP software early in the planning process to better align your project with your business goals. Apigee can help you manage these APIs securely, letting you choose the data that is shared. The use of both SAP and Apigee helps companies to realize long-term efficiency and streamlined operations as development becomes easier with each additional API. Benjamin Schuler Benjamin Schuler is a Solution Manager for SAP at Google Cloud with a focus on topics around application modernization. Prior to joining Google, he was working directly for SAP's consulting unit and helped companies move parts of their SAP landscape to the cloud. When he is not busy populating spreadsheets or adding yet another //TODO: to his demo apps, he likes to get out onto the water for some freeride kitesurfing. Dave Feuer Dave Feuer is Senior Product Manager at Apigee, a part of Google Cloud Platform. Previously, Dave ran the Platforms & Strategies practice at a boutique consulting firm, designing and implementing developer programs for Fortune 100 companies. Prior to that, Dave ran enterprise telecommunications product development and software engineering at IDT and Net2Phone, a telecommunications and payments company. Dave started his career as an embedded software development engineer, and frequently questions how he ended up spending so much time in Google Slides. Cool things of the week AI Simplified: Managing ML data sets with Vertex AI blog Create your own journaling app without writing code blog AppSheet Journal site Interview Apigee site Apigee Setup site SAP site Apigee: Your gateway to more manageable APIs for SAP blog Accelerate the time to value of your SAP data with Apigee video GCP Podcast Episode 54: API Lifecycle with Alan Ho podcast GCP Podcast Episode 219: Spotify with Josh Brown podcast Conrad Electronic: Powering next-gen retail with BigQuery and Apigee API management site Schlumberger chooses GCP to deliver new oil and gas technology platform blog Schlumberger Selects Google Cloud for its Enterprise-Wide SAP Migration and Modernization site What's something cool you're working on? Max is documenting how Google & Alphabet made the move to SAP. He's also working on a Discord bot on Google Cloud and ITRP series launch. Carter is working on a SAP content video series and teaching in the Equity Through Technology program.

Stephanie Wong and cohost Gabi Ferrara talk about the exciting launch of Database Migration Service at Google. Our guests this week, Shachar Guz and Gabe Weiss, start the show explaining DMS, focusing on the ease of infrastructure management for cloud users. Migration is made simpler with DMS, and Shachar and Gabe walk us through the process of using this powerful new service. Our guests outline some hurdles to migration and how DMS and the DMS documentation help developers overcome them. Shacher tells us the steps companies should take before and after running DMS to ensure projects run correctly and business logic is preserved as well, and Gabe stresses the importance of testing. Database Migration Service focuses on open source, and we talk about why this is an important benefit. In addition, the thorough explanations embedded in DMS help users navigate easily, serverless technology means projects are fast and efficient, and native applications are leveraged for better transparency. And it's free. Shachar Guz Shachar is a product manager at Google Cloud, he works on the Cloud Database Migration Service. Shachar worked in various product and engineering roles and shares a true passion about data and helping customers get the most out of their data. Shachar is passionate about building products that make cumbersome processes simple and straightforward and helping companies adopt Cloud technologies to accelerate their business. Gabe Weiss Gabe works on the Google Cloud Platform team ensuring that developers can make awesome things, both inside and outside of Google. Prior to Google he's worked in virtual reality production and distribution, source control, the games industry and professional acting. Cool things of the week Unlock the power of change data capture and replication with new, serverless Datastream blog Introducing Dataplex—an intelligent data fabric for analytics at scale blog Data Cloud Summit site Google Cloud's New 2021 Analytics Launches video Bringing multi-cloud analytics to your data with BigQuery Omni blog Applied ML Summit site Interview Database Migration Service site DMS Documentation docs Cloud SQL site Network Intelligence Center site Introducing Database Migration Service video Best practices for homogeneous database migrations blog Database Migration Service Connectivity—A technical introspective blog Migrating MySQL data to Cloud SQL using Database Migration Service Qwiklab site What's something cool you're working on? Gabbi is going to CrimeCon for fun!

On the podcast this week, we're diving into what full stack development looks like on Google Cloud. Guests Tony Pujals and Kevin Moore join your hosts Stephanie Wong and Grant Timmerman to help us understand how developers can leverage Dart and Google Cloud to create powerful and effective front end and back end systems for their projects. Kevin takes us through the evolution of Dart and Flutter and how they have become a way to allow developers an experience-first solution. Developers can focus on the experience they want to create, then decide which platforms to run on. With Dart, Google provides business logic that allows developers to provide the front end and back end experience for users in one programming language. Our guests talk about the types of projects that will benefit most from the use of Dart and how Dart is expanding to offer more features and better usability. Flutter offers a high fidelity, rich framework that supports mobile and can be deployed on any platform. When paired with Dart on Docker Hub, developers can easily build optimized front and back end systems. Tony and Kevin tell us about the new Functions Framework for Dart and how it helps developers handle deploying to serverless technologies. We hear more about how Dart, Flutter, and Cloud Run working together can make any project easy to build and easy to deploy and use. Tony Pujals Tony is a career engineer who's now on the serverless developer relations team and focused on helping full stack developers succeed building their app backends. Kevin Moore Kevin is the Product Manager of Dart & Flutter at Google. Cool things of the week What is Vertex AI? Developer advocates share more blog Google Cloud launches from Google I/O 2021 blog Secure and reliable development with Go | Q&A video Google CloudEvents - Go site Interview Flutter site Dart site Go site Datastore site Dart on Docker site Functions Framework for Dart on GitHub site Cloud Run site Dart Documentation docs Google APIs with Dart docs App Engine site Dart Functions Qwiklab site Flutter Startup Namer Qwiklab site Cloud, Dart, and full-stack Flutter | Q&A video Go full-stack with Kotlin or Dart on Google Cloud | Session video What's something cool you're working on? Grant has been working on libraries for CloudEvents.

Stephanie Wong and Priyanka Vergadia host the podcast this week as we talk responsible AI with guests Craig Wiley and Tracy Frey. Vertex AI, the newly released AI platform from Google, is where Craig starts, telling us that it helps seamlessly integrate AI best practices into AI projects. When designing and building machine learning projects, it's important to plan and integrate functions that support a responsible model as well. Tracy and Craig help us understand the process of designing and building these responsible, efficient projects, from problem identification and data set collection and refinement to ethical model considerations and finally project construction. Part of Responsible AI is considering all the stakeholders of a project and how they will be impacted. Through examples, Tracy demonstrates how businesses can decide if the software solution affects stakeholders in a way the business would be proud of. Starting in the planning stages and continuing through data collection and model training, companies employing responsible AI techniques will consider input from groups that may use or be affected by the model, from social scientist who specialize in human behavior, and others. Craig elaborates on these principles in the context of Vertex AI and how the time savings of Vertex could be used to make thoughtful, responsible AI decisions. Craig teaches us more about Vertex as we wrap up the interview. Its ability to analyze data and perform ongoing model monitoring make for richer, more accurate projects. Tracy talks about the future of Responsible AI and how the marriage of tech and humanity will continue to produce ethical, effective AI projects. Craig Wiley Craig is the Director of Product for Google Cloud's AI Platform. Previous to Google, Craig spent nine years at Amazon as the General Manager of Amazon SageMaker, AWS' machine learning platform as well as in Amazon's 3rd Party Seller Business. Craig has a deep belief in democratizing the power of data, and he pushes to improve the tooling for experienced users while seeking to simplify it for the growing set of less experienced users. Outside of work he enjoys spending time with his family, eating delicious meals, and enthusiastically struggling through small home improvement projects. Tracy Frey Tracy Frey is Google Cloud AI & Industry Solution's Managing Director of Outbound Product Management, Incubation and Responsible AI and is dedicated to ensuring Google Cloud AI & Industry Solutions is responsible, thoughtful, and collaborative as it continues to advance artificial intelligence and machine learning. She has been at Google for more than 10 years where she has worked on many different products and areas. Before joining Google she worked at multiple early-stage tech startups where she held multiple functions including product management, developer relations, product marketing, business development and strategy. Prior to her life in tech she taught children traditional wilderness survival skills, taught in a traditional classroom, studied private reserves in Costa Rica and has been a professional hip hop dancer. Cool things of the week Cloud CISO Perspectives: May 2021 blog The cloud developer's guide to Google I/O 2021 blog Interview Vertex AI site Responsible AI site Staying ahead of the curve – The business case for responsible AI article Building responsible AI for everyone site Cloud Storage site BigQuery site Data Cloud Summit site Applied ML Summit site GCP Podcast Episode 249: ML Lifecycle with Dale Markowitz and Craig Wiley podcast AI Edition Google's Tracy Frey: Creating Responsible AI podcast TensorFlow Responsible AI Toolkit site What's something cool you're working on? Priyanka has been working on the Vertex AI video series. Episode 1 and episode 2 are available now!

