Workplace collaboration continues to evolve as hybrid work expands its footprint. While both “same-time” and “staggered-time” (or asynchronous) collaboration modes each have their place in the hybrid work environment, organizations and teams sometimes overuse one mode over another. That’s probably because in-person meetings or collaborating in real time have been the default for many organizations, leading to a “same-time” bias, even as new tools make working across time zones and locations seamless. Ultimately, the key for making collaboration scalable and to support employee wellbeing is choosing the right method and tool for the task at hand. With that in mind, here are some ways to get the most out of same-time and staggered-time collaboration in your organization.

Making same-time collaboration more valuable

Historically, many organizations have valued same-time interactions for the fast, direct exchange of information and feedback. They also bring teams together and build human connections. While all these outcomes are powerful and important, same-time collaboration also has some drawbacks — especially in a hybrid environment.

First, same-time interactions can be difficult to arrange. Coordinating schedules requires advanced planning, especially when employees are distributed across time zones or working outside of traditional business hours. Second, back-to-back scheduling can contribute to meeting fatigue. In our recently commissioned global hybrid work survey with Economist Impact, 72% of respondents acknowledged that virtual meetings improve inclusion and participation. At the same time, 68% said there are too many virtual meetings in general, suggesting that even though employees value same-time collaboration, they want it in moderation.

To address these challenges, organizations should consider the collaboration scenarios in which same-time interactions can make the greatest impact. It’s particularly useful when consensus or immediate action is needed, as in briefings, decision-making, and crisis management.

For effective same-time collaboration in a hybrid environment, your employees need tools that help them coordinate real-time interactions and minimize time spent switching apps and context. With Google Workspace, teams can create and access a shared agenda or Google Doc inside a Google Calendar invite, helping align expectations and goals before, during, and after scheduled same-time work sessions. And, the more integrated your collaboration tools are, the easier it is for employees to get right to work when inspiration strikes or a quick decision is needed. For example, team members can initiate spontaneous work sessions by starting a Google Meet directly from Docs, Sheets, or Slides.

Additionally, consider how you can bring real-world collaboration activities into virtual environments to enhance same-time collaboration for distributed teams. For instance, digital whiteboard tools, like Jamboard and Miro in Google Meet, allow people to brainstorm, ideate, and problem-solve in real time from anywhere. Interactive solutions like these empower employees to work together in new ways.

Expanding what’s possible with staggered-time collaboration

Widespread adoption of hybrid work has prompted organizations to turn more frequently to staggered-time collaboration — where team members are free to share and respond to information in their own time. A key benefit of staggered collaboration is improving the experience and wellbeing of employees — specifically, by promoting participation across the team and support for flexible work habits. Allowing team members to engage when they’re most productive, or when it doesn’t interfere with their scheduled focus time, supports their wellbeing. It can also help employees feel heard, valued, and empowered. Staggered-time collaboration can also give team members who may feel uncomfortable or vulnerable speaking up in real time, or who just need time to think about their feedback, a more inviting way to share their perspectives.

Staggered-time collaboration can enhance a range of collaboration scenarios, including assigning tasks and action items, knowledge- and resource-sharing, brainstorming, and giving feedback. To make these interactions successful, employees need secure, intuitive tools that give them the information they need to do their jobs from anywhere, at any time. For example, in Spaces, team members can initiate and take part in group chat threads devoted to project- and topic-based discussions, as well as access files and tasks, to stay in the loop whenever they’re able to participate. For people working on a task or project at varied times, creating a dynamic, single source of truth makes all the difference.

When collaborating on shared documents, a feature like smart canvas enables teammates to assign tasks, build checklists, and share files using @-mentions for easy information access. Meanwhile, automated, built-in summaries in Docs help the team get up to speed without losing focus. Features like these help everyone stay on the same page (literally), even if they’re contributing to a project at different times.

Flexibility and collaboration are not mutually exclusive

Helping people know which tasks call for real-time collaboration and which tasks are better done on their own time is critical for sustaining productivity and wellbeing in a hybrid work world. Employees who are empowered to work in ways that complement their needs, preferences, and schedules typically reward their organization for that flexibility. As Holger Reisinger, Paul Sephton, and Dane Fetterer wrote for the Harvard Business Review, “When leaders give employees the freedom to choose where and when they work, it signals they trust them to do the job they were hired to do. The data shows that that trust is then paid back…at a very high rate, building a tight-knit culture of inclusivity and belonging.”

