When Google announced our plan to go beyond purchasing renewable power for 100% of our energy usage and operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030, we noted that achieving this goal will require new transaction structures, advancements in clean energy policy, and innovative new technologies. Today, we’re pleased to announce that one of these new technologies—a first-of-its-kind, next-generation geothermal project—will soon begin adding carbon-free energy to the electric grid that serves our data centers and infrastructure throughout Nevada, including our Cloud region in Las Vegas.  

Google and clean-energy startup Fervo have just signed the world’s first corporate agreement to develop a next-generation geothermal power project, which will provide an “always-on” carbon-free resource that can reduce our hourly reliance on fossil fuels. In 2022, Fervo will begin adding “firm” geothermal energy to the state’s electric grid system, where Google’s commitments already include one of the world’s largest corporate solar-plus-storage power purchase agreements. 

Importantly, this collaboration also sets the stage for next-generation geothermal to play a role as a firm and flexible carbon-free energy source that can increasingly replace carbon-emitting fossil fuels—especially when aided by policies that expand and improve electricity markets; incentivize deployment of innovative technologies; and increase investments in clean energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D). 

Next-generation geothermal technology

Traditional geothermal already provides carbon-free baseload energy to a number of power grids. But because of cost and location constraints, it accounts for a very small percentage of global clean energy production. 

That’s one reason this new approach is so exciting; by using advanced drilling, fiber-optic sensing, and analytics techniques, next-generation geothermal can unlock an entirely new class of resource. And the US Department of Energy has found that with advancements in policy, technology, and procurement, geothermal energy could provide up to 120 GW of firm, flexible generation capacity in the US by 2050. 

As part of our agreement, Google is partnering with Fervo to develop AI and machine learning that could boost the productivity of next-generation geothermal and make it more effective at responding to demand, while also filling in the gaps left by variable renewable energy sources. Although this project is still in the early stages, it shows promise.

Using fiber-optic cables inside wells, Fervo can gather real-time data on flow, temperature, and performance of the geothermal resource. This data allows Fervo to identify precisely where the best resources exist, making it possible to control flow at various depths. Coupled with the AI and machine learning development outlined above, these capabilities can increase productivity and unlock flexible geothermal power in a range of new places. 

This won’t be the first time that Google is applying software solutions to clean energy applications: we’ve just announced an update to our carbon-intelligent computing program that helps us reduce emissions associated with running applications at Google data centers. And other forms of AI and machine learning are currently being used to increase the value of wind energy. 

Already this year, Google has taken significant strides toward sourcing 24/7 carbon-free energy for all our data centers, office campuses, and Cloud regions. On Earth Day, our CEO Sundar Pichai announced that for the first time, five of our global data center sites operated near or at 90% carbon-free energy in 2020. 

Not only does this Fervo project bring our data centers in Nevada closer to round-the-clock clean energy, but it also acts as a proof-of-concept to show how firm clean energy sources such as next-generation geothermal could eventually help replace carbon-emitting power sources around the world.

Today we are excited to announce that Google and the Istio Steering Committee have submitted the Istio project for consideration as an incubating project within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). This is a significant milestone for Istio and its community, and we are thrilled to reach this next step in the evolution of the project.

Google and Istio

Google originated the Istio project, which alongside Kubernetes and Knative, is a critical part of cloud-native infrastructure. The Istio project has found success and maturity in its current model — being adopted by hundreds of organizations and bringing in over 4,000 developers for IstioCon.

For over 20 years, Google has helped shape the future of computing with its open source contributions and has invested deeply to unlock innovation for our customers. Istio extends Kubernetes to establish a programmable, application-aware network using the Envoy service proxy. Istio works with both Kubernetes-based and traditional workloads, and brings standard, universal traffic management, telemetry, and security to complex deployments. Finding a home in the CNCF brings Istio closer to the cloud-native ecosystem and will foster continuing open innovation.

The Istio journey

We started to develop Istio in partnership with teams at IBM and Lyft in 2016 based on patterns that were being used to connect Google production applications. Google’s security focus complemented the traffic management focus of an open-source project published by IBM, and those two teams decided to collaborate on Istio directly. Istio was launched “fully formed” in May 2017, with the v0.1 release featuring sidecar-powered traffic control, observability and policy features — the things that today define a service mesh. Istio has been open source from the beginning, and has a governance structure that promotes continuous contribution and project engagement.