This week on the show, our guests Anu Srivastava and Sudheera Vanguri talk about Document AI with hosts Stephanie Wong and Dale Markowitz. Document AI uses artificial intelligence to improve the way businesses create and manage things like paystubs, tax forms, contracts, and virtually any other business document. Data normally stored on paper can be parsed, enriched, and structured, then stored securely with the use of Document AI. Data becomes more accessible and more manageable. Our guests go on to describe the process of using this powerful tool and instances where developers and enterprise companies could benefit. We talk about Lending DocAI and Procurement DocAI and how offerings like Google Vision and Knowledge Graph enhance these powerful tools. Users of Document AI can take advantage of these tools as well as bring their own expertise to create custom models. Later, we learn about the developer experience when using the Document AI Platform. Our guests talk specifically about the use of Knowledge Graph and how the advanced search capabilities allow Document AI users to collect data from myriad sources, filling in missing information and enhancing the search with other useful data to make your results more usable. To demonstrate the use of the platform and integrated Google AI tools, we hear about the real-world examples of Workday and Mr. Cooper and their document processing and model training. Sudheera Vanguri Sudheera Vanguri is the head of Product Management at Google Cloud Document AI. Anu Srivastava Anu Srivastava is an Applied AI Engineer for ML on Google Cloud. Before that, she was a software engineer in Android Google Cloud Infrastructure. Cool things of the week A handy new Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure product map blog Compare AWS and Azure services to Google Cloud docs Google Cloud and Seagate: Transforming hard-disk drive maintenance with predictive ML blog Interview Document AI site BigQuery site Lending DocAI site Procurement DocAI site Cloud Natural Language site Google Vision AI site Google Knowledge Graph site Cloud Translation site Workday site Mr. Cooper site AODocs site Processors overview site Python Codelab site Getting started with the Document AI platform video What's something cool you're working on? We've been working hard on Google I/O.

On the show this week, Mark Mirchandani joins Stephanie Wong to talk about serverless computing and the Cloud OnAir Serverless event with our guests. Aparna Sinha and Philip Beevers start the show giving us a thorough definition of serverless infrastructures and how this setup can help clients run efficient and cost-effective projects with easy scalability and observability. Serverless has grown exponentially over the last decade, and Aparna talks about how that trajectory will continue in the future. At its core, the serverless structure allows large enterprise companies to do what they need to do, from analyzing real time information to ensuring dinner is delivered piping hot. Aparna describes the three aspects of next generation serverless, developer centricity, versatility, and built-in best practices, and how Google is using these to empower developers and company employees to create robust projects efficiently and economically. Phil tells us about the experience of using serverless products and the success of the three pillars in Google serverless offerings. Enterprise customers like MediaMarktSaturn and Ikea are taking advantage of the serverless system for e-commerce, data processing, machine learning, and more. Our guests describe client experiences and how customer feedback is used to help improve Google serverless tools. With so many serverless tools available, our guests offer advice on choosing the right products for your project. We also hear all about the upcoming Cloud On Air event and what participants can expect, from product announcements and live demos to thorough reviews of recently added serverless features. Aparna Sinha Aparna Sinha is Director of Product at Google Cloud and the product leader for Serverless Application Development and DevOps. She is passionate about transforming businesses through faster, safer software delivery. Previously, Aparna helped grow Kubernetes into a widely adopted platform across industries. Aparna holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. She is Chair of the Governing Board of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). She lives in Palo Alto with her husband and two kids. Philip Beevers Phil has been at Google for seven years. He currently leads the Serverless Engineering teams and previously ran the Site Reliability Engineering team for Google Cloud and Google's internal Technical Infrastructure. Phil holds a BA in Mathematics from Oxford University. Cool things of the week The evolution of Kubernetes networking with the GKE Gateway controller blog Network Performance for all of Google Cloud in Performance Dashboard site Go from Database to Dashboard with BigQuery and Looker blog Introducing Open Saves: Open-source cloud-native storage for games blog Interview Cloud Run site Cloud Functions site Serverless Computing site The power of Serverless: Get more done easily site App Engine site Building Serverless Applications with Google Cloud Run book MediaMarktSaturn site Ikea site Airbus site Veolia site Sound Effects Attribution "Fanfare1" by N2P5 of Freesound.org "Banjo Opener" by Simanays of Freesound.org

Kaslin Fields joins Stephanie Wong hosting the podcast this week as we talk all about GKE Autopilot with our guests Yochay Kiriaty and William Denniss. GKE Autopilot manages tasks like quantity and size of nodes so deploying workloads is faster and machines are used efficiently. Autopilot also offers cluster management options, including monitoring the health of nodes and other components. William and Yochay explain that GKE Autopilot was built to aid companies in the efficient use of resources and give clients more time to focus on their projects. Important efficiency features that are optional in GKE, like multidimensional pod autoscaling, are employed automatically for clients in Autopilot, giving clients peace of mind. Kubernetes best practices are auto-deployed for projects so clients can rest assured things will run as quickly and smoothly as possible without extra work. Kubernetes is a great way to manage containers, and our guests describe cases where this tool is best suited. We compare GKE standard mode and Autopilot, and Yochay tells us when developers might choose standard mode to allow for more specific customization. He talks about migrating between standard and Autopilot clusters with the goal of easy migration by the end of this year. Security is important for GKE, and we talk about the Autopilot security configurations and why they were chosen. Later, our guests walk us through the process of a Kubernetes project on Autopilot, highlighting decisions this tool makes automatically for you and why. Though Autopilot sounds very much like a serverless offering, William explains the differences between tools like Cloud Run and GKE Autopilot. We also hear about the future of Autopilot, including some exciting new features coming soon. Yochay Kiriaty Yochay is a Product Manager for GKE responsible for security. William Denniss William is a Product Manager for GKE Autopilot. He's currently writing a book called Kubernetes Quickly. Cool things of the week Google Cloud Region Picker site Faster, cheaper, greener? Pick the Google Cloud region that's right for you blog 5 resources to help you get started with SRE blog Interview Kubernetes site GKE site Autopilot Overview docs GCP Podcast Episode 252: GKE Cost Optimization with Kaslin Fields and Anthony Bushong podcast Multidimensional Pod Autoscaling docs Docker site Cloud Run site Introducing GKE Autopilot: a revolution in managed Kubernetes blog Creating an Autopilot cluster docs What's something cool you're working on? Kaslin has been working on KubeCon EU as a volunteer and will be presenting there as well.

