Google Cloud Data Heroes Series: Honoring Data Practitioner’s Journey and Learning with GCP
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Google Cloud Data Heroes is a series where we share stories of the everyday heroes who use our data analytics tools to do amazing things. Like any good superhero tale, we explore our Google Cloud Data Heroes’ origin stories, how they moved from data chaos to a data-driven environment, what projects and challenges they are overcoming now, and how they give back to the community.
For our first issue, we couldn’t be more excited to introduce Google Cloud Data Heroine Lynn Langit. Lynn is a seasoned business woman in Minnesota beginning her eleventh year as the Founder of her own consulting business, Lynn Langit Consulting LLC. Lynn wears many data professional hats including Cloud Architect, Developer, and Educator. If that wasn’t already a handful, she also loves riding her bike at any given season of the year (pictured on the right), which you might imagine gets a bit challenging when you have to invest in bike studded snow tires!
Tell us how you got to be a data practitioner. What was that experience like and how did this journey bring you to GCP?
I worked on the business side of tech for many years. While I enjoyed my work, I found I was intrigued by the nuanced questions practitioners could ask – and the sophisticated decisions they could make – once they unlocked value from their data. This initial intrigue developed into a strong curiosity and I ultimately made the switch from business worker to data practitioner over 15 years ago. This was a huge change in career considering I got my bachelor’s degree in Linguistics and German. And so I started small. I taught myself most everything both at the beginning and even now through online resources, courses, and materials. I began with database and data warehousing, specifically building and tuning many enterprise databases. It wasn’t until Hadoop/NoSQL became available that I pivoted to Big Data…
Back then, I supplemented my self-paced learning with Microsoft technologies, even earning all Microsoft certifications in just one year. When I noticed the industry shifting from on premise to cloud, I shifted my learning from programming to cloud, too. I have been working in the public cloud for over ten years already!
“I started with AWS, but recently I have been doing most everything in GCP. I particularly love implementing data pipelining, data ops, and machine learning.”
How did you supplement your self teachings with Google Cloud data upskilling opportunities like product deep dives and documentation, courses, skills, and certificates?
One of the first Google Cloud data analytics products I fell in love with was BigQuery. BigQuery was my gateway product into a much larger open, intelligent, and unified data platform full of products that combined data analytics, databases, AI/ML, and business intelligence.
I’ve achieved Skills Badges in BigQuery, Data Analysis, and more. I’ve also achieved Google’s Professional Data Engineer Certification, and have been a Google Developer Expert since 2012.
Most recently, I was named one of few Data Analysis Innovator Champions within the Google Cloud Innovators Program, which I’m particularly excited about because I’ve heard it’s a coveted spot for data practitioners and necessitates a Googler nomination to move from the Innovator membership to Champion title!
You’re undoubtedly a data analytics thought leader in the community. When did you know you moved from data student to data master and what data project are you most excited about?
I knew I had graduated, if you will, to the data architect realm once I was able to confidently do data work that matters, even if that work was outside of my usual domains: adTech and finTech..
For example, my work over the past few years has been around human health outcomes, including combatting the COVID-19 pandemic. I do this by supporting scientists and bioinformatic researchers with genomic-scale data pipelines. Did I know anything about genomics before I started? Not at all! I self-studied bioinformatics and recorded my learnings on GitHub. Along the way I adopted my learnings into an open source GCP course on GitHub aimed at researchers who are new to working with GCP. What’s cool about the course is that I begin from the true basics of how to set up a GCP account. Then I gradually work up to mapping out genomic-scale data workflows, pipelines, analyses, batch jobs, and more using BigQuery and a host of other Google Cloud data products.
Now, I’ve received feedback that this repository has made a positive impact on researchers’ ability to process and synthesize enormous amounts of data quickly. Plus, it achieves the greater goal of broadening accessibility to a public cloud like GCP.
In what ways do you think you uniquely bring value back to the data community? Why is it important to you to give back to the data community?