By the release of v0.3 a few months later there were users trusting it in production, seeing immediate benefits from its powerful features. The project reached v1.0 in July 2018, and was being used at scale by eBay and The Weather Company. Google led a major re-architecture with the release of v1.5, unifying the control plane into a single service. This change, based on user feedback, reduced administrative overhead, as was later written about in the IEEE Software journal. We also greatly simplified extensibility of the mesh by building support for WebAssembly plugins into Envoy.

Istio is now offered as a managed or hosted service by over 20 providers, including Anthos Service Mesh, a suite of tools that helps you monitor and manage a reliable service mesh on-premises or on Google Cloud.

The future of Istio as a project in the CNCF

At Google, we believe that using open source comes with a responsibility to contribute, sustain, and improve the ecosystem, and we are committed to improving critical cloud-native projects on behalf of our customers and the community at large. Google has made over half of all contributions to Istio and two-thirds of the commits, as measured by the CNCF DevStats.1 After deciding to adopt Envoy for Istio, Google rose to be Envoy’s number-one contributor.2

Istio is the last major component of organizations’ Kubernetes ecosystem to sit outside of the CNCF, and its APIs are well-aligned to Kubernetes. On the heels of our recent donation of Knative to the CNCF, acceptance of Istio will complete our cloud-native stack under the auspices of the foundation, and bring Istio closer to the Kubernetes project. Joining the CNCF also makes it easier for contributors and customers to demonstrate support and governance in line with the standards of other critical cloud-native projects, and we are excited to help support the growth and adoption of the project as a result.

Istio is key to the future of Google Cloud and if the project is accepted, Google will continue to strategically invest in Istio as a key maintainer and through ongoing investment in engineering for upstream contributions.

^{1. https://istio.teststats.cncf.io/d/5/companies-table?orgId=1
2. https://envoy.devstats.cncf.io/d/5/companies-table?orgId=1}

B2B marketplace IndiaMART aims to help businesses escape the restrictions of traditional supply chains. By providing access to a digital platform optimized for access from desktops and mobile devices, businesses can improve their operations and generate more revenue. IndiaMART’s suite of services includes web storefront, enquiry support, priority listings, premium number services, a lead management system, and payment facilitation.

IndiaMART also provides “behavior-based matchmaking” that identifies the supplier best equipped to meet buyer needs by product or service, category and location. IndiaMART then matches the designated suppliers with the buyers. Finally, IndiaMART operates as a “horizontal marketplace”—enabling suppliers to market to a large number of potential buyers—presenting a compelling offering for both groups.

Amarinder S. Dhaliwal, Chief Product Officer of IndiaMART, says once IndiaMART grew to a certain size, it benefited from a network effect—as more buyers used the marketplace, more suppliers came on board, prompting yet more buyers to access the service and so on. Suppliers becoming buyers and using IndiaMART to purchase products is another growth driver. “There is not just a network effect, but a community effect as well, as a supplier becomes a buyer,” says Dhaliwal. “This increases affinity, and supplier and buyer ‘lock-in’ to the marketplace increases multifold.”

Positioned to address challenges

IndiaMART’s proactive approach positioned the business well to address the challenges presented by new trends and market conditions. Traffic from mobile devices to its business-to-business marketplace has grown from about 30% to 75% over the last four years.

“Mobile traffic has grown at a compound annual growth rate of almost 100% over the same period,” says Dhaliwal. “The proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices has brought a considerable number of new users onto the internet and these users look for value—the right price from the right supplier,” he adds. “Furthermore, they can connect at any time and from any location they can access a network.”

The mobility revolution also challenged IndiaMART to provide a user interface and experience optimized for devices of various types and sizes—and that incorporated screens much smaller than the screens incorporated in desktops. The organization also had to help users overcome issues such as inconsistent network coverage and quality—particularly in remote areas.

Becoming a mobile-first organization

IndiaMART is responding by becoming, for buyers, a “mobile-first” organization that meets the group’s technical and user experience requirements.

