Hundreds of millions of residents of South East Asia have only limited access to banking and finance services. However, help is at hand. One of South East Asia’s largest fintech businesses, Ascend Money is using digital technologies to realize its mission of enabling as many people as possible to access innovative financial services and live better lives.

According to Ascend Money, 60 percent of the region’s 620 million residents do not have access to a full suite of financial services. Even a relatively small proportion of this market represents a big opportunity for the business.

Ascend Money’s offerings include the TrueMoney regional payment platform for underserved and digital consumers. The TrueMoney platform supports more than 40 million consumers across six countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

“We found, based on value, ease of use, effectiveness, and the skills and adaptability of our own team members, BigQuery and other Google Cloud Platform services were the best fit for our business.”

– Abraham Jarrett, Head of Engineering, Ascend Money

TrueMoney also provides an e-wallet app that provides easy ways to top up mobile phones, undertake online shopping, and pay for products and services; a network of 65,000 branded shops; and international remittances, initially between Thailand and Myanmar. In addition, Ascend Money offers financial products to small to medium businesses.

Ascend Money is part of the South East Asian online business Ascend Group, which also operates e-commerce, e-procurement, data centers, cloud services, fulfilment, and digital marketing services.

Cost is a key criteria

Ascend Money initially started operations using physical infrastructure and on-premises workforce productivity applications. However, as the business grew its customer base and expanded into new markets, its technology leaders began to explore options to improve value for money; reduce the maintenance load on in-house team members; improve its data management and analysis; and collaborate more effectively.

“Operating our own on-premises infrastructure entails a higher cost of ownership and maintenance, as well as requiring us to scale up our hardware as needed,” says Abraham Jarrett, Head of Engineering, Ascend Money. “We conducted an evaluation and found that moving to the cloud would deliver a range of benefits.”

G Suite and Google Cloud Platform the best fit

The business evaluated solutions available in the market and opted to move to G Suite and Google Cloud Platform.

“Moving to Google Cloud Platform was an optimization exercise, with lowering our costs our primary goal, and achieving better performance an added benefit,” says Jarrett. Google Cloud Platform monitoring, diagnostic, and analytics tools have enabled Ascend Money to reduce its infrastructure spending, becoming more efficient and cost-effective in the process.

“Managing software is a big cost for us. Through G Suite, we are significantly reducing our software deployment, licensing, and repair costs.”

– Abraham Jarrett, Head of Engineering, Ascend Money

The Ascend Money team saw Google Kubernetes Engine as enabling a seamless way of transitioning from an on-premises data center to a cloud service. “We considered industry trends such as what people were adopting and who we could hire when making our decision,” says Jarrett. “Engineering teams are focusing on using Kubernetes open source container management at scale and as a way of doing business, which was attractive to us.

“Google Kubernetes Engine presented the easiest way to manage and orchestrate our containers, and drive us away from our existing infrastructure.”

BigQuery best for cost and ease of use

Ascend Money also reviewed data infrastructure solutions, with its business intelligence and data platform teams considering a range of options. The teams quickly ruled out an on-premises solution due to the capital investment required and opted for a cloud service. Following a rigorous evaluation of Google Cloud Platform against the services offered by another cloud provider, Ascend Money opted to run on Google Cloud.

“We found, based on value, ease of use, effectiveness, and the skills and adaptability of our own team members, BigQuery and other Google Cloud Platform services were the best fit for our business,” says Jarrett. The business is now running an architecture comprising a BigQuery analytics data warehouse; Cloud Storage to store raw and archive data; Cloud Dataflow to process stream and batch data, and Cloud Pub/Sub for event ingestion and delivery.

“We’re expanding our utilization of BigQuery and other services on a daily basis,” says Jarrett.

Ascend Money is also using a range of Google Cloud Platform services for the infrastructure outside its data platform, including Stackdriver logging and monitoring; Cloud KMS to manage cryptographic keys for its cloud services, Cloud Build to undertake continuous integration, delivery, and deployment; Cloud DNS to provide domain name system services; and Cloud Functions to enable its developers to run and scale code in the cloud.

