My 5 faves from Next22

At 谷歌 , our purpose is "to improve the lives of as many people as possible" - over the last 24 years, in pursuit of that purpose, Googlers all over the world have built many apps that have shifted our paradigm from a company that helps people find answers to a company that helps people get things done. 10 of our apps serve billions of users every month, and help them in their everyday moments. And through Google Cloud , we get an enormous opportunity to expand that aperture and reach even more consumers, through the many enterprises that we serve their transformation journey. And to do that, we keep a few North Stars in mind as we built our planet-scale services:

• Are our services simple to use, fastest to deploy and provide the best technology infrastructure?
• Can our services help deliver faster insights and decision making capabilities to support and augment decision making?
• Do our services help you connect better, collaborate faster, remove friction and boundaries in the hybrid world we live in?
• Are our services helping keep data, systems and users secure? Not only on our platform but helping customers make open source choices more confidently?
• Finally, are we helping drive a sustainable future? Are we helping our users build through an inclusive lens and promoting representation?

Our 123 announcements at #Next22 mirror and amplify our North Stars. I have many more hours of content to listen to....but here are my 5 faves so far!

1. We introduced 5 new Google Cloud regions in Austria, Greece, Norway, South Africa and Sweden. In full transparency, this is #1 on my list because I HEART #datacenters. I spend a lot of time in my early career helping build new data centers (I still maintain that pulling fiber cables and laying them symmetrically is an ART)... a beautifully laid-out clean, green data center with rows of humming machines, blinking lights and well-organized cables always drives home the amazing power of technology in connecting the world and democratizing access. Google's networks carry 25% of the world's internet traffic and our sub-sea cables play a starring role in connecting the world! From a global socio-economic context, Google Cloud regions help contribute to local economic and job growth in the markets where we operate. According to preliminary estimates from?AlphaBeta Economics?commissioned by Google, the nine new Google Cloud regions we’ve announced this year (4 were announced in August) are expected to collectively contribute?a cumulative USD 40.2 billion to GDP by 2030.
2. We now have a new Google Cloud?Skills Boost annual subscription?that includes?Innovators Plus developer benefits?for $299/year. Operating in the cloud is a paradigm shift for all organizations - it's a journey, not a light switch. Key to the transformation of any organization is cloud fluency across the entire organization. Companies undertaking a transformation often look for the purple unicorn - that all knowing cloud ninja who can magically move everyone to the cloud - poof! We haven't found one yet - but we do know that the talent you need ALREADY exists on your teams. You need to invest in the education of your people and create a culture of experimentation. Join us in the journey to close the gap of cloud skills shortage with the bold ambition of getting 40M people with cloud skills. #skillstransformation
3. We launched Translation Hub?- a fully managed, self-serve AI Agent that lets localization managers and other employees translate content into 135 languages at the click of a button, helping promote more inclusive, impactful communication while also cutting costs and hyperscaling content. This one is close to my heart because the power to break down the language barriers and truly connect the world was made available through Google Translate - democratizing access and truly living Google's purpose of improving the lives of as many people as possible. With Translation Hub, the same capability is now available to all businesses through #googlecloud - to enable their users become better connected.
4. I have this belief that once you are a Google Workspace user, you can never go back to the other collaboration tools. I mean - you might HAVE to, but you will always miss #GoogleWorkspace. Don't take my word for it - just try #GoogleMeet, where Auto transcriptions removes the burden of taking notes (English, with French, German, Portuguese and Spanish coming in 2023) OR noise cancellation mutes any extraneous noises from typing, barking dogs, banging doors, yelling kids (I have personally pushed the boundaries of these!). Or try #GoogleDocs smartcanvas with auto-generated summaries, the recently expanded @ menu making it easier to insert tables, images, add actions, create email templates, a new Maps chip to insert #GoogleMaps directions directly in the doc - I could go on and on, but read all about it in our #CollaborationCloud announcements here

With that, I had such a hard time picking #5. I debated going to 10 faves (but you would stop reading at 5, right?), drank 3 cups of coffee, wrote and rewrote #5, felt guilty about playing favorites - but finally arrived at this one: Our announcements in Data. So here goes my last pick:

5. We have all heard that data is the new currency, the new oil - pick your favorite metaphor. Depending on which analyst report you pick up (Statista, IDC), the volume of data created globally will grow to 181 Zettabytes by 2025. 2/3rd of this data is never touched and 95% of businesses will tell you that getting insights and value out of data is a problem. Data quality is a $3.1T problem in US alone. #GoogleCloud is taking big steps in helping you understand the data in your organization and connected ecosystem - from descriptive, to predictive to prescriptive. BigQuery now lets you analyze unstructured and streaming data, such as raw documents and PDFs, video and audio, even call center logs—as much as 90% of all data is considered unstructured. BigLake now supports a trio of popular data formats: Apache Iceberg, the Linux Foundation’s?Delta Lake, and — coming soon — Apache Hudi. Updates to?Dataplex?will automate common processes related to data quality and data lineage, cutting down on manual work to clean up data and enhancing accuracy overall. You can now access Looker models from Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio). AND we want to continue to be the most open and collaborative cloud - we expanded integrations to our data cloud products with several popular enterprise data platforms, including Collibra , Databricks , Elastic , Fivetran , MongoDB , Sisu Data, Reltio , and Striim .

Learn more about all our 123 announcements at: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/google-cloud-next/google-cloud-next22-wrap-up

PS - Those were my favorite announcements. I should add that my favorite part of #CloudNext22 was hanging out with our many partners, customers and #Googlers in PERSON!!

I see you Lilah Jones !

Thank you for the conversations on transformation and partnership Mark Ardito Mike Kennedy

Always fun hanging with the coolest #CustomerEngineers in the industry: Aaron Hanlon Mark Prinz