When you create team norms around same-time and staggered-time collaboration, you can help your employees stay productive and connected — to each other and the broader organization. And by giving them tools that support seamless, secure collaboration experiences from anywhere, the impact on productivity, employee wellbeing, and morale can be transformational.

Do hamburgers really come from Hamburg? This may still be a matter of debate, but the popularity of American-style burger joints not just in Hamburg but all over Germany, is clear. Germany’s top two fast food companies are both burger chains. One of them is BURGER KING®, a global brand that welcomes more than 11 million customers worldwide every day. The company arrived in Germany in 1976, when its first restaurant opened in Berlin. It now operates more than 100 restaurants across Germany, with franchisees operating more than 600 restaurants of their own.

“In the fast food industry, being able to move quickly is very important. That means delivering the right promotion to our app or launching a viral campaign within days. To do that across more than 700 restaurants, we need the support of the right technology.”

—Oliver Mielentz, IT Manager, BURGER KING® Deutschland GmbH

Previously a subsidiary of the U.S. business, BURGER KING® Germany became an independent company in 2015. As a result, it needed to develop its own IT infrastructure, and the changeover needed to happen fast. “We had to put in place systems that would work for the entire network of franchisees and enable us to easily roll out campaigns,” explains Oliver Mielentz, IT Manager at BURGER KING® Deutschland GmbH.

With the help of Google Cloud Premier partner Cloudwürdig, BURGER KING® Germany chose Google Cloud and G Suite as the right combination to suit its needs.

“In the fast food industry, being able to move quickly is very important,” says Oliver. “That means delivering the right promotion to our app or launching a viral campaign within days. To do that across more than 700 restaurants, we need the support of the right technology.”

Building a franchisee platform in just three months

When a business has multiple franchisees, it’s important to make sure everyone is on the same page, especially in the fast-paced fast food environment. “We have to collate data from all our franchisees and produce reports quickly in order to react to changes in customer behavior,” explains Oliver. “That means processing every transaction that takes place in our restaurants.” Following the restructure, BURGER KING® Germany also needed to build a secure invoicing system with data storage and optimize its communication channels.

“Using Tableau with BigQuery, we’re able to produce reports very quickly. Previously, it took much longer, as data had to be fetched manually. Our reaction time is now almost a business day faster.”

—Oliver Mielentz, IT Manager, BURGER KING® Deutschland GmbH

With support from Witter-IT, BURGER KING® Germany chose Cloudwürdig to build its BKD Connect internal platform on Google Cloud. Thanks to the ready-to-go tools on Google Cloud, it was able to put its invoicing system and data warehouse in place in just three months.

For the BURGER KING® Germany data warehouse, Cloudwürdig built an ETL pipeline that channels ticket data for every sale into BigQuery. “Data is gathered from the restaurants,” says Oliver, “and using Tableau with BigQuery, we’re able to produce reports very quickly. Previously, it took much longer, as data had to be fetched manually. Our reaction time is now almost a business day faster.”

As the ticket data for every transaction is stored in BigQuery, the marketing team can easily see exactly which products are selling well. That’s crucial for tweaking promotions as well as monitoring the supply chain to make sure enough produce is delivered to restaurants in response to changes in demand.

“Thanks to BigQuery, we have a speedy data pipeline that enables us to react on the same day to changes in the market and eliminate bottlenecks in production,” says Oliver.

Switching to G Suite to improve communication

To enable franchisees to sign in to its BKD Connect Platform, BURGER KING® Germany needed a secure authentication system. To solve that problem, it chose to provide franchisees with G Suite accounts. “It’s really easy to set up a new franchisee on the platform. I just create a new G Suite account and Drive folder for it, and it’s ready to go,” says Oliver. G Suite also helps the franchise network to run efficiently, as daily reports are automatically saved to Drive and shared to the appropriate regional network. “Thanks to that system, it’s much easier for any team at headquarters to access the information it needs,” Oliver explains.