This week on the podcast, Stephanie Wong and Alexandrina Garcia-Verdin are diving into an important topic for our global community: sustainability and carbon aware computing. Kendal Smith, program manager for Carbon Intelligent Computing, and Chris Talbott, leader of the sustainability product marketing efforts at Google Cloud, start the show telling us why sustainability is so important in the tech world. Environmentally conscious data centers are an important part of Google Cloud sustainability efforts. Using computing in the smartest way possible, Kendall tells us, is the root of green computing. Wind, solar, and other low or carbon-free energy sources are employed at Google Cloud data centers to accomplish this goal. Kendall and Chris detail the green goals Google has met or exceeded, including carbon neutrality in 2007, and future goals for Google. Chris explains how Google Cloud customers have taken advantage of Google's sustainability practices and been inspired in their own businesses. Kendall details the Carbon Intelligent Computing Platform and how they adjust compute times to align with available carbon-free energy. We hear about Google's sustainability metrics, including the Carbon Free Energy Percentage, and how these measurements can help Google and its customers run environmentally friendly applications. Chris describes the process he and his team go through when helping Google clients design their carbon aware strategy. To wrap up the show, our guests talk about the future of de-carbonized computing at Google. Kendal Smith Kendal is the Program Manager for Carbon Intelligent Computing at Google, which reduces the carbon footprint of Data Centers by exploiting flexibility in compute workloads. She also helps Google engineers build products efficiently, as well as advise other Bets on carbon measurement and tracking. Chris Talbott Chris leads sustainability product marketing and customer engagement efforts for Google Cloud, and works on opening new Google Cloud data centers throughout the globe. He helps customers improve the environmental impact of their IT operations and identify new opportunities to tackle climate change challenges with cloud technology. Cool things of the week Active Assist's new feature, predictive autoscaling, helps improve response times for your applications site Maximizing developer productivity video Interview Google Carbon Aware Computing Workshop 2021 site Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows blog How carbon-free is your cloud? New data lets you know blog Google Cloud Region Picker site What's something cool you're working on? Alexandrina is working on a new series called People & Planet AI. The first episode, Recovering global wildlife populations using ML is out now. She's also been working on internal websites to share climate information. Stephanie has been working on a blog post about AppSheet Automation, which we talked about in-depth last week on the podcast.

Stephanie Wong and co-host Carter Morgan learn all about the no-code experience of AppSheet Automation this week. Guests Jennifer Cadence and Prithpal Bhogill introduce us to AppSheet, a platform that empowers anyone to build applications without code. The strong focus on openness means AppSheet offers support for all manner of APIs and services, making it easy to use and customize. Jennifer starts by telling us how AppSheet increases productivity and satisfaction at work. She describes how people's individual characteristics and use of time affect productivity and explains that tasks that can be automated free people up to work on higher value tasks or focus on important issues. Employees are not only more productive but happier in their jobs when mundane or frustrating tasks are automated. Later, Prithpal describes using the software. The AppSheet Unified Platform supports any application creator so users can build their apps and automations without ever leaving the AppSheet dashboard. Data stays where it is, with no upload requirements, further easing the build process. We hear some real-world uses of AppSheet Automation, including employee onboarding, customer support, and more. Prithpal takes us behind the scenes, using examples to explain the inner workings of AppSheet and walks us through the steps of using this powerful tool. Jennifer tells us how the AppSheet Community helps shape the platform and talks about the future of AppSheet Automation. Jennifer Cadence Jennifer is the Product Marketing Manager for AppSheet. She's also a dog lover, community builder, and curious human. Prithpal Bhogill Prithpal is the Lead Product Manager for AppSheet, frequent blogger, and featured speaker on several tech conferences. Cool things of the week Choose your own cloud adventure video Recovering global wildlife populations using ML blog Introduction to AI Platform (Unified) docs Interview AppSheet site AppSheet Community site Invisible Woman book Apps Script site Workspace site What's something cool you're working on? Stephanie and Carter are working on some new features for the podcast! Stephanie will be speaking at CTC. Sound Effects Attribution "Applause 1" by Ichapman1980 of Freesound.org

Brian Dorsey joins Stephanie Wong this week for an in-depth discussion on Workflows. Guests Kris Braun and Guillaume Laforge introduce us to Google Cloud Workflows, explaining that this fully managed serverless product helps connect services in the cloud. By facilitating the creation of an end-to-end schema, Workflows lets developers specify what microservices or other software respond when certain events occur in a detailed, visual format. Kris and Guillaume list the benefits of using Workflows and detail the many uses for this powerful tool. The ability to add detailed descriptors, for example, helps companies avoid errors in calling up other pieces of software. New employees have an easier time getting acquainted when the steps are clearly defined as well. Our guests use real-world examples to illustrate the three main uses for Workflows: event-driven, batch, and infrastructure automation. Workflows are flexible and customizable. Later, we hear about Cloud Composer and its relation to Workflows, and our guests help us understand which product is right for each client type. The Workflows team continues to expand offerings. More connectors are being added to allow developers to call other GCP services. Working with lists will soon be easier, allowing Workflows to run steps in parallel. And Kris details other exciting updates coming soon, including Eventarc. Kris Braun Kris Braun is the Product Manager for three Google Cloud products that connect services to build applications: Workflows, Tasks, and Scheduler. Before Google, Kris' adventures include founding and growing startups, leading a team of network security researchers investigating threats like Stuxnet, and writing the original BlackBerry simulator for app development. He's a passionate advocate for opening job opportunities to skilled refugees displaced by war and disaster. Guillaume Laforge Guillaume Laforge is a Developer Advocate for Google Cloud, focusing on serverless technologies. More recently, he dived head first in Workflows, and started presenting the product at online events, wrote articles, tips and tricks, and videos on the topic. Cool things of the week How sweet it is: Using Cloud AI to whip up new treats with Mars Maltesers blog Turbo boost your Compute Engine workloads with new 100 Gbps networking blog Benchmarking higher bandwidth VM instances docs Interview Workflows site Spanner site Cloud SQL site Cloud Composer site Pub/Sub site Cloud Run site Eventarc site Eventarc Documentation docs Workflows Insiders site Quickstarts site How-To Guides site Syntax Reference site Guillaume's Workflow Tips and Tricks blog A first look at serverless orchestration with Workflows blog Orchestrating the Pic-a-Daily serverless app with Workflows blog Better service orchestration with Workflows blog Get to know Workflows, Google Cloud's serverless orchestration engine blog 3 common serverless patterns to build with Workflows blog Introduction to serverless orchestration with Workflows codelab Pic-a-Daily Serverless Workshop codelab Pic-a-daily: Lab 6—Orchestration with Workflows codelab What's something cool you're working on? Brian is working on use cases around VMs. Stephanie has been writing about database migration.

Hosts Stephanie Wong and Priyanka Vergadia learn about data governance this week in an interesting chat with Jessi Ashdown and Uri Gilad. While data governance includes security measures, the overarching term also means knowing your data, where it is, and how to use it. In their book, Jessi, Uri, and their co-authors hope to make data governance more accessible by sharing the knowledge Google has developed over twenty plus years. We talk about the challenges companies of all sizes face implementing data governance frameworks and Uri shares a few tips for streamlining the process. Communication and prioritization are important no matter the size of your team. Companies must also understand the sensitivity of the data, how it's protected and managed, and why it's collected. Having a thoughtful, thorough understanding of what data gives you the most bang for your buck can help companies prioritize certain data collection, make better decisions, scale efficiently, and save money. When communicating with team members, it's important to share vital information about the data. Knowing who's in charge of what data, for example, makes accessing that data faster. With proper communication and thorough prioritization, teams can begin to think about how developing automated tools can increase functional data utilization. Later, we discuss the ways companies can support employees on the data governance journey by clearly communicating the best practice rules. Uri describes how Google uses data governance principles and shares resources Google has published that detail these steps further. Tools like BigQuery and Data Catalog are Google-built products meant to provide companies with more automated data governance solutions. Jessi and Uri wrap up the show with some more best practices in the data governance sphere, like proper metadata to increase the trustworthiness of data. And Uri details the tools Google Cloud has developed to make your data life easier, giving examples of companies putting these tools into practice. Jessi Ashdown Jessi Ashdown is a User Experience Researcher for Google Cloud who conducts user studies with customers from all over the world and uses the findings and feedback from these studies to help inform and shape Google's data governance products to best serve those users' needs. Uri Gilad Uri is leading the Data Governance efforts, within the Data Analytics area in Google Cloud. As part of his role, Uri is spearheading a cross-functional effort to create the relevant controls, management tools and workflows that enable a GCP customer to apply Data Governance policies in a unified fashion wherever your data may be in your GCP deployment. Prior to Google, Uri served as an executive in multiple Data Security companies: most recently as the VP of product in MobileIron, a public Zero Trust/Endpoint security platform. Uri was an early employee and a manager in CheckPoint and Forescout - two well known Security brands. Uri holds an M.sc from Tel Aviv University and a B.sc from the Technion, Israel's Institute of Technology. You can find him on Linkedin. Cool things of the week Batter up! Anthos on bare metal helps MLB gear up for upcoming season blog Introducing Network Connectivity Center: A revolution in simplifying on-prem and cloud networking blog Interview Data Governance: The Definitive Guide: People, Processes, and Tools to Operationalize Data Trustworthiness book Goods White Paper doc Dremel White Paper doc BigQuery site Data Catalog site Identity and Access Management site Strata Data Superstream Series event What's something cool you're working on? Priyanka has been working on GCP Comics and new GCPSketchnotes. Stephanie is working on an animated series about data centers.