IndiaMART is also adapting its marketplace to support two key trends:
• Buyers using long, conversational sentences to conduct online searches rather than simply typing in keywords
• Non English-users—the vast majority of people in India—stepping up their use of the marketplace

“We expect that, within a few years, we will have more non-English users than English users on IndiaMART,” says Dhaliwal.

IndiaMART is also benefiting from Indian government measures to reform taxation and stimulate the digital economy. “There has been a huge focus on areas such as digital payments and the digitization of identity,” says Dhaliwal. “We have embraced elements of this agenda by implementing a digital payment platform and are continuing to look at ways of providing new digital services to suppliers.

“Meanwhile, the Indian government’s recent implementation of GST allows us to validate suppliers’ businesses and bring more qualified, more verified suppliers on our platform—improving the experience for buyers and suppliers.”

Speed and reliability an issue

IndiaMART had started operations with servers, storage, networking, and associated systems co-located in a data center in the United States. However, as buyers and suppliers increasingly used mobile devices—over occasionally unreliable networks—to access the marketplace, access speeds and reliability became an issue. With most requests traveling between India and the United States, network latency was unacceptably high. Furthermore, business growth meant IndiaMART needed an environment that could scale to meet demand for the next five to 10 years.

IndiaMART opted for a multi-cloud architecture and established criteria for cloud providers to win its business. “We required an infrastructure that could scale and meet our demand for fast response time without putting our business at risk,” says Dhaliwal. “This meant taking a phased rather than one-shot approach to the migration. We also needed to minimize any wasteful duplication of infrastructure and reduce latency. In addition, as we scaled, we needed to protect our systems, transactions and information, including the details of buyers and suppliers.”

Google Cloud team’s high-quality support

The organization performed proof of concept with the three largest multinational cloud services providers and found Google Cloud was best positioned to act as the cornerstone of its multi-cloud architecture. “The Google Cloud team gave us considerable support in helping us run a proof of concept of its services,” says Dhaliwal.

“The proof of concept also illustrated that Google Cloud was superior to the other cloud services we looked at.

“We could run our marketplace across multiple geo-locations under a single IP address, avoiding duplication, and users in India could connect to Google Cloud via the closest access point, with their traffic passing quickly across the Google network.

“In addition, Google Cloud’s load balancing service would enable encryption between load balancing layers and back ends to ensure security, while all communication would move across Google’s own protected network.”

Being one of India’s early users of G Suite, the organization was also familiar with Google Cloud applications and services.

IndiaMART then opted to work with the Google Cloud team and a certified partner on a step-by-step implementation that minimized any risk of disruption.

Deep engagement from Google

“We engaged very deeply with both Google and the partner to complete this migration,” says Dhaliwal. “The Google team worked very hard to understand our requirements and provide a solution that catered to our needs and could be deployed in a phased manner.” The team ran workshops and technical sessions with IndiaMART and, at a Google Summit, connected the marketplace provider to Google experts in databases and infrastructure.

“These discussions really helped us formulate a strategy moving forward,” says Dhaliwal.

Based on input from Google and its own evaluation, IndiaMART developed an architecture comprising virtual machine instances delivered through Compute Engine, Google Cloud’s infrastructure-as-a-service offering; Cloud Load Balancing to support cloud resources distributed across multiple locations; Cloud Pub/Sub to provide enterprise messaging; and Cloud Dataflow to transform and enrich data.

Cloud Armor works with Cloud Load Balancing to defend against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks; and Geocoding API helps the organization convert geographic coordinates into readable addresses and vice versa. Cloud AutoML allows IndiaMART to train machine learning models to meet its requirements. With Geocoding API, IndiaMART can matchmake buyers and suppliers based on location—providing a high quality experience for both parties. Finally, AutoML Translation allows the organization to create a custom machine learning model that converts product names from English into Hindi and other languages, effectively opening up new markets for buyers and suppliers.

Phase one complete

IndiaMART has completed phase one of the migration that involved moving its web properties across to Google Cloud. The organization is now experimenting with moving its APIs and databases to the service and anticipates completing the exercise over the coming year.

Average page load time down

The initial phase of the project has already delivered considerable benefits to IndiaMART. The organization has cut average page loading time from five seconds to three seconds, and Dhaliwal attributes close to one second of that reduction to the move to Google Cloud. “With Google Cloud, buyers and suppliers can access our marketplace much faster than previously,” says Dhaliwal. “This impacts positively on engagement, time spent on our marketplace, and the user’s entire journey with us.”