With Google Cloud Platform, Ascend Money is now processing about 12GB of batch data per day and streaming data from about 200 data marts per day in Thailand alone.

Cost effective scalability and faster to market

Google Kubernetes Engine has enabled the business to scale and deliver to market faster. “We can build on the platform, take the application and container and deploy them to scale out,” says Jarrett. “The Google Kubernetes Engine orchestration mechanism that provides containerized, elastic scalability is extremely important in allowing us to manage costs and expend our effort efficiently. Through Kubernetes, we can write once and deploy everywhere.”

With Google Cloud Platform, the business has saved 3,000,000 THB (about US$90,000) in licensing costs and, through automation tools, reduced the time to complete infrastructure activities by 50 percent.

“We don’t have as many meetings since we deployed G Suite and we can work effectively in a distributed fashion.”

– Abraham Jarrett, Head of Engineering, Ascend Money

Ascend Money’s entire workforce is now using G Suite to collaborate and operate productively. The business is achieving a range of benefits including being able to get new team members up and running more quickly and reduced cost. “Managing software is a big cost for us,” says Jarrett. “Through G Suite, we are significantly reducing our software deployment, licensing, and repair costs.” Meanwhile, the shorter time to onboard team members to G Suite is paying off with improved productivity and an accelerated ability to collaborate.

Ascend Money team members primarily use Sheets, Slides, and Docs to create internal materials, including product requirement documents in Docs and workforce and project planning spreadsheets in Sheets.

The organization also uses Hangouts Meet to collaborate when working from different locations. “We don’t have as many meetings since we deployed G Suite and we can work effectively in a distributed fashion,” says Jarrett. “People can work from home and we have five regions plus Thailand where they can collaborate live on a document, such as a slide deck for board meetings or meetings with our chief executive officer, head of engineering, or other senior managers.”

20 hours per week saved

Jarrett describes the time savings of using web browser-based productivity software and G Suite as saving them an average of 20 hours per week. This has improved productivity and the quality of life for Ascend Money’s hard-working team, increasing overall staff satisfaction.

“The ability to work remotely is a big win for us,” Jarrett says. “Our team members can keep one computer at work and one at home and access the same information, they can work in a plane while it sits on the tarmac, or update a Google Doc or a Google Sheet in real time on their phone. They can work anytime, from any location, as long as they have an internet connection. They have less dead time, meaning more uptime.”

With Google Cloud Platform and G Suite, Ascend Money is ideally positioned to support growing demand for its fintech services in South East Asia, particularly among people with limited access to banking. “We have the agility and dynamism to support rising demand and look forward to continuing to work with Google to realize our business ambitions,” says Jarrett.

The typical smart factory is said to produce around 5 petabytes of data per week. That’s equivalent to 5 million gigabytes, or roughly 20,000 smartphones.

Managing such vast amounts of data in one facility, let alone a global organization, would be challenging enough. Doing so on the factory floor, in near-real-time, to drive insights, enhancements, and particularly safety, is a big dream for leading manufacturers. And for many, it’s becoming a reality, thanks to the possibilities unlocked with edge computing.

Edge computing brings computation, connectivity, and data closer to where the information is generated, enabling better data control, faster insights, and actions. Taking advantage of edge computing requires the hardware and software to collect, process, and analyze data locally to enable better decisions and improve operations.

At Hannover Messe 2022, Intel and Google Cloud will demonstrate a new technology implementation that combines the latest generation of Intel processors with Google Cloud’s data and AI expertise to optimize production operations from edge to cloud. This proof-of-concept project is powered by the Edge Insights for Industrial platform (EII), an industry-specific platform from Intel; and a pair of Google Cloud solutions: Anthos, Google Cloud’s managed applications platform, and the newly-launched Manufacturing Data Engine.