This week on the podcast, fellow Googlers Kaslin Fields and Anthony Bushong chat with hosts Mark Mirchandani and Stephanie Wong about how to optimize your spending with Google Kubernetes Engine. Cost optimization doesn't necessarily mean lower costs, Kaslin explains. It means running your application the best possible way and accommodating things like traffic spikes while keeping costs as low as possible. As our guests tell us, standard best practices can aid in optimization, but when it comes to efficiently running on a budget, there are more tips and tricks available in GKE. One of GKE's newest operation modes, Autopilot, means Kubernetes nodes are now managed by Google. Customers pay by the pod so the focus can be on the application rather than the details of clusters and their optimization. Best practices for resource utilization and autoscaling are included with Autopilot. Kaslin and Anthony break up Google's GKE cost optimization tips into four categories: multi-tenancy, autoscaling, infrastructure choice, and workload best practices and tell us how company culture effects these decisions. Proper education around Kubernetes and GKE specifically is the first step to using resources the most efficiently, Anthony tells us. Keeping tenants separate and resources well managed on multi-tenant clusters is made easier with Namespaces. Scaling pods and the infrastructure around them is an important part of optimization as well, and Anthony helps us understand the best practices for fine tuning the autoscaling features in GKE. Scaling infrastructure to handle spikes or lulls is an automatic feature with Autopilot, helping projects run smoothly. To control workloads efficiency, GKE now offers a host of features, including horizontal, vertical, and multidimensional pod autoscaling. Later, we walk through the steps for implementing some of these optimizations decisions while keeping your application running. GKE Usage Metering is a useful tool for measuring tenant usage in a cluster so resource distribution can be managed easier. Kaslin Fields Kaslin is a Developer Advocate at Google Cloud where she focuses on Google Kubernetes Engine. Anthony Bushong Anthony is a Specialist Customer Engineer at Google Cloud, where he focuses on Kubernetes. Cool things of the week A2 VMs now GA—the largest GPU cloud instances with NVIDIA A100 GPUs blog How carbon-free is your cloud? New data lets you know blog Our third decade of climate action: Realizing a carbon-free future blog Interview Kubernetes site GKE site Best practices for running cost-optimized Kubernetes applications on GKE docs Docker site Autopilot overview docs Namespaces docs Kubernetes best practices: Organizing with Namespaces blog Optimize cost to performance on Google Kubernetes Engine video Using node auto-provisioning docs Scaling workloads across multiple dimensions in GKE blog Enabling GKE usage metering docs Kubernetes in Google Cloud Qwiklabs site Kubernetes Engine Qwiklabs site Cloud Operations for GKE Qwiklabs site Earn the new Google Kubernetes Engine skill badge for free blog Beyond Your Bill videos Cloud On Air Webinar: Hands-on Lab: Optimizing Your Costs on Google Kubernetes Engine site Cloud OnBoard site Adopting Kubernetes with Spotify video

Stephanie Wong joins our old pal Mark Mirchandani this week to chat about BeyondCorp Enterprise and the way enterprise companies are using this security software. Ameet starts the show explaining BeyondCorp's three pillars of security, including how detailed customer and client knowledge aid in security. Kiran elaborates, stressing the importance of the web browser's contribution to a secure experience. With BeyondCorp Enterprise offerings, companies can layer additional protections in the cloud, supplementing the often lacking network model and adding better security protections across devices. BeyondCorp offers a simpler implementation structure as well. Things like monitoring can be switched on with a click. We hear about the features of BeyondCorp, including how users help shape the way BeyondCorp protects their projects. Ameet walks us through how a client could add BeyondCorp to their current security infrastructure and the specific benefits of doing so. BeyondCorp Enterprise, an easy off-the-shelf offering, was inspired by Google's own security measures. With automatic added protections in Chrome, BeyondCorp Enterprise takes the most secure browser in the world and ups the game for enterprise employees working from any device. Kiran describes these additional measures and why they're important for enterprise users. Ameet and Kiran tell us the steps required to set up the software and the customizations available. Enterprise customers should think through groups of users and what will be allowed by each. On the browser side, the three tiers of security features, including invisible features, can be implemented and changed easily. With the new BeyondCorp Enterprise, enterprise clients are now able to take advantage of the advanced security of the cloud. Through real company examples, Ameet and Kiran share with us the ways this software is already changing the enterprise security game. Kiran Nair Kiran Nair is a product manager on Google Chrome. His focus area is security, and keeping Chrome users safe from web based threats. Besides spending the last 12 years building software and hardware products, Kiran is a certified yoga trainer and enjoys a casual game of tennis in the evening Ameet Jani Ameet is the product manager for BeyondCorp Enterprise. Cool things of the week Introducing #AskGoogleCloud: A community driven YouTube live series blog Cloud On Air: Build the future with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) event Google Cloud Born-Digital Summit: Inspiring the next generation of technology leaders blog Interview BeyondCorp site BeyondCorp Enterprise on Google site GCP Podcast Episode 221: BeyondCorp with Robert Sadowski podcast An overview: "A New Approach to Enterprise Security" research paper How Google did it: "Design to Deployment at Google" research paper Google's frontend infrastructure: "The Access Proxy" research paper Migrating to BeyondCorp: "Maintaining Productivity while Improving Security" research paper The human element: "The User Experience" research paper Secure your endpoints: "Building a Healthy Fleet" research paper Question of the week Can you clearly explain GCP policy resource inheritance? What does it mean when the policy is effectively a union or additive? Resource Manager Understanding hierarchy evaluation Guide to Cloud Billing Resource Organization & Access Management

Jenny Brown and Mark Mirchandani are back this week to celebrate a special anniversary! This year marks ten years since the launch of the first Chromebooks, and our guests, Angela Gosz and Courtney Harrison, are here to reflect on the past and talk about the future Chrome OS. Chromebooks powered by Intel allow users to get the most out of their endpoints, serving as a secure and stable entrypoint to the Cloud. Our guests describe the key groups of Chromebook users and how the security, ease of use, and portability of Chrome OS benefits each group. The Google Admin Console allows more than 500 customizable security features to tailor the experience for employees or end customers, Angela explains. The changes brought on by the pandemic meant more companies had to support a distributed business, and Chrome OS has been able to facilitate this transition easily. With zero-touch enrollment, Chromebooks can be sent directly to employees, bypassing IT. Chromebooks can be configured through the Google Admin Console without any physical contact. Courtney tells us about her experiences with Chrome OS at Intel and how the automatic updates, computing speed, and other features have made her job easier. She explains the process of working with Google to develop Chromebook hardware and how the cloud comes into play for maximum performance. We talk about the many Chromebook options offered and what options will be available in the future. Angela Gosz Angela Gosz is a Customer Success Manager on the Chrome Enterprise Team, based out of Google Chicago. With 17 years of experience in the IT Industry, Angela has been on the leading edge of digital transformation implementations, supporting Enterprise organizations and partners to adopt and optimize their endpoint computing strategy - especially in Healthcare. Today she ensures customers realize the full potential of their investment in Chrome OS as a cloud-first endpoint. Outside of work, she has been meditating daily for 5 years, teaches yoga and is a certified Reiki practitioner. Angela holds a Bachelor's Degree in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Courtney Harrison Courtney is an Account Director with Intel Corporation based in the San Francisco Bay area. Currently Courtney leads a team that supports all of the Intel business interactions with Alphabet and Google. A twenty-one year Intel veteran, Courtney has spent the past fifteen years in field sales working with top multi-national customers and local OEMs. Courtney began her career at Intel in CPU operations. Courtney has both a Bachelor's and Master's Degree from Stanford University in Industrial Engineering. Cool things of the week A new podcast explores the unseen world of data centers blog Back by popular demand: Google Cloud products in 4 words or less (2021 edition) blog Save the date for Google Cloud Next '21: October 12-14, 2021 blog Interview Intel site Chromebook site Chrome OS site Chromebook turns 10 site Building the future of business computing: 10 years of Chrome OS blog Form Factor Portfolio site Deploy devices with zero-touch enrollment site Thunderbolt site WiFi 6 site CloudReady site MCA site What's something cool you're working on? Mark is working on Costs meet code with programmatic budget notifications. Sound Effects Attribution "LeDancing" by Frankum of Freesound.org "Jingle Romantic" by Jay_You of Freesound.org

