3602
Of your peers have already watched this video.
10:42 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
The Inside Story of How PayPal Became an Innovator in a Competitive Market
PayPal is an American company operating a worldwide online payment system that supports online money transfers and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. The company enables over 29 million payments or transactions on a peak day. in over 200 markets around the world.
PayPal wanted to scale its business. It had achieved a 25% payment growth across the world. It wanted to ensure it’s available wherever its customers are and enable seamless transactions. PayPal also wanted to ensure flexibility. “There are huge variations in the amounts of payment that happen every day of the week or every week of the year. We wanted to ensure our systems are capable of keeping up with these variations,” says Sri Shivananda, SVP and CTO, PayPal.
The company also had to meet regulatory compliance needs across its 200 markets and increase its efficiency. It wanted to get rid of hardware on-premises which it wasn’t using on a regular basis. And above all, the company wanted to innovate quickly to beat the competition.
This is why PayPal turned to Google Cloud. Watch how it made the transition and reaped the benefits.
4003
Of your peers have already downloaded this article
3:30 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
Everything COOs need to know to make an informed decision
about migrating and modernizing their businesses’ core
technology estate to the cloud.
5625
Of your peers have already downloaded this article
1:30 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
Even before the current crisis, IT organizations saw pressure to be more agile and innovative. Customer demographics and expectations are changing. Competition is emerging faster and from unexpected sources. Business models are being reinvented. Digital technology was at the heart of many of these challenges, and its adoption was key to every company’s response.
As a result, CIOs face a series of urgent challenges:
- How can they raise system visibility and system control over operations that are more dispersed and changing than ever?
- How can they cut costs, yet create a more agile and responsive IT system?
- How can they do more with older data, even as they understand better the data from a market that is changing every week?
- How can they help people work faster, with a minimum of change management, or set the stage for growth, while preserving capital?
In many cases the answer is a step-by-step deployment of cloud computing technology, tailored to meet the most pressing needs first.
Groupe Dauphinoise Grows it Customer Base with G Suite and Google Cloud Platform
10380
Of your peers have already read this article.
2:45 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
As a leading French agricultural cooperative, Groupe Dauphinoise places collaboration at the heart of its philosophy. Working with farmers in the Rhone-Alpes region, Groupe Dauphinoise takes on a diverse range of activities from agricultural production to research and development to running retail outlets.
As its operations expanded and strained its existing infrastructure, Groupe Dauphinoise saw the opportunity to upgrade its technology solutions and adopted G Suite, Chrome devices and ultimately Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
“We transitioned to G Suite to improve our staff’s collaboration. We quickly realized that as the company grew, we needed a new infrastructure. Based on our satisfaction with G Suite, we chose GCP. With Google, ‘any device, anytime, anywhere’ is not just a dream,” says Sylvain Claudel, Head of IT at Groupe Dauphinoise.
“We transitioned to G Suite to improve our staff’s collaboration. We quickly realized that as the company grew, we needed a new infrastructure. Based on our satisfaction with G Suite, we chose GCP. With Google, ‘any device, anytime, anywhere’ is not just a dream.”
—Sylvain Claudel, Head of IT, Groupe Dauphinoise
Flexible workforce, stable infrastructure
Many of Groupe Dauphinoise’s 1,500 employees spend their days out of the office. Five years ago, with the help of Google partner GoWizYou, the company transitioned to G Suite to improve the flexibility and collaboration of its staff.
As Groupe Dauphinoise began to expand and collect more data, the company reached the limits of its on-premise infrastructure. Adding new storage was not a simple matter. Acquiring, configuring and synchronising new servers costs Groupe Dauphinoise time as well as money. In addition, with all its servers stored in a single room, security was a concern. Groupe Dauphinoise needed a new infrastructure.
Google Cloud Platform was the only solution in mind after Groupe Dauphinoise’s experience with G Suite and Chromebooks. Disruption was kept to a minimum thanks to Google’s licensing agreements with Microsoft products, allowing the company to migrate without affecting its operations.
After migrating its infrastructure to Compute Engine, Groupe Dauphinoise can let Google look after the security and maintenance. Cloud IAM makes it easy for Groupe Dauphinoise to hand out permissions to sensitive resources across a number of sites with maximum security and minimum fuss. The company placed its archives in Cloud Storage, while Cloud SQL allows it to continue to make use of its MySQL databases without disrupting the day to day business. Meanwhile, BigQuery provides Groupe Dauphinoise with the raw power to analyse large datasets quickly.