I stay busy always sharing my learnings back to the community. I record Cloud and Big data technical screencasts (demos) on Youtube, I’ve authored 25 data and cloud courses on LinkedIn Learning, and I occasionally write Medium articles on cloud technology and random thoughts I have about everyday life. I’m also the cofounder of Teaching Kids Programming, with a mission to help equip middle and high school teachers with a great programming curriculum on Java.
Begin your own hero’s journey
Ready to embark on your Google Cloud data adventure? Begin your own hero’s journey with GCP’s recommended learning path where you can achieve badges and certifications along the way. Join the Cloud Innovators program today to stay up to date on more data practitioner tips, tricks, and events.
Connect with Google’s data community at our upcoming virtual event “Latest Google Cloud data analytics innovations”. Register and save your spot now to get your data questions answered live by GCP’s top data leaders and watch demos from our latest products and features including BigQuery, Dataproc, Dataplex, Dataflow, and more. Lynn will take the main stage as an emcee for this event – you won’t want to miss!
Finally, if you think you have a good Data Hero story worth sharing, please let us know! We’d love to feature you in our series as well.
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What is Google Cloud SQL?
Cloud SQL is a fully managed relational database for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server.
It reduces maintenance cost and automates database provisioning, storage capacity management, replication, and backups. It offers quick setup, with standard connection drivers and built-in migration tools.
How Do You Set It Up?
Cloud SQL is easy to setup. You select the region and zone where you would like the instance to be, and it gets created there.
You also have a lot of configuration options, where you can select the machine type with the right number of CPU and amount of memory you need.
Choose storage each type between solid state and hard disk drives, depending on latency queries per second and cost requirements and set storage capacity.
Higher storage capacity leads to better performance.
What About Back Up?
Cloud SQL also offers automated backups and recovery options.
You can set time slots and locations for backups. For production applications, it is recommended to enable high availability, or HA.
By enabling this feature, the database instancewill automatically failover to another zone in your selected region in case of an outage.
You can also create cross-regional replicas to protect from regional failures.
In addition, you can enable automatic storage increase to add more storage when nearing capacity.
How Do You Migrate an Existing MySQL Database to Cloud SQL?
Cloud console makes it very easy by providing a migrate data button, which guides you through easy steps.
First, you provide your data source details, things like public IP address, port number,
and your replication credentials.
Second, you create a Cloud SQL read replica, just like we discussed in the creation process, using a SQL dump file.
Third, you sync the read replica with source. And, finally, you promote the read replica to primary instance with very low downtime.
Is Data Safe in Cloud SQL?
Like anything else in Google Cloud,the data in Cloud SQL is encrypted at rest and in transit.
External connections can be encrypted using SSL or Cloud SQL Proxy, which is a tool to help you connect to your Cloud SQL instance from your local machines.
You can use Cloud SQL as a relational database for your applications that are hosted within Google Cloud, like App Engine, Cloud Run, Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine, or Cloud Functions.
You can also connect your Cloud SQL database with applications that are hosted outside of Google Cloud.
How Much Does It Cost and What Are Some Uses Cases?
Cloud SQL pricing varies depending on MySQL, PostgreSQL,or SQL Server.
Broadly speaking, though, it’s the combination of the type of instance, storage, or network you use. SQL Server also has some licensing costs.
Since Cloud SQL is a relational database, you can use it with any online transaction processing apps, such as order or payment processing apps, where you need to handle frequent queries with fast response times.
Gartner Identifies Critical Capabilities for Data Management Solutions
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Data management solutions for analytics offerings are consolidating, with major vendors able to address a range of use cases and smaller vendors addressing a subset of use cases. Data and analytics leaders can use this research to guide evaluation and initial vendor selection for DMSA offerings.
For data and analytics leaders responsible for data management solutions as part of strategizing and planning information infrastructure should:
- Evaluate the capabilities of incumbent solution(s) against new use cases, to determine if existing expertise could be used to reduce development time with a good-enough solution already in place.