Jenny Brown co-hosts with Mark Mirchandani this week for a great conversation about the ML lifecycle with our guests Craig Wiley and Dale Markowitz. Using a real-life example of bus cameras detecting potholes, Dale and Craig walk us through the steps of designing, building, implementing, and improving on a piece of machine learning software. The first step, Craig tells us, is to identify the data collected and determine its viability in an ML model. He describes how to get the best data for your project and how to keep the data, code, and libraries consistent to allow better analysis by your ML models. He talks about the importance of a Feature Store to aid in data consistency. Craig explains how machine learning pipelines like TensorFlow are great tools to improve consistency in the ML environment as well, making it easier to improve your model and even to build new ones using the same data. Keeping this consistency from data scientist analyzation to ML developer to model deployment means a more efficient process and product. Evaluating models after production is an important step in the lifecycle as well to ensure accuracy, validity, and performance of the model. Craig gives us some examples and tips on monitoring models after they've been deployed. We talk about the challenges of scaling ML projects and Craig offers advice for developers and companies looking to build ML projects. Dale Markowitz Dale Markowitz is an Applied AI Engineer for ML on Google Cloud. Before that, she was a software engineer in Google Research and an engineer at the online dating site OkCupid. Craig Wiley Craig is the Director of Product for Google Cloud's AI Platform. Previous to Google, Craig spent nine years at Amazon, as the General Manager of Amazon SageMaker, AWS' machine learning platform as well as in Amazon's 3rd Party Seller Business. Craig has a deep belief in democratizing the power of data, he pushes to improve the tooling for experienced users while seeking to simplifying it for the growing set of less experienced users. Outside of work he enjoys spending time with his family, eating delicious meals, and enthusiastically struggling through small home improvement projects. Cool things of the week Introducing GKE Autopilot: a revolution in managed Kubernetes blog At your service! With schedule-based autoscaling, VMs are at the ready blog Interview Google Cloud AI and Machine Learning Products site GCP Podcast Episode 240: reCAPTCHA Enterprise with Kelly Anderson + Spring ML Potholes with Eric Clark podcast Using machine learning to improve road maintenance blog Key requirements for an MLOps foundation blog TensorFLow site Kubeflow Pipelines site TensorBoard site How to dub a video with AI video Can AI make a good baking recipe? video Machine learning without code in the browser video What's something cool you're working on? Jenny started a new podcast that reads interesting Google blog posts over at Google Cloud Reader. Our friend Dr. Anton Chuvakin started the Cloud Security Podcast by Google. Read more about it and listen here. Follow the show and hosts on Twitter Cloud Security Podcast Anton and Tim And listen to Anton on the GCP Podcast Episode 218: Chronicle Security with Dr. Anton Chuvakin and Ansh Patniak.

Mark Mirchandani and Stephanie Wong are back this week as we learn about all the new things happening with Google Cloud Spanner. Our guests this week, Dilraj Kaur and Christoph Bussler, describe Cloud Spanner as a fully managed relational database that boasts unlimited scaling and advanced consistency and availability. Unlimited scaling truly means unlimited, and Chris explains why Cloud Spanner offers this feature and how it's making database design and development easier. Dilraj and Chris tell us all about the cool new features Spanner has developed, like generated columns and foreign keys, and how customer needs influenced these developments. Chris walks us through the process of using some of these new features, including how developers can monitor their database systems. Managed backups and multi-region configuration are additional recent additions to Cloud Spanner, and our guests explain how these are used by current enterprise clients. Dilraj and Chris explain the automatically managed features of Spanner versus the customer managed features and how people set up and manage database projects. We hear examples of companies using Cloud Spanner and how it has improved their businesses. Dilraj Kaur Dilraj Kaur is an Enterprise Customer Engineer with specialization in Data Management. She has been with Google for about 2.5 years and is based in Atlanta. Christoph Bussler As a Solutions Architect Chris is focusing on databases, data migration and data integration in enterprise customer settings. See his professional work and background on his website. Cool things of the week New to Google Cloud? Here are a few free trainings to help you get started blog Start your skills challenge today site Service Directory is generally available: Simplify your service inventory blog Interview Google Cloud Spanner site GCP Podcast Episode 62: Cloud Spanner with Deepti Srivastava podcast Using the Cloud Spanner Emulator docs Cloud Spanner Ecosystem site Cloud Spanner Qwiklabs site Google Cloud Platform Community On Slack site Creating and managing generated columns docs WITH Clause docs Foreign Keys docs Numeric Data Type docs Information schema docs Overview of introspection tools docs Backup and Restore docs Multi-region configurations docs ShareChat: Building a scalable data-driven social network for non-English speakers globally site Blockchain.com: Streamlining infrastructure for the world's most dynamic financial market site What is Cloud Spanner? video What's something cool you're working on? Mark has been working on budgeting blog posts, including Protect your Google Cloud spending with budgets. Stephanie is working on her data center animation series

This week on the podcast, Mark Mirchandani and Gabi Ferrara talk with Nimesh Bhagat about Cloud SQL Insights. This powerful tool enables developers to diagnose database issues for faster, smoother performance. Nimesh tells us the inspiration for Cloud SQL Insight's development and describes its biggest benefits. One of the important aspects of Insights is the ability for developers to gain an application-centric view by allowing them to tag database queries with SQL comments. These tags are aggregated in Insights and give developers a visual of the database queries. Here, developers can see load patterns and use that information to improve database efficiency. Cloud SQL Insights offers managed database analysis that helps developers understand the past and predict the future. Simplifying the journey of database debugging, Nimesh explains, was the goal of creating Cloud SQL Insights. He takes us through the process of using the software, pointing out the improvements Insights makes over the old way. Cloud SQL Insights only launched in January, but it's already helping numerous clients with their projects. Nimesh describes these real-world uses, including Major League Baseball experience as part of Insights Early Access Program. Nimesh Bhagat Nimesh is a product manager at Google Cloud, he leads Cloud SQL Insights. He has worked across engineering and product roles, building highly available and high performance enterprise infrastructure used by Fortune 500 companies. His passion lies in combining powerful infrastructure with simple user experience so that every business and developer can build software at scale and velocity. Cool things of the week A new collaboration with Google Cloud blog Don't fear the authentication: Google Drive edition blog Interview Cloud SQL Insights docs Cloud SQL Documentation docs GCP Podcast Episode 163: Cloud SQL with Amy Krishnamohan podcast Google Cloud Monitoring site Database observability for developers: introducing Cloud SQL Insights blog Introduction to Cloud SQL Insights codelab Boost your query performance troubleshooting skills with Cloud SQL Insights blog Introducing Sqlcommenter: An open source ORM auto-instrumentation library blog Introducing Cloud SQL Insights video Cloud SQL Github site What's something cool you're working on? Gabi is working on several things, including Schema Migrations with CI/CD pipelines. She is always available on Twitter and she offers free office hours! Sound Effects Attribution "Small Audience Laugh" by Tim Kahn of Freesound.org