Edge computing exploits the untapped gold mine of data sitting on-site and is expected to grow rapidly. The Linux Foundation’s “2021 State of the Edge” predicts that by 2025, edge-related devices will produce roughly 90 zettabytes of data. Edge computing can help provide greater data privacy and security, and can accomodate the reduced bandwidth needs between local storage and the cloud.

Imagine a world in which the power of big data and AI-driven data analytics is available at the point where the data is gathered to inform, make, and implement decisions in near real-time.

This could be anywhere on the factory floor, from a welding station to a painting operation or more. Data would be collected by monitoring robotic welders, for example, and analyzed by industrial PCs (IPCs) located at the factory edge. These edge IPCs would detect when the welders are starting to go off spec, predicting increased defect rates even before they appear, and adding preventive maintenance to correct the errors without any direct intervention. Real time, predictive analytics using AI could substantially prevent defects before they happen. Or the same IPCs could use digital cameras for visual inspection to monitor and identify defects in real-time, allowing them to be addressed quickly.

Edge computing has powerful potential applications in assisting with data gathering, processing, storage and analysis in many manufacturing sectors, including automotive, semiconductor and electronics manufacturing, and consumer packaged goods. Whether modeling and analysis is done and stored locally or in the cloud, or is predictive, simultaneous, or lagged, technology providers are aligning to meet these needs. This is the new world of edge computing.

The joint Intel and Google Cloud proof of concept aims to extend the Google Cloud capabilities and solutions to the edge. Intel’s full breadth of industrial solutions, hardware and software, are coming together in this edge-ready solution, encompassing Google Cloud industry-leading tools. The concept shortens the time to insights, streamlining data analytics and AI at the edge.

The Intel-Google Cloud proof of concept demonstrates how manufacturers can gather and analyze data from over 250 factory devices using Manufacturing Connect from Google Cloud, providing a powerful platform to run data ingestion and AI analytics at the edge.

In this demonstration in Hannover, Intel and Google Cloud show how manufacturers can capture time-series data from robotic welders to inspect welding quality and show how predictive analytics can benefit the factory operators. In addition, the video and image data is captured from a factory camera to show how visual inspection can highlight anomalies on plastic chips with model scoring. The demo also features zero-touch device onboarding using FIDO Device Onboard (FDO) to illustrate the ease with which additional computers could be added to the existing Anthos cluster.

By combining Google Cloud’s expertise in data, AI/ML and Intel’s Edge Insight’s for Industrial platform that was optimized to run on Google Anthos, manufacturers can run and manage their containerized applications at the edge, in on-premise data center, or in public clouds using an efficient and secure connection to the Manufacturing Data Engine from Google Cloud. It forges a complete edge-to-cloud solution.

Simplified device onboarding is available using Fido Device Onboard (FDO)—an open IoT protocol that brings fast, secure, and scalable zero-touch onboarding of new IoT devices to the edge. FDO allows factories to easily deploy automation and intelligence in their environment without introducing complexity into their OT infrastructure.

The Intel-Google Cloud implementation can analyze that data using localized Intel or third-party AI and machine learning algorithms. Applications can be layered on the Intel hardware and Anthos ecosystem, allowing customized data monitoring and ingestion, data management and storage, modeling, and analytics. This joint PoC facilitates and support improved decision making and operations, whether automated or triggered by the engineers on the front lines.

Intel collaborates with a vibrant ecosystem of leading hardware partners to develop solutions for the industrial market by using the latest generation of Intel processors. These processors can run data intensive workloads at the edge with ease.

Putting data and AI directly into the hands of manufacturing engineers can improve quality inspection loops, customer satisfaction, and ultimately the bottom line.

The new manufacturing solutions will be demonstrated in person for the first time at Hannover Messe 2022, May 30–June 2, 2022. Visit us at Stand E68, Hall 004, or schedule a meeting for an onsite demonstration with our experts.

