As organizations expand their use of cloud computing services, more of their sensitive data inevitably moves to and lives in the cloud. Much of this sensitive data is unstructured and can be challenging to secure. Despite this potential challenge, the usefulness of cloud for data storage and processing is too big for most organizations to ignore and has in turn led to data sprawl, where their sensitive data is spread over many resources, both in the cloud and on-premise. Addressing data sprawl requires solutions that can discover, manage, and secure sensitive data, especially unstructured data, as it spreads.

To help organizations confidently move their sensitive data to the cloud, Google Cloud works diligently to earn and maintain customer trust. Control and transparency are pillars of our approach to offering a trusted cloud. Therefore, we’ve been expanding our capabilities to act on unstructured data as sprawl increases.

Given the importance of these capabilities to our strategy, we are happy to announce today that Forrester Research has named Google Cloud a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Unstructured Data Security Platforms, Q2 2021 report, and rated Google Cloud highest in the current offering category among the providers evaluated.

The report evaluates the 11 most significant providers with platform solutions to secure and protect unstructured data, spanning from cloud providers to data security-focused vendors. The report notes that “Google offers breadth and depth with built-in data security in the cloud. Google Cloud Platform, Google Workspace, and BeyondCorp Enterprise have underlying data security products and features for protecting customer data.”

Google Cloud tools focused on protecting unstructured data were developed and battle-tested internally at Google to alleviate some of our own data security challenges. This brings the best of Google security to the organizations utilizing Google Cloud and our security tools. The report highlights that “Google productizes capabilities originally developed to secure its own business, and brings a disciplined approach to product enhancements for enterprise requirements. It serves a wide range of enterprise and mid-market, with a focus on emphasizing data protection needs by industry. ”

Google Cloud’s data security strategy focuses on meeting customers wherever they are in their cloud migration journey. The report highlights that “Google further enables a Zero Trust approach with third-party integrations through its BeyondCorp Alliance of partners in device management, endpoint security and gateways.”

Google Cloud received the highest possible score in sixteen criteria, in total receiving the most 5 out of 5 ratings among all vendors assessed. These criteria include: Data Intelligence, Access Control, Deletion, Obfuscation-Scope, Obfuscation-Key Management, Deployment, Security and Risk, APIs and Integration, Data Security Platform Vision, Data Security Execution Roadmap, Performance, Planned Enhancements, Zero Trust Enabling Partner Ecosystem, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Installed Base, and Revenue. 

Notably, Google Cloud received the highest possible score in the Obfuscation criteria. Obfuscation can help protect sensitive data, like personally identifiable information (PII), which is critical to many enterprise workflows. Cloud DLP helps customers inspect and mask this sensitive data with techniques like redaction, bucketing, and tokenization, which help strike the balance between risk and utility. This is especially crucial when dealing with unstructured or free-text workloads, in which it can be challenging to know what data to redact. More than 150 detectors combine to power Cloud DLP’s masking, which can be deployed in data migrations and business workloads like real-time data collection and processing. For Obfuscation specifically, the report mentioned that Google “takes a broad view of DLP, which includes in-line redaction of sensitive elements in unstructured data and DLP APIs that extend support to additional data types like images or other media.”

We are honored to be a Leader in The Forrester Wave™ Unstructured Data Security Platforms Q2 2021 report, and look forward to continuing to innovate and partner with you on ways to make your digital transformation journey safer as we work to become your most trusted Cloud.

A copy of the full report can be viewed here.

As a Google Cloud customer, your carbon footprint is already carbon neutral: Google first achieved carbon neutrality in 2007, and has been purchasing enough solar and wind energy to match 100% of its global electricity consumption since 2017. Now, Google is targeting a new sustainability goal: operating on carbon-free energy (CFE) 24/7, everywhere, by 2030. 

We want to empower you to make more sustainable decisions and progress with us towards this 24/7 carbon-free future. Earlier this year, we published the carbon characteristics of our Google Cloud regions. Later, we introduced a simple tool to help you pick a Google Cloud region, taking variables like price, latency and sustainability into account. Our next question was: what’s the best way to surface that sustainability info when you’re actually picking a region for your cloud resources? 