Former GCP Podcast host Mark Mandel is our guest this week. He's talking Google Cloud Game Servers, Agones, and more with Mark Mirchandani and guest host Stephanie Wong. Mark explains how dedicated game servers work and why gaming has embraced the idea of dedicated servers. Online multiplayer gaming with its need for fast, consistent state sharing among players benefits from dedicated servers and offers cheating mitigation and reduced latency, as well as development flexibility. He tells us a little about the history of the open source project, Agones, and how it has helped Kubernetes run memory-state games efficiently on these dedicated servers. Google Cloud Game Servers work with layers of products to create a seamless multiplayer environment. Mark details this process and how Kubernetes, GKE, and Agones work together with these servers to accomplish this goal at scale. This situation is ideal for developers looking for the customizability and flexibility of a self-controlled system rather than a fully managed lift and shift model. Mark talks about the features of GCGS, including the versioning configuration system that allows you to create multiple configurations, and roll outs that give you control over distribution. We also learn a little about game building best practices and how Mark and his team advise and educate other game developers. Mark Mandel Mark Mandel is a Developer Advocate for the Google Cloud Platform. Hailing from Australia, Mark built his career developing backend web applications which included several widely adopted open source projects, and running an international conference in Melbourne for several years. Since then he has focused on becoming a polyglot developer, building systems in Go, JRuby and Clojure on a variety of infrastructures. In his spare time he plays with his dog, trains martial arts, and reads too much fantasy literature. Cool things of the week Google Cloud Docs Samples docs Limiting public IPs on Google Cloud blog Interview Google Cloud Game Servers site Agones site Agones Prerequisite Knowledge docs Kubernetes site GKE site Online Game Technology, Drawn Badly videos GCP Podcast Episode 142: Agones with Mark Mandel and Cyril Tovena podcast GCP Podcast Episode 202: Supersolid with Kami May podcast Multiplay site Accelbyte site Improbable site Find the right Google Cloud partner site Game Developers Conference site Agones on Slack site Agones on Twitter site Mark Mandel on Twitch site Mark Mandel on YouTube site What's something cool you're working on? Stephanie is working on Season of Scale season 5 and a data center animated series that will launch in a few weeks! Sound Effects Attribution "TrumpetBrassFanfare.wav" by ohforheavensake of Freesound.org "8-bit Video Game Sounds.wav" by ProjectsU012 of Freesound.org "music elevator.wav" by Jay_You of Freesound.org

Dustin Dye and Alex Seegers of Botcopy are on the show today, chatting with hosts Mark Mirchandani and Priyanka Vergadia. Botcopy uses advanced AI technology along with excellent copy writing to create better chat bots. The software works directly on a company website and doesn't require a login, allowing chats to stay anonymous. Our guests explain that their chat bots are treated like virtual employees, built and trained to function and speak appropriately for their specific job. Copy writing is an important part of this, as the conversational AI should continue to support the brand being represented and conversations should flow naturally. The bot personalities are developed through written copy and interactions with customers in instances like customer service, lead generation, and even some internal employee management needs. Later, we talk about how Dialogflow and Botcopy work together, including how Botcopy adds important user context to the conversation to facilitate more accurate bot responses. We hear more about Dialogflow CX and how the modular builder makes designing and controlling bot conversations easier. CX has also made managing multiple bots on a single account easier and team collaboration more efficient. The visual builder available in CX offers a better chatbot design experience, especially when multiple teams are working on the same bot. We hear examples of great use-cases for Botcopy, like restaurant menus, clinical trials, and more. Alex and Dustin give developers valuable advice about working with clients to build their bots. Test early and often to build a robust bot capable of handling many situations. It's important to have an analytics system in place to identify possible improvement areas as well. Dustin Dye Dustin Dye is co-founder and CEO of Botcopy. After developing branded character and dialogue content for the #1 business bots on Messenger and Slack, Dustin launched Botcopy in 2017. Before co-founding Botcopy, Dustin had co-founded Expert Dojo, one of Silicon Beach's largest startup incubator, serving, mentoring, and securing funding for some of the most exciting businesses coming out of LA. Dustin is a frequent keynote speaker at leading Chatbot conferences in the US and abroad. Alexander Seegers Alexander Seegers is a co-founder and COO of Botcopy and heads up the product team. He holds a Business degree from Northeastern and UX certification from General Assembly. Alex has consulted tech leaders at Fortune 500 companies worldwide, spearheading their forays into conversational AI for multiple use cases at the enterprise level. In addition to big-picture leadership and vision, Alex is adept at numerous coding languages and complex systems architecture. Cool things of the week Introducing WebSockets, HTTP/2 and gRPC bidirectional streams for Cloud Run blog Take the first step toward SRE with Cloud Operations Sandbox blog Interview Botcopy site Botcopy Blog blog Contact Botcopy email Dialogflow site Miro site What's something cool you're working on? Priyanka is working on Dialogflow CX episodes for the Deconstructing Chatbots series.

Welcome back to a new year of Google Cloud Platform Podcasts! Mark Mirchandani and Emma Iwao host the first show of 2021 with special guest Rebecca Weekly of Intel. She joins us to talk about the partnership between Google Cloud and Intel. Describing the company's goals of gathering, storing, managing, and analyzing data in all its forms to unlock the power of technology and information, Rebecca points out how well these align with Google's own goals and why the partnership is such a natural fit. Rebecca explains the four pillars of the Google-Intel partnership, including the focus on infrastructure and app modernization to elevate the user experience. Through their work with Google, Intel has been able to optimize the move from on prem to cloud for those clients who choose to make the shift, using their thorough client knowledge and Google Cloud expertise to facilitate a smooth transition. Rebecca walks us through the process of crafting this client experience, from choosing products and tools to identifying and solving any bottlenecks and optimizing the configuration using benchmarks. Later, we talk about the value of open source software in both the hardware and software worlds and why Intel believes so strongly in open source projects. Rebecca offers examples of clients successfully using Intel hardware and Google Cloud software, including Climacell and Kinsta. We get the inside scoop on future projects at Intel, like the next generation of scalable Xeon processors, and Rebecca talks about the future of data analyzation and computing. Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Rebecca Weekly Rebecca leads the team that influences nearly every aspect of our cloud platform solutions across strategic planning, hardware and software enabling, marketing and sales. Together they shape the development, production, and business strategy of Intel's cloud platforms to ensure differentiation and platforms that enable TAM expansion with enthusiasm, collaboration, and urgency. She drives strategic collaborations with key partners including top cloud service providers, OxMs, ISVs & OSVs to ensure platform requirements meet our customer needs. In her "spare" time, she's the lead singer of a funk & soul band, Sinister Dexter, was professionally trained in dance (tap, modern, and jazz), and is an experienced choreographer. She has two amazing little boys and loves to run (after them, and on her own). Rebecca graduated from MIT with a degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Cool things of the week 97 Things Every Cloud Engineer Should Know Book Introducing Google Cloud Workflows video Interview Intel site Google Cloud withe Intel site TensorFlow site Anthos site Intel Select Solutions site PerfKit Benchmarker site Google Cloud Functions site Climacell site Blue Skies Ahead: ClimaCell Delivers Innovative Weather Prediction Solutions doc Kinsta site Benchmarking GCP's Compute-Optimized VMs (C2) blog Arcules site Descartes Labs site DAOS site Optane site What's something cool you're working on? Emma was a guest on GCP Podcast Episode 167: World Pi Day with Emma Haruka Iwao. Emma is working on the Ruby 3.0 support and release and deprecation policy. Ruby is now available on Google Cloud Functions! Sound Effects Attribution "Partyhorn" by Milton of Freesound.org "ToiletFlush" by EminYildirim of Freesound.org