Over the past decade, cybersecurity has posed an increasing risk for organizations. In fact, cyber incidents topped the recent Allianz Risk Barometer for only the second time in the survey’s history. The challenges in combating these risks only continue to grow. Adversaries tend to be agile and are consistently looking for new ways to land within your digital environments. They also drive attack vectors that work, which means enterprise risk leaders are now forced to look for new ways of securing infrastructure and data.

Cloud comes of age in the modern day cybersecurity threat landscape

When cloud, in its various delivery models, was first introduced, it didn’t fit neatly into the security frameworks that had seemingly protected networks for many decades. Public cloud was the answer to ongoing IT challenges: scale, resources, security capabilities, and budget cycle limitations. Now, public cloud is meeting the increasing challenge of implementing cybersecurity controls and frameworks that are capable of protecting today’s global enterprise.

Cloud adoption – with all its scale and redistribution of longstanding security paradigms – is the optimal choice for infrastructure and security, particularly as organizations grapple with the need to engage in digital transformation. We assert that successful digital transformation is impossible without incorporating the use of the scale, security architecture, and resiliency of the cloud.

Consequently, cloud adoption becomes a necessary component of roadmap discussions and planning as your organization looks to reduce overall risk. Risk leaders and enterprise cybersecurity leaders must consider that moving data, digital processes, and priority workloads to the public cloud is a crucial step for meeting the current and future digital needs of the enterprise. Going forward, this digital transformation increasingly will include hybrid infrastructure environments composed of a combination of on-premises and cloud solutions.

Pinpointing where threats thrive

As digital environments become more complex within a given organization, proactively countering adversaries becomes all the more difficult. It’s harder to implement, scale, and adhere to existing security and control frameworks. It’s also increasingly challenging to apply framework guidance to new applications, build and support infrastructure within a secure foundation, and maintain good cyber hygiene through the digital lifecycle.

As reported by TechTarget, the 2020 hack of the SolarWinds Orion IT performance monitoring system is a prime example. It grabbed headlines “not because a single company was breached, but because it triggered a much larger software supply chain incident.” This vulnerability in popular, commercially available, and widely utilized software compromised the data, networks, and systems of thousands of companies when a routine software update turned out to be backdoor malware.

A close look at the root problems behind high-profile security breaches reveals that it’s a lack of agility and an inability to scale resources that prohibit the modern security organization’s ability to respond quickly enough to counter new challenges. Look even closer and you’ll often find an insufficient implementation of best practices and ineffective solutions, leaving an organization continually chasing the next tool or solution and scrambling to stay ahead of emerging threats.

While the cost to individual businesses is high, most organizations struggle with the needed skills and resources to rigorously maintain data security basics and ensure readiness for inevitable attacks. The previous sentence is especially true when you consider that maintaining an effective state of cybersecurity readiness is a costly practice that requires the continual development of expertise, the evaluation of new tools, and an ongoing element of vigilance.

Threat visibility is a big part of the problem. You can’t protect your company from what you can’t see. For individual enterprises – with critical data workloads housed in a combination of on-premises servers, a variety of endpoints, and both private and public cloud instances – staying ahead in the ongoing battle requires a new approach.

The identification of actionable alerts and other data contributes to a better overall state of readiness. Thought leadership and discussions related to Autonomic Security Operations provide a promising outlook for security organizations willing to lean into the changing technology landscape – a landscape that now benefits from leveraging automation and machine learning currently used in security stacks. Reducing the chance of introducing vulnerabilities or missing-critical alerts starts with ensuring full visibility into an increasingly expanding and complex environment.

The evolution of a shared responsibility to a shared fate

Industry megatrends are driving cloud adoption and with it a path to improved cybersecurity. Among these trends is the concept of shared fate as an evolution of the historical shared-responsibility model. Shared fate drives a flywheel of increasing trust which develops as more enterprises transition to the cloud. This compels an even higher security investment and a more vested interest from cloud service providers.

At Google Cloud, shared fate means we take an active stake in our customers’ security posture, offering capabilities and defaults that help ensure secure deployments and configurations in the public cloud. We also offer experience-based guidance on how to configure cloud workloads for security, and can assist with risk management, reduction, and transfer.

