7 Top Statements From Google Cloud’s First Data Cloud Summit

CEO Thomas Kurian and Gerrit Kazmaier, general manager and vice president for data analytics, databases and Looker, kicked off the event with a keynote address.

Data is at the heart of business transformation, and digital innovators understand the power of resilient, mission-critical systems that can run their businesses reliably and securely, and how technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, large-scale analytics systems and big data can be used to power innovation, according to Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.

“During the pandemic, we’ve seen how organizations have turned data into actionable insights to drive impressive change,” Kurian said at Google Cloud’s inaugural Data Cloud Summit on Wednesday. “Our mission at Google Cloud is to accelerate organizations’ ability to transform their business digitally. Solving data challenges is at the heart of Google’s core competence. And over the last two decades, we’ve been in a unique position to help businesses get the most value out of their data.”

Kurian and Gerrit Kazmaier, Google Cloud’s new general manager and vice president for data analytics, databases and Looker, kicked off the virtual conference with a keynote address. Kazmaier, who joined Google Cloud in April from SAP, also previewed some of the cloud provider’s new database and data analytics products and updates.

“Our data cloud technologies continue to be one of Google Cloud’s fastest-growing segments,” Kurian said. ”In 2020 alone, customers analyzed 200 percent more data at exabyte scale using our Google Cloud data technologies. Our databases saw tremendous growth, and data scientists doubled the instances of machine learning workloads that they used last year.”

Click through to read some more of Kurian’s remarks from the Data Cloud Summit address and what Kazmaier had to say about organizations becoming data-driven, making data an ability and the four pillars of Google Cloud’s integrated data cloud.

Kurian On Google Cloud Customers Mining Data

Over the past year, I’ve been inspired by the ways our customers have used data to respond to the monumental challenges we all faced. Twitter is able to learn more from their data, move faster and serve more relevant content to people who use their service every day. In fact, Twitter’s data platform ingests trillions of events, processes hundreds of petabytes of data and runs tens of thousands of jobs in over a dozen clusters every single day.

One of the largest transportation logistics companies in North America, JB Hunt, uses Google’s data cloud to better predict outcomes, to empower users and to make informed decisions. Real-time data is a cornerstone in the...$1 trillion logistics industry. And as customers have increased their expectations for faster service, more transparency and immediate delivery of their e-commerce packages, this has become an even (more) critical element of JB Hunt’s success.

HSBC, a leading financial institution, is leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to reduce the time employees spend on manually intensive queries and ultimately to improve customer satisfaction.

We at Google Cloud are committed to providing a data cloud that provides customers deep insights into their business, helps them automate processes that are core to their company and provides a strong foundation for transformation of their business using a deep understanding of their data.

Kazmaier On Becoming Data-Driven

Data and the ability to work with it is the key to success in our modern world of ever-increasing opportunities and ever-increasing complexity. I know that every company in every industry is on their own journey to become data-driven and to capitalize on their innate digital potential.

At Google Cloud, we’re seeing businesses of all kinds adapting and shifting…and reinventing how they operate with data. And they’re succeeding in transforming their businesses, from the largest known brands to small and mid-sized organizations.

Regardless of where you are on your own journey, you have all an incredible untapped digital potential.

Kazmaier On Passing Through ‘The Filter’

Every company invests in technology, people and skills to become digital, and every company understands the opportunity data has to transform their business. Every company knows that they will compete in a data- and AI-driven world. But why do only a few succeed in leveraging data to transform their business? Why is it still so uncommon to become data-driven, and why does so much of the investment in data not go beyond technology islands and proofs of concept?

It’s almost like there is a big filter that everyone has to pass through on their journey to become data-driven, and most just haven’t succeeded yet. There is an invisible barrier holding us back on our potential to drive innovation. It is time for us now to remove the filter, because the ones who are able to pass through that filter use data to drive operational excellence with automation from machine learning and AI. They deliver insights to people when they actually need them. They drive constant data experimentation and exploration to uncover new opportunities. They develop software services at scale. They use data to create highly contextual, data-rich experiences for their customers. And, ultimately, they’re able to capture, understand and act upon the deeply hidden patterns of our world.

Kazmaier On Data As An Ability

It’s time for us to think of data as an ability -- an ability to interconnect skills, technologies, processes and people.

An analogy that I like to use is listening to music. At any point in time, only a fraction of a soundbite actually reaches your ear, but we have a memory of what we have heard before, and an anticipation of what you might hear next. And it’s only this integrated set of different skills that constitute the sense of hearing. Ultimately, this enables us to listen, to understand and to act.

Data is shockingly similar. For organizations, this means there must be continuity in the full data lifecycle. That includes how data is created, captured, refined, stored and processed from analytical databases through transactions, from developers to data scientists, from small to real big data, and from on premise into the multi-cloud. Only this can start that virtuous cycle in which data is the source for creating value, for which more data is generated and which then becomes the source of creating more value again.

Kazmaier On Google Cloud’s Unified Data Platform

To unlock this potential, all organizations are adding software and data as a core element of their own value creation. At Google Cloud, we will help you in this by providing you a unified data platform.

We will truly connect the different types of data processing from planet-scale to OLTP systems. From analytics to data lakes, to data science to business analytics, we connect the different roles that work with data and provide them a common platform to build upon. And we will enable the acquisition of external data partner solutions and the open-source systems. We connect all of these aspects of working with data, so the true value flow that data actually represents comes together again.

Kamaier On The ‘Four Pillars’

We are building our integrated data cloud on four key pillars. And to deliver on this idea, we have our four imperatives.

The first is about openness, because the true value of data is only unlocked when it can be seamlessly accessed and freely combined. And to do this, you need an open data platform. And we embrace the ecosystem from open source to partner services, because we want you to be free to choose the best service to do your work. Openness means that you can run anywhere in a real multi-cloud environment and can still benefit from a central control and management plane.

The second is about intelligence, starting from self-tuning systems, to tools and data integrations -- data scientists, data engineers, developers working together, so they can put AI and machine learning into action. It means databases with embedded machine learning, so you can execute…transactions in real time in a semantically rich data model that allows you to build data-driven applications and make analysts highly productive.

Third, it’s about being planet-scale, because data is virtually endless, and your capacity to source, process and use data ultimately defines how much value you can get out of it. Your technology platform needs to offer unlimited scale and highest availability. It must allow your developers to build and deploy applications faster and without ever worrying about the underlying database system. It means that you need a global events means so you can connect every element of your business. And it means that you need analytical systems that just blaze through even your largest data sets with ease.

And fourth, it’s about trust and security. Data systems are becoming increasingly mission-critical, and this goes beyond the transactional databases. Trust and security are just top priorities as we shift toward digital environments. You need to be able to trust the integrity of your data, your governance of your data inventory and availability of your data and landscape altogether. Working with data requires strong security and compliance requirements, but -- most importantly -- everyone who will trust you with their data needs to know it’s secured by only the highest standards. These imperatives are at the heart of an integrated cloud that helps you to pass through that filter on your own journey toward the digital enterprise. And we know this, because we’ve learned from you, our customers and partners.

Kazmaier On Google Cloud’s ‘Most Open’ Data Cloud

What makes our Data Cloud special is that it’s the most open cloud platform, and yet our products also complement each other and integrate to create an incredible data- rich experience.

Openness is a key pillar on how to unlock the data cloud, but technology innovations are only one part of this equation. And to ensure that we are able to adapt and change, a data cloud strategy must embrace the open ecosystem. We have partners that extend our cloud capabilities to their customers, and together, we are raising the value of your investment in data and allow you to do more with less on one common platform.