This week, four of the podcast's greatest hosts come together to celebrate all of the fun and informative episodes we've been privileged to do this year! Join Mark Mirchandani, Jon Foust, Priyanka Vergadia, and Brian Dorsey as we talk about our favorite guests and shows, some cool things that happened this year, and what we're looking forward to in 2021! Cool things of the week A Giant List of Google Cloud Resources blog Google Cloud 4 Words site Our favorite episodes Jon's Favorites GCP Podcast Episode 212: Data Management with Amy Krishnamohan podcast GCP Podcast Episode 237: NVIDIA with Bryan Catanzaro podcast Priyanka's Favorite GCP Podcast Episode 240: reCAPTCHA Enterprise with Kelly Anderson + Spring ML Potholes with Eric Clark podcast Mark's Favorites GCP Podcast Episode 242: NASA and FDL with James Parr and Madhulika Guhathakurta podcast GCP Podcast Episode 217: Cost Optimization with Justin Lerma and Pathik Sharma podcast GCP Podcast Episode 228: Fastly with Tyler McMullen podcast Brian's Favorites GCP Podcast Episode 223: Voice Coding with Emily Shea and Ryan Hileman podcast GCP Podcast Episode 233: Bare Metal Solution with James Harding and Gurmeet Goindi podcast GCP Podcast Episode 212: Data Management with Amy Krishnamohan podcast Sound Effects Attribution "Bad Beep" by RicherLandTV of Freesound.org "Small Group Laugh 6" by Tim.Kahn of Freesound.org "It's Always Night in Space" by JamesSilvera of HDInteractive.com "Easy Cheesy" by LoboLoco of FreeMusicArchive.org

Guest host Sara Ford joins our old favorite Mark Mirchandani this week for a special interview with NASA and FDL. Our guests, James Parr and Madhulika Guhathakurta, give us a super cool, in-depth look at how NASA and FDL do what they do. Lika explains the important scientific studies she has worked on during her years at NASA and how she came to understand and appreciate Machine Learning. James introduces us to the Frontier Development Lab, a project collaborated on by private and public companies to leverage AI and Machine Learning in the research of science, exploration, and many other disciplines. From saving Earth from asteroids to conducting research on our sun, James describes the process of solving these solar system sized problems, starting with creating a solid team. Machine Learning is a team sport, he says, and like making a Hollywood film, it takes many people from different backgrounds to find these solutions. The cloud has been integral in facilitating this meeting of the minds and the analyzing of data at FDL. Later, we talk about the process of astronomical research before the current technological age and how techniques have advanced into the 21st century. James tells us the origin story of FDL and how they were tasked with applying Machine Learning to complex problems like planetary defense and space weather. Lika describes space weather and details how it impacts our planet. We talk about the role of data engineers in the team sport of astro-research and how data is collected and analyzed. Lika emphasizes the benefits of building a working system and how the processes can be applied to many other disciplines. James and Lika wrap up the show with a look at what cool things they expect in the future. James Parr James is Director of the Frontier Development Lab, in partnership with NASA ARC and the SETI Institute. FDL has successfully demonstrated that structured interdisciplinary problem solving, sprint methodologies, radical collaboration methods and partnering with leaders in commercial AI, such as Google Cloud, are powerful amplifiers in applying AI to the science and technology goals of space agencies. Madhulika(Lika) Guhathakurta, PhD For the past two decades, Lika has led the development of Heliophysics as an integrated scientific discipline from which fundamental discoveries about our universe provide direct societal benefits. As the Lead for the Living With a Star (LWS) program for 16 years (2001-2016), she made possible the flagship missions (e.g. the Solar Dynamics Observatory, Van Allen Probes, Solar Orbiter Collaboration and Parker Solar Probe) including STEREO that would revolutionize our understanding of how the Sun shapes space weather in the solar system. To accelerate innovation and scientific discovery she created funding mechanisms to shepherd traditional domain scientists out of their comfort zones to create LWS system science known as Targeted Research & Technology program and Focused Science Teams that foster competitive, yet collaborative environments that promote the crosspollination of ideas and technology. To nurture the next generation of leaders in Heliophysics, she created the Jack Eddy Fellowship Program which has become an important channel for the professional growth of promising researchers and has been successful at promoting the careers of many women scientists reaching 50% parity with men. Since 2017, she was the driving force at NASA Headquarters and at NASA Ames behind the growth of Frontier Development Laboratory, both in terms of the breadth of problem areas tackled as well as in the number of agency and industry partners (e.g. Google, Nvidia, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Planet). The types of innovative solutions include virtual telescopes, data fusion, edge computing, and autonomy and this approach will have an enduring imprint on the way science and exploration is carried out by future generations. Cool things of the week Prepare for Google Cloud certification with one free month of new Professional Certificates on Coursera blog GCP Podcast Episode 239: Cloud Learning Services with Nandhini Rangan and Magda Jary podcast NASA's OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Collects Significant Amount of Asteroid site Interview NASA site Frontier Development Lab (FDL) site Oort Information site Sound Effects Attribution "Bad Beep" by RicherLandTV of Freesound.org "Small Group Laugh 6" by Tim.Kahn of Freesound.org

Mark and Brian are together this week, hosting our guests Senanu Aggor and Ilias Katsardis as we discuss High Performance Computing with Google. HPC uses powerful computers to solve problems that would otherwise be too large or take too long for standard machines. Innovation and advances in cloud technology have made this resource more accessible, more scalable, and more affordable. Senanu lists some great use cases for HPC, including vehicle manufacturing and the medical field and describes how these markets benefit from the extra power HPC offers. Ilias talks tech and helps us understand the evolution of the Google HPC offering and the architecture most often used with HPC. He explains the benefits of HPC on the cloud over the old way, emphasizing the flexibility of choosing machines based on your code rather than forcing your code onto small machines. Storage of data is flexible, scalable, and secure as well. Diminishing VM to VM latency has been an important advancement in HPC, and Ilias describes how Google has decreased latency. Google Cloud customers are using the HPC offering for all kinds of large computing jobs, and Senanu details some of these real world instances. From Covid vaccine research to disaster evacuation planning, HPC on the cloud is changing the way we process data. Later, Ilias tells our listeners how to get started with their HPC project. Senanu Aggor Senanu Aggor is the Product Marketing Manager for Google Cloud's High Performance Computing (HPC) solution. Ilias Katsardis Ilias Katsardis is the HPC Solution Lead for the Customer Engineering team (EMEA) at Google. In this role, Ilias brings over 14 years of experience in the cloud computing and high-performance computing industries to promote Google Cloud's state-of-the-art infrastructure for complex HPC workloads. Previously, he worked as an applications analyst at Cray Inc., where he was a dedicated analyst to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), and, prior to that, was an HPC application specialist at ClusterVision. Ilias also founded two startups Airwire Networks in 2006 and Performance Hive in 2017. Cool things of the week What's happening in BigQuery: Time unit partitioning, Table ACLs and more blog BigQuery explained: Blog series blog BigQuery Spotlight videos Cloud Functions vs. Cloud Run video Interview High Performance Computing site GCP Podcast Episode 237: NVIDIA with Bryan Catanzaro podcasdt GCP Podcast Episode 167: World Pi Day with Emma Haruka Iwao podcast Compute Engine site Compute Engine Machine Types site Cloud Storage site Cloud Firestore site Google Cloud with Intel site Cloud GPUs site Best practices for running tightly coupled HPC applications on Compute Engine site Super Computing Event site Stackchat at home This week, Max Saltonstall is talking cyber analytics with Eric Dull from Deloitte.