“Our company is growing and we have more and more data to collect and analyze like sales data, weather patterns or production numbers. With GCP, we have more than a single on-premise data store, so our disaster recovery plan is much more flexible. Compute Engine allows us to add more storage quickly and easily, without having to spend days synchronizing data and installing new servers. We have improved security and maintained the stability of our infrastructure while keeping costs down,” says Sylvain.
Safeguarding the present, looking to the future
With Google Cloud Platform, Groupe Dauphinoise has expanded and secured its infrastructure without sinking costs into on-premise servers or DevOps staff. Its investment in Chrome devices and adoption of G Suite mean that its mobile workforce can fully reap the benefits of a cloud-based infrastructure while dramatically cutting the cost of hardware. Meanwhile, working with a 200 million line table of sales data in Google BigQuery, the cooperative found that queries ran ten times faster than with its previous database provider. Groupe Dauphinoise is experimenting with Google BigQuery to expand its BI capabilities. Products like Google BigQuery help Groupe Dauphinoise grow its business, safe in the knowledge that its infrastructure is stable and secure.
“The amount of data we collect is growing very quickly. We need to break our rules and evolve from the mindset that we had with on-premise infrastructure and our old databases. We can now look at collecting more customer fidelity data, or big data for our farmers. With our data and infrastructure in Google’s care, we can concentrate on growing our customer base instead of our IT department!” says Sylvain.
Google Introduces BigQuery Connector for SAP to Power Customers’ Data Analytics Strategy
5470
Of your peers have already read this article.
2:00 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
Google Cloud has a genuine passion for solving technology problems that make a difference for our customers. With the release of our BigQuery Connector for SAP, we’re taking a another big step towards solving a major challenge for SAP customers with a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to integrate SAP data with BigQuery, our serverless, highly scalable, and cost-effective multi cloud data warehouse designed for business agility.
Solving for simplified data integration
Like most businesses today, SAP customers are eager to unlock the immediate insights and opportunities within their ever-growing stores of business data. However, many are discovering just how hard it can be to take the first step in any modern, cloud-enabled data analytics strategy: combining SAP data with other cloud-native, and enterprise data sets in real-time and at scale. According to a 2020 SAPInsider study, more than half of SAP customers surveyed said data integration was their top analytics pain point. These companies urgently need a rapid, sustainable, cost-effective and scalable way to integrate SAP data with modern cloud data analytics solutions.
The BigQuery Connector for SAP gives our customers a solution: a fast, simple, cost-effective and massively scalable way to make SAP data fully accessible within BigQuery by leveraging customers’ existing SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server (SLT) tooling and skill sets. It’s the first SAP SLT direct near real-time connector for BigQuery without the need to set up additional infrastructure or third-party middleware, and can be deployed using a variety of embedded or stand-alone deployment options. In fact, most customers can install the BigQuery Connector for SAP in less than an hour—a remarkably easy way to start working with our industry-leading analytics solution that delivers proven and quantifiable business advantages for customers. Additionally, the BigQuery Connector for SAP is not restricted to customers who have deployed their SAP applications on Google Cloud. Customer’s who are running their SAP applications on-premise, or on any cloud, can also deploy and realize the analytical benefits of the solution.
Designing a solution with customer requirements and investments in mind
When the Google Cloud team started work on an analytics data integration tool for our SAP customers, we began with a set of requirements designed to root out the usual sources of cost and complexity. These included:
- The need for real-time performance with deltas replicated in milliseconds
- The ability to integrate data from almost any SAP Netweaver based application running today, regardless of its deployment location (on premises, any cloud, Google Cloud)
- Automatic BigQuery data type mapping with minimal transformation required
- Generation of target tables in BigQuery directly from source, if required
- Application layer integration that avoids the issues of direct database access
- Leveraging customers’ existing SAP skillsets, change data capture, and infrastructure
An important step towards meeting these requirements came when Alphabet, Google’s parent company, decided to leverage SAP SLT as a foundation for developing direct data replication between SAP and BigQuery for its internal corporate landscape. SLT as part of SAP’s strategic Business Technology Platform, supports real-time replication of data from SAP or third-party systems to SAP HANA, however, one of its limitations was direct integration with targets like BigQuery.
SAP SLT was a logical foundation for developing the connector for several reasons:
- It’s widely adopted among SAP customers who likely already leverage SLT for SAP analytics data integration
- It works with almost every non-SaaS SAP application environment running today
- It supports real-time replication performance at massive scale
It was an obvious choice for the Alphabet engineering team who saw immediate value from integrating SAP with BigQuery.