DDoS attack repelled

Google Cloud’s security features have already passed their first test. As IndiaMART undertook stage one of the migration, the business experienced a DDoS attack that generated request loads more than 400 times greater than normal. “Because we were on Google Cloud infrastructure, we could develop a solution to combat this severe DDoS attack,” says Sunil Parolia, Sr. VP at IndiaMART. “From a security perspective, this really justified our decision to go with Google Cloud.”

Google Cloud is also helping deliver the availability required by IndiaMART and the scalability to support growing demand. “As the number of people in India who access the internet grows from about 500 million to 700-800 million over the next couple of years, we will continue to build our traffic and be the dominant business-to-business platform,” says Dhaliwal. “On the supplier side, we expect to see more and more businesses come onto our marketplace—ranging from small-to-medium businesses up to larger brands. Google Cloud will enable us to accommodate this traffic without compromising the experience we provide.”

The music industry is rapidly changing. Only 20 years ago, the availability of music and the infrastructure that was required to make an album a sales success were incredibly complex and expensive. With the decline of physical sales and a fundamental shift to digital, music streaming now accounts for more than half of all sales globally.

At the same time, technology has democratized music-making; in many ways, it has made the musical landscape more diverse. Artists can upload their music with the click of a button. But while it’s easier for creators to share their songs with audiences, getting paid has become more fragmented.

Although music is booming, people no longer buy it outright. Instead, listeners download music digitally or subscribe to streaming services to have their libraries with them at all times. To monetize digital content effectively, artists need to know when, where, and how often their songs are played on each service. To help them navigate this complicated royalties landscape and maximize their profits, Berlin-based international music company BMG provides customized, transparent, and fair services to songwriters and artists.

With publishing and recording divisions under one roof, the subsidiary of international media giant Bertelsmann works with both emerging artists and established stars, including John Legend, Kylie Minogue, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards. With the MyBMG web and mobile application, clients can view and analyze their royalty details in real time and collect payment. When a new record is released, BMG uses data to maximize its impact and revenue for its creators.

“We make sure that everyone who uses our clients’ music knows who needs to be paid the associated royalties, then we collect these royalties and share them out quickly and transparently,” explains Sebastian Hentzschel, Chief Information Officer at BMG. “When our artists release new music, we make sure that it’s marketed and promoted effectively around the world.”

“We needed a scalable solution for our royalty workloads that was intuitive for our developers. We also wanted a partner, not a client-vendor relationship. With autoscaling via BigQuery, excellent customer support, and a clean and simple user interface, Google Cloud ticks every box for us.”

—Gaurav Mittal, Vice President Group Technology, BMG

Getting up to speed with a new way of paying artists

In this digital world, artists aren’t just paid every time a fan buys an album—they’re paid a small amount, or royalty, for each song downloaded or streamed by a listener. So, when the industry shifted to digital, the volume of data that BMG needed to handle grew exponentially. “One CD sale is equivalent to about 1,500 streamed songs or plays,” says Gaurav Mittal, Vice President Group Technology at BMG. “That means IT departments have to process 1,500 times the amount of data to calculate payments for artists, and this makes scalable micropayment processing very important.”

Until 2019, BMG’s infrastructure was entirely hosted on-premises. Hardware limitations made it challenging to scale on-demand, making it harder to handle the data peaks that royalty processing can bring. “With our on-premises infrastructure, we were going to hit a ceiling in a few years,” says Gaurav. “We still managed to process royalty payments for our clients, but it was increasingly time consuming and expensive. To keep focusing on our clients, rather than our infrastructure, we decided to migrate to Google Cloud.”

From the outset, Gaurav and his team had a clear vision for the partnership: “Most importantly, we needed a scalable solution for our royalty workloads that was intuitive for our developers. We also wanted a partner, not a client-vendor relationship,” he says. “With autoscaling via BigQuery, excellent customer support, and a clean and simple user interface, Google Cloud ticks every box for us.”

Keeping artists happy with business-as-usual payouts during migration

To move applications to the cloud while keeping payment cycles on track for its artists, BMG teamed up with Google Cloud partner Rackspace Technology. “We selected Rackspace Technology because it combines strong technical muscle and a global footprint, with the customer service of a local boutique firm,“ shares Gaurav.

