Top takeaways from Google Next

Up to 123 announcements were made during Google Cloud Next '22, a hybrid event with livestream broadcasts from New York City, Sunnyvale, Tokyo, Bengaluru, India, and Munich.

These are our top takeaways divided into Open Infrastructure & Data, Collaboration, Security and Sustainability.

Open data cloud

Several new features were announced to enable the aggregation and analysis of information in any format, from any source and from any cloud provider:

• Translation Hub: to deliver translation at scale in 135 languages, through Google Cloud’s AI agent. It takes full documents, including images and translates them preserving their original layouts and formatting.
• Data Studio and Looker come together: unification of its two popular business intelligence tools, Looker and Google Data Studio, together with core Google technologies like AI and ML, combining the reports that users create in self-service mode with Looker data models.  Also, they announced a preview of Looker support for Power BI.
• Unstructured data analysis in BigQuery, including audio and video: 90% of data is unstructured. BigQuery includes the ability to analyse unstructured and streaming data including PDFs, audio and video. With BigQuery Omni, it is possible to analyse data from other clouds without moving it from its source.
• Big Query support of key storage formats for data lakes and data warehouses through BigLake: It now supports Apache Iceberg and will soon support Delta Lake and Apache Hudi. It provides a new integrated BigQuery experience for Apache Spark that will speed up processing times,
• Vertex AI Vision: this new service converts computer vision and recognition of images, video and audio into structured data in real time and securely through AI. It reduces the time to create computer vision applications from weeks to just hours.
• Compatibility with all major SaaS applications: GoogleCloud has joined many of the most influential data companies to guarantee open standards and interoperability.

Open infrastructure cloud

The most notable infrastructure and migration updates are as follows

• 5 new cloud regions

  Sweden, Norway, Austria, Greece and South Africa have been added, bringing the total to 48 regions.

• Workload-optimised infrastructure for 7 key workloads:
1. AI for which the Tensor Processing unit v4 (TPU v4) was built, running large-scale training workloads 80% faster and 50% cheaper.
2. High Performance Computing with new C3 instances that include the Intel Sapphire rapid processor, and a new hyper disk system.
3. Media Streaming. Google has built Media CDN using a global network and its experience with Youtube.
4. Sovereign. Assured workloads allow you to configure a regulatory compliant environment in minutes.
5. Traditional. New capabilities with VMware to migrate workloads directly from the VMware console, and Dual run to rehost mainframe workloads in the cloud.
6. Cloud-first. Cluster automation, management and scaling with GKE Autopilot and Anthos multi-cluster. Google Distributed Cloud Edge for low latency applications.
7. Web 3. New partnership with Coinbase to better serve the Web3 ecosystem.
• Anthos: Improved user interface and virtual machine support on Anthos for retail environments.
• Dual Run and Migration Center: New migration centre, which brings together assessment, planning, migration and modernisation tools in a single point. Dual Run removes migration obstacles in legacy mainframe environments.
• Open source AI: Participation alongside other leading vendors in the OpenXLA Project, an open source ecosystem of ML technologies.

Collaboration cloud

The physical office is no longer the only space to work together. Google Workspace’s vision has always been to allow people to connect to collaborate wherever they are. Now, a new era of communication, expression, and co-creation is powered by new advancements in artificial intelligence

• Immersive Connections with Google Meet and Smart Canvas:
• Google Meet is reinforced with new features, such as embedding video directly into Presentations, speaker spotlight and AI-powered cameras that provide adaptive framing to clearly see the people in the room. 
• Smart Canvas now allows you to create easily accessible templates in Google Docs, with customised building blocks. New smart chips will soon be launched to interact with other third-party tools without the need to switch tabs.
• Work safer: Confidentiality extension with Client-side encryption for Google Calendar and Gmail as well as support for global data loss prevention in real time in Google Chat.
• New APIs for Meet and Chat will allow developers to access functions from third-party applications like LumApps, Asana or Zendesk, from which it will be possible to do things such as initiating messages or creating and starting meetings. It will also be possible to integrate apps directly into Meet.

Finally, Google has announced the Starline project, a feature that allows co-workers to feel as if they are together even when they are in other cities through a 3D model that is entering a new testing phase, but when it is ready, will be a real revolution.

Trusted cloud advanced security

Security threats are growing in sophistication, scale and impact. Google takes responsibility for maintaining privacy and security in all its products, so they have built security into the platform rather than adding to it.

To quickly and effectively identify and resolve cyber threats they have launched

• Chronicle Security Operations: It consolidates security analytics, automation, and thread intelligence allowing cyber security teams to detect, investigate and respond to threats with Google’s scale, speed and intelligence.
• Confidential Space: the next solution in its confidential computing portfolio will help unlock the value of secure data collaboration.
• Google Cloud Ready - Sovereign Cloud: New partner and customer program to deliver cloud solutions with the highest levels of sovereignty, control and transparency
• Software Delivery Shield. A fully managed, end-to-end software supply chain security solution to create software faster, and more securely from source to deployment.

Sustainability

People, government and corporations are more concerned and motivated than ever but need access to information to improve on their ESG commitments.

• Google Cloud Carbon Footprint is now generally available and free for every user in the Cloud Console to be able to see and optimize their carbon impact.
• Google Maps Platform will soon launch its Eco-friendly routes so ridesharing and delivery companies will be able to embed eco-friendly routes into their driver applications.