In today’s discussion, we are talking about Google Cloud Next 2019 event, the annual event where it is all about Google Cloud. The event happened in San Francisco over the course of 4 days last week. We are bringing you the 6 main changes that Google has announced during the summit.
1. Anthos
Let’s start with Anthos. Anthos is the new Google Cloud Services Platform that was introduced at the Google Cloud Next 2019 event. It allows companies to run applications in their private data centre and in Google’s cloud. Moreover, Google expanded its support to the competing cloud service platforms. Thus organisations will be able to use one single platform for their applications on any cloud service. That makes Anthos a one-stop shop. All of this is powered by containers and Kubernetes that Google has been pushing for years.
Google surprised the world by the launch of a product that allows users to run applications on other platforms. The profit, after all, is in charging fees for compute time and storage allocations. The company says that the reason behind it is the demand from customers. However, another reason behind it is, of course, the fact that it allows Google to differentiate itself from its competitors.
2. Open-source integrations into the Google Cloud Console
The products of multiple open-source companies would be integrated into Google’s Cloud Console. Not only that but Google would also make them the first-party services in the future. Right now, the partners are Confluent, DataStax, Elastic, InfluxData, MongoDB, Neo4j and Redis Labs. Nevertheless, it is likely that others will follow over time.
The integrations are a boost in Google Cloud’s service open source offerings. Especially, when some customers are likely to be already using some of these services. Take Wiredelta® as an example, who is using MongoDB on multiple projects. The organizations will get support from these companies while managing the services from a single console and paying just one bill. However, the subtext is a bit more complicated than that. As it reveals Google’s approach to open source putting it into contrast with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The issue arises because many of the companies that are participating here are highly critical of AWS’s treatment of open source.
3. Google’s AI Platform
Google sees its AI capabilities as one of the main differentiators in its fight against its competitors. There is already a wide range of AI tools offered by Google. Tools such as developer tools and services for advanced data scientists like Tensorflow to AutoML. The new AI Platform offers an end-to-end solution for more advanced developers. It allows ingesting data for training and testing their models, to put them into production all in an automatic fashion. This will help organisations across the globe tremendously. As they will be able to apply state of the art data science and machine learning to their data, without building their own data science division.
All big cloud providers are mainly focusing on AI (and machine learning). The end-to-end solution is obviously great news as machine learning is one step closer to a wider range of potential users. Nevertheless, the experience for developers still leaves lots of room for improvement.
4. Your phone is now a security key
The use of a physical key for two-factor authentication is going to go away if you choose to. You will be able to use any Android 7+ phone as a security key, too. All you need to do is just set it up in your Google Account and your phone will then use Bluetooth to provide the second factor. At this moment, it only works with Chrome. However, the company aspire to turn this into a standard. Nevertheless, Google still recommends you use a regular key as a backup in case of god-forbid that horrific day when you lose your phone.
Two-factor authentication is much safer than just using your login and password. Even systems that use SMS and push-notifications are not 100% safe. On the other hand security keys, the new Android-based system included, use the same standards as existing keys. Security keys prevent phishing attacks by making sure that you are on a legitimate site. This new system could increase the number of people using two-factor authentication
5. Google Cloud Code
Cloud Code is a set of plugins and extensions for popular IDE’s like IntelliJ and VS Code. Developers are provided with all of the necessary tools to build cloud-native applications. They can simply write their applications like before, but then package them as cloud-native apps and ship them to a Kubernetes cluster for testing and production. Pretty neat stuff.
Writing cloud-native apps is complicated and usually involves writing complex configuration files. Cloud Code ideally makes all of this so easy that it’ll be far easier for developers as well as for the companies that employ them to make this move to modern infrastructure.
6. Google Cloud aims at retailers
The best left for the end. Google is launching a vertical solution that’s justly aimed at retailers. Okay, we know, that doesn’t sound like such a big deal. But Google Cloud plans to offer more of these specialized solutions over time.
The CEO of Google said that customers are asking for these kinds of integrated solutions. Solutions that package some of the companies existing tools into integrated solutions. So they are bringing them to the customers. This is essentially the first time it is doing so (with maybe the exception of healthcare), but it’ll likely offer more of these over time. They could also easily become a major factor in growing the platform’s user base.
Conclusion
So here is a list of 6 main changes that Google announced at the Google Cloud Next 2019 event. If you are interested in more news, don’t forget to visit our blog. Last but not least, if you have an idea for a native of a hybrid app or a web application, don’t hesitate to contact us! Let’s make the world digital together.