“The BigQuery Connector for SAP has enabled fast, low latency data replication for billions of records from 500+ tables of our most critical financial and supply chain data. Now in one cost-effective BigQuery data lake, this ERP data can be combined with other data sources for previously impossible real-time analytics and ML use cases. This allows us to drive much deeper strategic insights that support business and operational excellence, management and P&L reporting and more.”—Anil Nagalla, Sr. Engineering Director, Financial Systems, Google
SAP data integration with BigQuery enables new value
By leveraging SAP SLT, the BigQuery Connector for SAP can integrate real-time data streams from any SAP system—while also taking advantage of customers’ existing SAP investments and skillsets.
At the same time, the BigQuery Connector for SAP does a lot of heavy lifting on its own. For example, it automatically handles the complex, multi-step process of transforming SAP data types for use in BigQuery—mapping data-type transitions between the SAP and BigQuery environments, creating a target table schema on BigQuery for the transformed data types, building the target BigQuery table, and even adapting as new data types appear in your SAP environment.
For teams that want to fine-tune the BigQuery Connector for SAP’s automated recommendations, the connector supports additional levels of customization and choice. But if you simply want to get the job done and give your data analytics team greater support for their high-value work, then you’ll love just how quickly and easily the BigQuery Connector for SAP turns the complicated work of data integration and performance to process large volumes of data into a done deal. By integrating enterprise data sets in real time, customers can drive differentiated value and unlock new insights and actions that drive a competitive advantage.
The BigQuery Connector for SAP really shines as an enabling tool that transports and transforms your SAP data to power analytics solutions enabled by accelerators like the Google Cloud Cortex Framework: a comprehensive set of reference architectures, deployment accelerators, and integration services designed to give SAP customers a fast and seamless path to value with their data analytics investments. Simply put, the more SAP data you make available within Google Cloud, the easier it is to get meaningful—and often game-changing—insights from these solutions.
Learn more about the BigQuery Connector for SAP
Ready to get started with your own SAP data analytics strategy on Google Cloud? Install the Google Cloud BigQuery Connector for SAP, and discover a faster, simpler, more sustainable way to power your company’s data analytics strategy.
3791
Of your peers have already watched this video.
8:00 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
Target Leverages Google Cloud to Create Market-defining Online Experience
In the hyper-competitive world of online retail sales, ease-of-use and transaction speed can make or break business outcomes. However, a few years ago US Retail giant Target was going through a period of uncertainty.
While the company had over 1800 stores across the US with an estimated 85% of US consumers shopping at a Target store and over 25 million people visiting the Target website or using its app each month, it was still losing ground.
In spite of having millions of loyal customers, the company was dangerously late on digital and its technology wasn’t keeping pace with unstable systems to boot. The company faced the twin challenges of trying to operate today’s business as efficiently as possible and creating tomorrow’s business as quickly as possible. On the one hand it needed productivity and stability and on the other it wanted speed and disruption. Not an easy task to accomplish.
That’s when Target decided to use Google Cloud to solve its challenges. See how Target leveraged Google Cloud to create a market-defining online experience that has made customers happier and more loyal.
More Relevant Stories for Your Company
How a Mid-Sized Firm is Shrinking Inventory Carryovers 50% with AI
For more than 10 years, NMK Textile Mills has manufactured bed linens for major retailers in the United States and Canada. As e-commerce exploded, the company’s co-founder saw an opportunity to grow the business. So, in addition to manufacturing bed linens wholesale for retail customers, NMK Textile Mills reworked its complete supply
Three Benefits of VPC Network Peering for SAP Managed Apps
Over the past year, RISE with SAP has emerged as a valuable solution for SAP customers seeking a faster, simpler, and more affordable path to the cloud. RISE with SAP is a subscription-based offering that typically includes a number of fully managed cloud application options, including SAP S/4HANA Cloud and
City of San Jose Ensures Critical Services Reach Community Using AI Translation
San José is one of the most diverse U.S. cities, with residents speaking more than 100 languages. Several years ago, we set out to improve city community interactions through more equitable service management and delivery. This demanded a new approach to automating the intake of requests from a majority population
Southwire Completes SAP Migration to Google Cloud as a First Step of its Tech Evolution
“Talk about tough times, right?” That’s how Dan Stuart, Senior Vice President of IT Services at Southwire Company, refers to the months following a December 2019 ransomware event, and the COVID crisis that began in spring of 2020. Those events hit just as the company was preparing for an overhaul
