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.