Starting today, we are indicating regions with the lowest carbon impact inside Cloud Console location selectors. Available today for Cloud Run and Datastream, you’ll see it roll out to more Google Cloud offerings over time:

Regions that feature the “Lowest CO2” and the leaf have a CFE% of at least 75%, or, if the information is not available for this region yet, a grid carbon intensity of maximum 200 gCO2eq/kWh. You can read more about how we calculate these metrics in our documentation.

Before releasing this feature, we ran experiments to measure its impact: Users who were exposed to the enhanced region picker were 19% more likely to select a “low carbon” region for their Cloud Run service—a significant lift. These results show that by displaying carbon information in context of when you make the decision of picking a region, we are helping you make more sustainable decisions.

By sharing and displaying carbon information of Google Cloud regions, together we’re making tangible progress towards our goal of a carbon-free future. Learn more about Carbon free energy for Google Cloud regions.

The partnership between Google Cloud and SAP is entering a new chapter. Over the years, our close partnership with SAP and our mutual dedication to customers has inspired us to do some of our most unique and innovative work—such as building Fast Restart and Memory Poisoning Recovery capabilities for S/4HANA workloads, offering real-time access to our advanced machine learning (ML) capabilities, and developing integrations with the industry’s best cloud security and network infrastructure.

With an expanded, strategic partnership, we are capitalizing on one of the cloud’s most valuable benefits: enabling customer choice without driving up cost or complexity. Customers have shared that they appreciate what Google Cloud has done over the years to support their ability to choose—from our support for multi-cloud environments to our track record with open-source technologies like Kubernetes, to name a couple of examples. 

“We chose Google Cloud to support our SAP implementation. Our decision had a lot to do with the relationship between Google Cloud and SAP and also for the applications and services that are offered by Google Cloud, like BigQuery, which are helping to enable data and analytics within our organization.”— Sam Moses, Vice President of Corporate Systems, The Home Depot

Now, we’re placing this same emphasis on customer choice, flexibility, and freedom to help SAP customers get greater ROI from their cloud investments in three ways:

• Execute seamless business transformations that deliver all of the benefits of modern, cloud-native applications and services—quickly, economically, and without disrupting day-to-day operations
• Migrate critical business systems to the cloud, in order to lock in OpEx savings and refocus their IT teams on strategic business technology initiatives
• Augment existing business systems with cloud capabilities in AI, ML, and analytics

The cornerstone of our expanded partnership is the RISE with SAP program—a comprehensive set of tools, technology, and expert support for a fast, predictable, cost-effective path to business transformation with SAP in the cloud. RISE is also designed to meet every SAP customer on their own terms, whether they’re undertaking an enterprise-wide cloud migration or pursuing an incremental or hybrid-cloud approach. 

To support customers taking advantage of RISE with SAP, Google Cloud will work even more closely with SAP to accelerate customers’ cloud migrations and business process modernization across several key areas. This includes ensuring global availability of multiple SAP services and products—such as SAP Business Technology Platform and SAP HANA Cloud—on Google Cloud’s reliable, scalable infrastructure and high-speed network. Google Cloud is also committed to bringing SAP’s solution for RPA in manufacturing to the Google Cloud Marketplace to support business process modernization. 

Additionally, integrating our AI, ML, and analytics capabilities with key SAP solutions will help companies augment their business systems with sophisticated capabilities and technologies so they can draw more value out of the data stored with them.

“We can deliver our 160 key business insights two or three orders of magnitude faster with BigQuery. When you think about our marketing campaigns and month-end finance processes, we’re talking about jobs that used to take five to eight hours to complete that are now running in seconds.”— Dan Semmens, Head of Data and AI, ATB Financial

Join us on the journey ahead

There’s so much more to come from SAP and Google Cloud. Learn more about our commitment to enabling digital transformation and hear more from customers about their SAP on Google Cloud deployments.