BMG’s own technology team put together the outline for the Google Cloud architecture, which they passed on to Rackspace Technology for optimizations and the ultimate stamp of approval. Whenever Gaurav and his developers needed support, Rackspace Technology was ready to go. “So far, we’ve migrated 17 applications successfully, and Rackspace Technology has been 100% spot-on with each suggestion,” says Gaurav. “I can’t recall a single flaw in a Rackspace Technology-approved architecture, and that really says something.”

When BMG began its migration in August 2019, the team developed an ambitious two-year plan. Only 14 months later, however, the project is more than 75% complete. Among the solutions that BMG is using today are Cloud Storage to securely store 130 TB of data, and Cloud SQL as its standard database technology. The web applications run on Compute Engine, App Engine, and Google Kubernetes Engine.

“After successfully moving a few applications, it was clear that with the strong teamwork of BMG and Rackspace Technology, together with the ease of use of Google Cloud, we could speed up the project without sacrificing quality,” says Gaurav. “We’re set to complete our migration six months before schedule, helping us to quickly move out of our hybrid environment.”

“Our income-tracking teams are very savvy on the data, and the simplicity of Google Cloud empowers them to self-serve analytics, rather than wait for IT. Our teams are much more productive.”

—Gaurav Mittal, Vice President Group Technology at BMG

Royalty reporting and processing with BigQuery and Dataproc

So far, all of BMG’s critical workloads are up and running on Google Cloud. Royalty calculations, for example, which require incredible processing power and the collection of many micropayments to ensure full and timely payout, run entirely on Dataproc with output stored on BigQuery for downstream integration and reporting.

Enabling more harmonious workflows through self-serve analytics

As the new beating heart of BMG’s royalty reporting, BigQuery changed the rhythm of collaboration company-wide. In the past, income tracking teams had to contact IT departments if they needed deeper data insights for their work. By integrating Data Catalog with BigQuery, BMG has made the data more accessible to all teams. This helps them detect missing income and new revenue streams independently, maximizing profits for artists.

“Our income-tracking teams are very savvy on the data, and the simplicity of Google Cloud empowers them to self-serve analytics, rather than wait for IT,” says Gaurav. “Our teams are much more productive.”

“Google Cloud enables us to be more client focused and deliver better features faster. We believe it’s just the beginning. We offer rights and royalty services for music publishing, recorded music, neighboring rights, and books. Without scalability limitations, it’s absolutely conceivable to offer our platform as a service to other companies or industries, such as gaming. Google Cloud has opened a world of possibilities.”

—Sebastian Hentzschel, Chief Information Officer, BMG

With a leaner IT environment, BMG can focus its effort on the needs of its clients. Beyond improvements in royalty processing, it can concentrate on app development, releasing new features and enhancements more frequently. By hosting applications on Google Kubernetes Engine, App Engine, and Compute Engine, BMG has built a CI/CD pipeline with automated deployments and testing to significantly speed up workflows.

“In our old system, it could take several weeks to set up an environment,” says Gaurav. “With Google Kubernetes Engine, any of our developers can complete the process in a few clicks. Having that autonomy makes our developers more motivated and self-driven.”

“Google Cloud enables us to be more client focused and deliver better features faster,” adds Sebastian. “We believe it’s just the beginning. We offer rights and royalty services for music publishing, recorded music, neighboring rights, and books. Without scalability limitations, it’s absolutely conceivable to offer our platform as a service to other companies or industries, such as gaming. Google Cloud has opened a world of possibilities.”

With the migration almost complete, BMG is looking forward to its next technology project. It plans to leverage AutoML to further scale and automate royalty tracking with machine learning. On the marketing side, advanced analytics will help BMG determine the effectiveness of promotional campaigns around the world, further increasing profits for artists. By connecting Google Data Studio to BigQuery, BMG will increase the quality of its analyses, helping musicians better understand the reach of their music around the world.

In the end, Gaurav shares, helping musicians is what it all comes down to. “We’re a new kind of music company because we build our services around our artist, songwriter, and publisher clients, not the other way around,” he says. “Google Cloud is helping us maintain strong relationships with our clients, and that’s music to our ears.”