This week, your hosts Mark Mirchandani and Priyanka Vergadia are joined by Google Product Marketing Lead for Online Fraud Protection, Kelly Anderson, to talk about reCAPTCHA Enterprise. Kelly's main focus at Google, reCAPTCHA, is a service that helps online companies determine if a user is a human or an automated system. With an advanced risk analysis engine, Google's reCAPTCHA system has been defending sites from fraud for more than a decade. We talk about the evolution of reCAPTCHA and learn about the specific attributes of each version. Later, we focus on reCAPTCHA Enterprise which caters this security software to enterprise companies. Like version three, Enterprise boasts detailed risk analysis and actions. Companies can also expect reason codes for high risk scores and the ability to use the risk analysis engine customized to their company. They are able to find bots impersonating users and neutralize them easily. reCAPTCHA Enterprise is easy to use, whether you're a Google Cloud customer or not. With the handy API, any company can take advantage of this security feature. Kelly leads us through the steps of deploying the API and details instances where this software plays a vital role in the protection of your website across multiple devices. Kelly takes us through the reCAPTCHA Enterprise dashboard and talks about the future as we conclude the show. reCAPTCHA hopes to move beyond behavioral protection to continue to stay ahead of malicious actors online. As Kelly explains, Machine Learning will become more and more important as fraud detection continues to grow and change. Kelly Anderson Kelly Anderson currently leads product marketing for Google Cloud's online fraud protection business. She devotes most of her time to working on reCAPTCHA Enterprise and Web Risk and is passionate about helping businesses and their customers stay protected from fraud and abuse. Prior to Google, she worked in product marketing for Microsoft in Azure, where she marketed a variety of security products and business continuity products. For more information about Kelly Anderson and her leather jacket, you can follow her on Twitter. Cool things of the week Introducing HTTP/gRPC server streaming for Cloud Run blog Introducing Google Workspace blog Interview reCAPTCHA Enterprise site reCAPTCHA enterprise product demo video Top 10 use cases for reCAPTCHA Enterprise to defend against OWASP Web-Automated Attacks site Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise: Frictionless, Flexible, and Effective Web App Security site Stackchat at home This week, Max Saltonstall is fixing potholes in Memphis with Eric Clark of SpringML. What's something cool you're working on? Priyanka has been working on Google Cloud Whiteboard episodes Operations and CDN. She's been working on new comic strips for zero trust and new GCPSketchnotes as well!

Jon Foust joins Mark this week as we talk with Nandhini Rangan and Magda Jary about Cloud Learning Services. The Cloud Learning Services team is passionate about helping technical practitioners elevate their careers and transform businesses by building and validating in-demand Google Cloud skills. Nandhini explains that a lack of technical practitioners with skills in the cloud is one of the biggest barriers to entry for companies considering the shift. But with the right knowledge, companies that take full advantage of cloud environments are proven to be more efficient, reach more of their goals, and overall, be more successful. Cloud Learning Services offerings empower technical practitioners and companies to learn new skills, put these skills into practice, and achieve their objectives. Magda tells us that these training courses focus around job roles in the cloud. The cloud has necessitated a shift in the idea of development learning, she tells us, explaining that nowadays, the focus is on job roles, like Data Scientist, and the technological requirements of that job rather than learning one coding language. We talk later about the specific offerings Cloud Learning Services provides. With a focus on hands-on learning, technical practitioners are put into the real Google Cloud environment with Qwiklabs, while videos and lectures accompany the material. Job-specific skill badges and certifications are earned as courses are completed, allowing technical practitioners and employers to better understand what proficiency in each job role looks like. Our guests tell us more about Qwiklabs and how its sandbox environment facilitates better learning without the added cost and commitment of services that they may not be ready to use. When the time for real-world development comes, this hands-on approach means no disconnect between learning and applying. We talk more about the Challenge Labs used to test learning and the skill badges earned on completion. To wrap up, we discuss the future of Cloud Learning Services and how the team stays on top of new technologies and job roles to keep learning materials updated and fun. The team is working on new material for badging and certifying business professionals as well. Resources to check out to learn more about Google Cloud training and certifications: https://cloud.google.com/training https://cloud.google.com/certification Follow a learning path designed to help you prepare for the certification most suited to your role: https://g.co/cloud/getcertified Nandhini Rangan Nandhini Rangan works at Google Cloud Learning and is very passionate about the topic of upskilling, reskilling, and especially for cloud roles that are needed in organizations today, but also defining the roles and jobs of the future. She is based in Canada and works out of Toronto. She started her career as a Software Engineer, went on and got her MBA and then spent many years in operations and strategy including a stint as a management consultant. Learning was always top of mind for her and she decided to make the jump to join a learning organization full time in 2018 with Google Cloud. She launched the Google Cloud Technical Residency program, worked in the Higher Education learning space bringing programs to faculty and students globally, and currently works as a learning portfolio manager helping bring cloud training content closer to its audiences. Magda Jary Magda Jary is responsible for all aspects of Google Cloud Certification and Digital Badges go-to market and her mission is to grow Cloud skill sets. She joined Google in 2008 after graduating with two Masters degrees: Media and Communications at Warsaw School of Economics and International Management at Rotterdam School of Management. Currently based in San Francisco, she has been leading global learning and engagement programs for Google Cloud customers and partners. Magda is a frequent guest speaker at events dedicated to skills development, diversity, and women in tech. She is a certified yoga teacher and has completed a mindfulness teacher certification. She teaches the Search Inside Yourself training at Google, a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course for leaders. Cool things of the week Announcing Google Cloud Public Sector Summit, a free global digital event: Dec. 8-9 blog 5 tips for more interactive meetings with Q&A and Polls, rolling out to Google Meet blog Add a more accurate sense of place to your applications using these five YouTube tutorials blog GCP Podcast Episode 181: Google Maps Platform with Angela Yu podcast Interview Google Cloud Training site Google Cloud Skill Badges site Qwiklabs site Deploy to Kubernetes in Google Cloud site Professional Machine Learning Engineer Certification site Coursera site Codelabs site TSIA Star Awards site Question of the week I've been interested in the Cloud Architect Certification and after listening to the interview, I've be inspired to look into taking it. What training material

ML in machinery is our main topic this week as Mark Mirchandani and Brian Dorsey talk with Arnaud Hubaux, development lead for ASML. Our good friend, fellow Googler, and ML specialist Dale Markowitz joins the conversation as well! With a potent combination of physics and Machine Learning, ASML develops machines that build the chips powering our essential devices. These highly refined machines optimize production for each specific customer, detect defects, and make corrections quickly and accurately by harnessing the power of Machine Learning. The machines also effectively train themselves to ensure the intense accuracy required is sustained over time. Arnaud describes the process these machines go through in order to accomplish these goals, including how they build and train their ML models with the help of physics. Arnaud tells us how the machine's closed ML system works from zero to train the particular job it will do. By taking a minimum spec chip that has already been created, the machine learns the process for creating that chip and continues to improve that process. These machines are not only able to detect problems but can figure out why these issues are occurring, decreasing production downtime. Recently, ASML moved to Google Cloud. We talk about the products they use, why they chose Google Cloud, and their journey to the cloud. Arnaud Hubaux Arnaud Hubaux is development lead for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning products at ASML. He works with the world's biggest chip manufacturers on AI-driven solutions to solve problems like optimizing production yield. As a trailblazer, Arnaud and his team implemented the first ASML AI application development pipeline on Google Cloud. With a PhD on applied constraint solving, Arnaud has deep experience as an architect of software platforms and product lifecycle management. Cool things of the week Cloud migration: What you need to know (and where to find it) blog All together now: Fleet-wide monitoring for your Compute Engine VMs blog SRE Classroom: exercises for non-abstract large systems design blog gVisor: Protecting GKE and serverless users in the real world blog Interview ASML site ASML in One Minute video Zoom in on the chip in your smartphone video KubeFlow site BigQuery site AI Platform Notebooks site Cloud Build site Introduction to Kubeflow video Intro to Kubeflow Pipelines video How to Build a Kubeflow Pipeline video Tip of the week We have a super cool tip on combining AI and WTH with meetings and webcams! Check out the Level Up - AI Director and Level Up - Real-Time Video Translation with AR Subtitles videos! What's something cool you're working on? Mark is working on some upcoming Kubernetes content. Brian is working on an upcoming series of GCE videos with Carter Morgan.