For far too long, managing employee expenses has been a time-consuming process that requires manual data entry and reconciliation to bridge the gap between business bank accounts and ERP systems. In the absence of an integrated workflow, finance teams use multiple systems to manage credit card and cash payments, and finding receipts. In most cases, they also lack real-time visibility into company spending.

The complexity grows exponentially as businesses expand, especially into new regions. Extra administration required to manage new bank accounts, card issuers, and local accounting systems impedes decision making and negatively impacts revenues and growth. Businesses of all sizes struggle with this, but it can be especially challenging for medium to large enterprises.

Payhawk set out to help businesses overcome these challenges when we founded the company in 2018. We combine VISA company cards, reimbursable expenses, and accounts payable into a single product. Our customers can automate manual processes, maximize efficiency, and accelerate business expansion.

Setting up our first cloud cluster in less than a week

To support growth and attract investment we were keen to launch our solution on a scalable, future-proof IT architecture that didn’t require extensive technical support. This is where Google Cloud made a big impression, especially the user interface and documentation which massively reduces the resources required to set up clusters and put them into production.

I’m a CTO, not a DevOps specialist, but in less than a week I was able to set up a secure, reliable operating infrastructure. This enabled us to fast-track our application development and we were able to issue our first card in just eight months. Our Google Cloud partner, Cloud Office also gave us valuable assistance, guiding us through the deployment process and advising on Google Cloud’s extensive range of solutions.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) played a critical role, accelerating the deployment and management of our cloud native applications. We use Cloud SQL as our database while other important tools include Cloud Memorystore, Vision AI, Cloud Storage and Artifact Registry for our wider data storage and application needs. With Firebase we’ve been able to build a notification system for mobile devices.

Another incentive is that most other cloud solutions require add-on services to build and keep your product live. With Google Cloud, all the services that Payhawk needs including logging, metrics, monitoring of resources, and utilization of CPU memory come as standard.

For instance, I was really impressed by Google Cloud’s operations suite, which includes Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring. If there are any anomalies in our cloud architecture, we can track and resolve them with minimal disruption to our operations. This also removes the need to invest in an additional observability solution.

Reliability that builds customer trust

Google Cloud also supports Payhawk’s mission to put customers at the center of our organization. Thanks to Google Cloud error reporting and tracking and Google Cloud single sign on, Payhawk’s engineering team can anticipate customer issues and correct them in less than one hour. Trust is everything, and Google Cloud gives us the tools to boost customer satisfaction and build long-term relationships.

As a young business, managing costs is also a priority. The Google for Startups Cloud Program, which includes credits for Google software and tools, enabled us to push the business forward without having to worry about financing our infrastructure, especially in the first year. This gave us breathing room to work through funding, application development, and the onboarding of our first customers.

In addition, Google Cloud gives us confidence that we can grow the business fast. In most months we have seen more than 10% growth — in some cases it’s been 20%. In the first half of 2022, the business doubled in size, but Google Cloud gave us the flexibility to scale our infrastructure, adding storage, memory, and processing power as we onboarded new customers. The pricing model is also generous so that we can grow our revenues while keeping control of operational expenditure.

Since launch we have acquired a valuable mix of customers from startups to large businesses that want to reduce the costs of their expenses programs and increase employee satisfaction. They include ATU, a German automobile servicing company, which has successfully digitized its entire procurement process, and Discordia, a Bulgarian logistics business with 10,000 trucks, which has issued Payhawk cards to all its drivers.

Looking to the future, it’s no exaggeration to say that Google Cloud is a foundation of our business and has given investors confidence in our operations. From a first seeding round of €3 million, early this year we closed a Series B extension of $100 million. This gives us a valuation of $1bn and makes Payhawk the first ever Bulgarian unicorn.

We now operate in 32 countries in Europe and the US, and plan to double our team by the end of the year. It feels like we’ve come a long way since we first started using Google Cloud, and I’m thrilled that we have Google Cloud as a global technology partner supporting our mission to transform expense management and financial operations worldwide.

If you want to learn more about how Google Cloud can help your startup, visit our page here to get more information about our program, and sign up for our communications to get a look at our community activities, digital events, special offers, and more.