- Plan on using a heterogeneous solution landscape overall, but try and reduce duplication of effort by categorizing use cases with regard to their target deployment platform.
- Use a logical data warehouse architecture when you need to integrate separate data repositories efficiently, keeping in mind performance SLAs that may be impacted by remote access.
- Plan for eventual integration with other data silos when scoping the effort needed to implement a specific solution, to avoid crippling overhead caused by proliferating data silos.
Download this report to know more.
Cloud Databases: An Essential Building Block for Transforming Customer Experiences
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Around the globe, companies realize that iterating and innovating the customer experience (CX) is the key to their business transformation and success goals. Customers expect exceptional and speedy service from organizations through personalized experiences and easy-to-use apps.
However, while most companies want data-driven innovation, many of them overlook a key mechanism to do so: operational databases. These databases run a company’s day-to-day operations and power applications around the globe.
“Operational databases are often overlooked because they are behind the scenes,” says Kumar Menon, senior vice president of data fabric and decision science technology at Atlanta-based Equifax, the multinational consumer credit reporting agency. “Companies often focus on providing strong customer-facing applications, but the application will only achieve the desired results with a well-architected operational data capability that helps drive the real-time analytics needed to make the customer experience effective and memorable. It is the backbone of anything that you will build on top of it.”
Better customer experience is a business outcome of using cloud databases to build applications. This dictum stands to reason because moving from a traditional on-premises database to a modern database in the cloud, or simply building new applications in the cloud, allows companies to address operational overhead, unlock new possibilities, implement new features quickly, increase application reliability, and serve users across more regions—all the things that enhance CX and make it possible. Google Cloud sponsored this research by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services to understand how digital innovators are delighting their customers by using modern cloud databases. The report analyzes why operational databases are an essential building block for transformative experiences and highlights some of the critical capabilities leaders should prioritize. Through interviews with technology executives, data leaders, and industry experts, it provides real-world examples of benefits companies are realizing with cloud databases. We hope you find the findings and real-world examples in this report insightful and inspiring.
Quick Watch on Six Database Trends
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In a data-driven, global, always-on world, databases are the engines that let businesses innovate and transform. As databases get more sophisticated and more organizations look for managed database services to handle infrastructure needs, there are a few key trends we’re seeing. Here’s what to watch.
Two Ad Agencies Leverage BigQuery to Support Next-gen Ad Campaigns
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Advertising agencies are faced with the challenge of providing the precision data that marketers require to make better decisions at a time when customers’ digital footprints are rapidly changing. They need to transform customer information and real-time data into actionable insights to inform clients what to execute to ensure the highest campaign performance.
In this post, we’ll explore how two of our advertising agency customers are turning to Google BigQuery to innovate, succeed, and meet the next generation of digital advertising head on.
Net Conversion eliminated legacy toil to reach new heights
Paid marketing and comprehensive analytics agency Net Conversion has made a name for itself with its relentless attitude and data-driven mindset. But like many agencies, Net Conversion felt limited by traditional data management and reporting practices.
A few years ago, Net Conversion was still using legacy data servers to mine and process data across the organization, and analysts relied heavily on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to generate reports. The process was lengthy, fragmented, and slow—especially when spreadsheets exceeded the million-row limit.
To transform, Net Conversion built Conversionomics, a serverless platform that leverages BigQuery, Google Cloud’s enterprise data warehouse, to centralize all of its data and handle all of its data transformation and ETL processes. BigQuery was selected for its serverless architecture, high scalability, and integration with tools that analysts were already using daily, such as Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Data Hub. After moving to BigQuery, Net Conversion discovered surprising benefits that streamlined reporting processes beyond initial expectations. For instance, many analysts had started using Google Sheets for reports, and BigQuery’s native integration with Connected Sheets gave them the power to analyze billions of rows of data and generate visualizations right where they were already working.If you’re still sending Excel files that are larger than 1MB, you should explore Google Cloud.
