Maven Wave’s #GoogleNext19 Recap: Nourishing the Ecosystem with Openness

Google Cloud showcased its dazzling growth at Next ’19 with 30,000+ attendees, 500+ breakout sessions, and 400+ customer stories shared.

Last year, Google beat the enterprise drum at Next ‘18, showcasing several enterprise-focused launches and updates. This year, Google proved it has, in fact, become an enterprise darling. Google Cloud’s new CEO, Thomas Kurian, a long-time Oracle alum, shared the details of its impressive enterprise proliferation, serving nine of the 10 largest media companies, seven of the 10 largest retailers, and six of the top 10 enterprises. In efforts to broaden its reach further, Google showcased some massive advancements to its platform:

• Anthos – the show-stopping reveal by far – a comprehensive cloud architecture that allows customers to deploy, run and manage applications in Google Cloud Platform, in on-premise data centers … and wait for it… in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure too. The Kubernetes-powered development, deployment, and IT-monitoring platform grease users’ multi-cloud wheels allowing them to easily migrate applications between on-premise and cloud platforms via containerization and enables a seamless hybrid cloud environment for the first time.
• Open Source Integrations – a broad range of open source solutions are now integrated into Google Cloud Platform, including Confluent, MongoDB, DataStax, and others. As with Anthos, Google Cloud users can use the companies’ services and monitor and manage it all from a single management console.
• Cloud Run – a managed compute platform that enables you to run containerized workloads in a serverless model.
• Cloud Security Command Center – a unified view of the threat landscape within the Google Cloud Platform that synthesized signals from Google Services and third-party security partners, which Maven Wave will be adding to its services offering.
• New AI Platform – improvements to its existing and already successful AI platform. New features are geared toward the advanced developer and seek to add efficiency during each stage of the AI lifecycle, from the data intake all the way through production.
• Android Devices as Security Keys – phones using Google’s mobile operating system may now serve as physical security keys for two-factor authentication via Bluetooth, improving security by removing the risk of SMS spoofing.
• Google Cloud for Retail – the launch of Google’s retail offering, that packages up existing industry applications into an integrated service running on Google Cloud. This premium eCommerce hosting program will be the first of several vertical-specific solutions Google will introduce.
• Google Cloud Code – a set of plugins and extension intended to simplify the creation of cloud-native applications that has developers write and package application directly on Kubernetes clusters.
• G Suite Upgrades – additional collaboration, heightened security, advanced alert management, Google Voice integration, AI-supported Google Voice upgrades, and compatibility with more file formats.

Taking in the major updates, we quickly realized this year’s theme was embracing openness. Shadows of 2018’s enterprise focus were floating about, but overwhelmingly the focus was on ecosystem development. With Anthos, Google facilitates customers continuing or even expanding the use of competing technologies.

As they openly shared, the move was motivated by a notion that isolated platforms that try to “hog” every workload invariably fail. The formalization of open source partnerships not only demonstrates Google’s respect for the innovation-driven outside of its own genius factory but also shows a desire to help open source companies drive their revenue. Even the retail solution highlighted how Google partnered with Salesforce to help improve shoppers’ customer experience.

Google also showcased how a considerable share of its customers rely on partners to usher them through their cloud journey. In fact, Google shared how it is redoubling its partner-enablement, which folded nicely into its overarching “openness” theme. In addition to the OpenStack partnerships, Google showcased some new partner specialization categories, including the Marketing Analytics Specialization (a recent achievement for us).

And even after all that, by far our favorite part of the event’s partner track was the award ceremony. We’re honored to share that we’ve been recognized as Google Cloud’s North American Partner of the Year for the second time in a row. This award recognizes Maven Wave’s proven ability to assist customers in building digital solutions leveraging the innovation, security, open standards, and scale that Google Cloud provides. We couldn’t have done it without Google’s valuable enablement platform, and we’re excited to experience the enhancements to the partner program they’re rolling out.

It was a thrilling show. Google’s booming ecosystem has formed a brilliant brain-trust that we were honored to be a part of. In addition to taking in all the new technologies and ideas from our peers, we participated in some sessions on the mainstage to showcase how our customers are thriving in the cloud:

• Breaking the Mold to Become a Digital, Data-Driven Leader with Northern Trust
• Open Doors to ML: How AAA Leverages BQML and Google Sheets to Predict Call Volume with AAA Auto Club Group
• Collaboration & Mobility in a SaaS World with Verizon
• Uncovering Clinical Insights From Unstructured EMR Data to Improve Patient Outcomes with Rush University Medical Center

And if you missed any of the sessions presented by our experts in the Maven Wave booth this year, stay tuned. Recordings will be available soon. We look forward to reconnecting with familiar faces next year and meeting all the rookies that will gravitate to this expanding community. Cheers, Google Next! We’ll see you again in 2020.