The Google Cloud Risk Protection Program represents the continuing evolution of the shared-fate model. The program offers a practical solution that provides the modern enterprise a snapshot comparison of its current security state against well-adopted cloud-security frameworks. It also give you an opportunity to explore cyber insurance designed to meet your needs from our partners Allianz and Munich Re.

When performed with diligence, cloud adoption can help increase your overall cybersecurity effectiveness. Using a hybrid approach – and steadily reducing which data assets remain on premises – can strengthen your overall security posture and reduce risks to the organization.

Cloud security and the ability to reduce risk

In comparison to the enterprise-by-enterprise security scramble to protect data and workloads in individual private clouds, global public cloud solutions like Google Cloud can be a force multiplier when adhering to established best practices. By that, we mean, quite literally, that you get more security at every touchpoint – from infrastructure and software to access and data security.

Strong security in the public cloud starts with the foundational pieces: the hardware and design elements. At Google, for example, we take a security-by-design approach within both the data center and purpose-built components themselves. Within Google Cloud, data is encrypted by default – both at rest and in transit. Google’s baseline security architecture adheres to the zero trust principles, meaning that every network, device, person, or service initially cannot be trusted.

Embarking on a zero trust architecture journey gives modern security practitioners the ability to methodically shut down traditional attack vectors. Zero trust also provides more granular visibility and control of rapidly expanding environments. The recent emphasis of its benefits, as the U.S. White House set forth through an executive order on increasing cybersecurity resilience, is an example of the wide-scale recognition by both government and industry on the benefits of this approach.

Since adopting a zero trust approach more than a decade ago, Google has achieved a recognizable level of maturity, reflected by our internal infrastructure and multiple enterprise offerings, enabling different aspects of the zero trust security journey.

Compliance and privacy drive critical elements of the cloud adoption cycle

Privacy frameworks, regulatory compliance, and data sovereignty are driving critical elements of the cloud adoption cycle. Cloud providers must ensure they have the necessary controls, attestations, and abilities to audit in order to provide organizations with the tools to preemptively satisfy regulatory and compliance mandates across the globe.

Now consistently expected to be part of a design feature that’s built into the cloud journey, it cannot simply be an add-on capability. The direction of this evolution promises to play more of a role in the future of cloud adoption, not less. Because this is an ongoing component of enterprise risk evaluation, your business must consider cloud providers that can partner on this critical aspect of the journey – and not leave you without the resources to respond to this growing critical need.

Building trust into your digital transformation journey

Digital transformation is difficult because the modern enterprise must build and design for both today and tomorrow. From a security perspective, the challenge has often been that security industry practitioners cannot always predict what the future will look like. That said, there are clear steps you can take to mitigate all-around risk throughout the process.

How you approach the cloud is, of course, integral to your journey, but it doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing proposition. And although technology debt continues to persist with legacy systems, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t begin to move forward.

Google Cloud enables you to modernize at your own pace and understand what’s realistic. We recommend you move what data you can to a more secure public cloud today, followed by a phased approach to move more in the months and years that follow. The key tenets of our approach to security in the public cloud include:

• The security-by-design posture of Google Cloud can help modern-day enterprises scale security capabilities and reduce risk with an architecture built on zero trust principles.
• The Google Cloud approach to security and resiliency includes a framework to help you protect against adverse cyber events by using our comprehensive suite of solutions.
• Google Cloud can help ensure your organization adheres to the requirements of a growing and increasingly complex regulatory and compliance environment.
• The ideal model of a future organization is one where cloud plays a major role in infrastructure design and architecture. Your organization should begin to view public cloud as an enabler of the business and a core component of digital transformation.

As you transition more data to the public cloud, it’s paramount that trust is ingrained in every step you take with your cloud service provider. Many service providers readily take on a shared responsibility with your organization when it comes to security. At Google, we take it several steps further with our shared fate model to help ensure data security in the public cloud. Your future and our’s are part of the same data security journey.