Kenneth Eisinger
Manager of Paid Media Analytics at Net Conversion
Since modernizing their data analytics stack, Net Conversion has saved countless hours of time that can now be spent on taking insights to the next level. Plus, BigQuery’s advanced data analytics capabilities and robust integrations have opened up new roads to offer more dynamic insights that help clients better understand their audience.
For instance, Net Conversion recently helped a large grocery retailer launch a more targeted campaign that significantly increased downloads of their mobile application. The agency was able to better understand and predict their customers’ needs by analyzing buyer behavior across the website, mobile application, and their purchase history. Net Conversion analyzed website data in real-time with BigQuery, ran analytics on their mobile app data through the Firebase’s integration with BigQuery, and enriched these insights with sales information from the grocery retailer’s CRM to generate propensity behavior models that accurately predicted which customers would most likely install their mobile app.
WITHIN helped companies weather the COVID storm
WITHIN is a performance branding company, focused on helping brands maximize growth by fusing marketing and business goals together in a single funnel. During the COVID-19 health crisis, WITHIN became an innovator in the ad agency world by sharing real-time trends and insights with customers through its Marketing Pulse Dashboard. This dashboard was part of the company’s path to adopting BigQuery for data analytics transformation.
Prior to using BigQuery, WITHIN used a PostgreSQL database to house its data and manual reporting. Not only was the team responsible for managing and maintaining the server, which took focus away from the data analytics, but query latency issues often slowed them down.
BigQuery’s serverless architecture, blazing-fast compute, and rich ecosystem of integrations with other Google Cloud and partner solutions made it possible to rapidly query, automate reporting, and completely get rid of CSV files.
Using BigQuery, WITHIN is able to run Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) analytics and quickly share the insights with their clients in a collaborative Google Sheet. In order to improve the effectiveness of their campaigns across their marketing channels, WITHIN further segments the data into high and low LTV cohorts and shares the predictive insights with their clients for in-platform optimizations.
By distilling these types of LTV insights from BigQuery, WITHIN has been able to use those to empower their campaigns on Google Ads with a few notable success stories.
- WITHIN worked with a pet food company to analyze historical transactional data to model predicted LTV of new customers. They found significant differences between product category and autoship vs single order customers, and they implemented LTV-based optimization. As a result, they saw a 400% increase in average customer LTV.
- WITHIN helped a coffee brand increase their customer base by 560%, with the projected 12-month LTV of newly acquired customers jumping a staggering 1280%.
Through integration with Google AI Platform Notebooks, BigQuery also advanced WITHIN’s ability to use machine learning (ML) models. Today, the team can build and deploy models to predict dedicated campaign impact across channels without moving the data. The integration of clients’ LTV data through Google Ads has also impacted how WITHIN structures their clients’ accounts and how they make performance optimization decisions.
Now, WITHIN can capitalize on the entire data lifecycle: ingesting data from multiple sources into BigQuery, running data analytics, and empowering people with data by automatically visualizing data right in Google Data Studio or Google Sheets.A year ago, we delivered client reporting once a week. Now, it’s daily. Customers can view real-time campaign performance in Data Studio — all they have to do is refresh.
Evan Vaughan
Head of Data Science at WITHIN
Having a consistent nomenclature and being able to stitch together a unified code name has allowed WITHIN to scale their analytics. Today, WITHIN is able to create an internal Media Mix Modeling (MMM) tool with the help of Google Cloud that they’re trialing with their clients.
The overall unseen benefit of BigQuery was that it put WITHIN in a position to remain nimble and spot trends before other agencies when COVID-19 hit. This aggregated view of data allowed WITHIN to provide unique insights to serve their customers better and advise them on rapidly evolving conditions.
Ready to modernize your data analytics? Learn more about how Google BigQuery unlocks the insights hidden in your data.
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