BURGER KING® Germany also recently extended its use of G Suite across the whole company. “Following an evaluation of our previous email and productivity software, I made the decision to switch solely to G Suite,” says Oliver. BURGER KING® Germany employees now use Gmail, Calendar, and Drive for their day-to-day productivity needs. “We only just completed the migration, but already, everyone’s happy,” says Oliver. “It’s so easy to share a file using Drive or set up a meeting on Calendar.”

“We’re big fans of Hangouts Meet, and we have two rooms here at our Hanover headquarters equipped with Hangouts Meet hardware,” Oliver adds. “The speech quality is good, and it’s helpful to be able to see every participant, especially when you’re running a meeting with multiple franchisees.”

Optimizing infrastructure to power innovative campaigns

The BURGER KING® app, available for iOS and Android, helps the company to deliver a great customer experience. Through their MyBK accounts, guests can access coupons and special promotions. “We had a really interesting campaign for Easter: guests used the app to hunt for virtual Easter eggs,” explains Oliver. “We knew it was going to be big, and our previous back end wouldn’t have been able to handle the traffic.”

To enable the marketing campaign to go ahead, BURGER KING® Germany moved the back end of the app, along with its website, to Google Cloud. For developing and running its web and app back ends, it now uses App Engine and virtual machines on Compute Engine, as well as Memorystore and Cloud Functions. For monitoring and logging, it uses Stackdriver, and Cloud CDN and Cloud DNS to easily handle its traffic.

“We ran the campaign without any performance issues, even though we were receiving several million hits a day,” says Oliver. Since migrating the back end to Google Cloud, the marketing team also launched the popular “Escape the Clown” campaign. “That campaign blew our minds!” says Oliver. “It wouldn’t have been possible without Google Cloud, because it required a lot of back end capacity.”

To develop the app infrastructure it needs, BURGER KING® Germany relies on Cloudwürdig. “Working with Cloudwürdig is great because the team has the same agile mindset as us,” says Oliver. “When we have a new idea, we just set up a meeting, and in a couple of days the new infrastructure is in place. For Escape the Clown, it only took a few weeks to get everything ready to launch.”

Leveraging integrated tools to grow the business

Using Google Cloud together with G Suite enables BURGER KING® Germany to run its franchise network efficiently, while keeping its IT team lean. “Google Cloud and G Suite are the perfect fit for the way of working at BURGER KING® Germany,” says Oliver. “Many of the company’s operatives are often on the road, visiting restaurants and franchisees. With these tools, they can work flexibly and react quickly to the situation on the ground.”

“In order to grow the business, we need to use the data we receive every day to understand exactly what is happening in our restaurants. With the tools provided by Google Cloud, we can get more guests through the door and offer them a better experience.”

—Oliver Mielentz, IT Manager, BURGER KING® Deutschland GmbH

It also helps to keep infrastructure costs under control. “With Google Cloud, we only pay for what we use, which is really important for us,” Oliver explains. “It means we can scale up quickly if we see an opportunity to react to a trend in customer behavior and launch a new marketing campaign that resonates with the moment. When it’s finished, we can then scale down again, and that definitely saves us money.”

BURGER KING® is now working with Cloudwürdig to add more functionality to the BURGER KING® app using Google Kubernetes Engine. “We like to work with customers long-term to support their digital transformation. BURGER KING® Germany is a great example of how one project can develop into a great collaboration,” says Benny Woletz, Managing Director of Cloudwürdig.

BURGER KING® also plans to expand its presence in Germany and gain a greater market share by further tailoring both its marketing and the way it runs its restaurants to answer its guests’ needs. “In order to grow the business, we need to use the data we receive every day to understand exactly what is happening in our restaurants,” says Oliver. “With the tools provided by Google Cloud, we can get more guests through the door and offer them a better experience.”

This April, Gmail will be 18 years old. That’s a big milestone, given that email as a medium just turned 50.

Launched in 2004—with its 1 GB free storage, conversation based grouping, and enhanced search capabilities—Gmail quickly became one of the most popular email services in the world.

What started off as Paul Buchheit’s side project is now part of Google Workspace, a solution that’s used by over 3 billion users. 

Yet despite this growth and Gmail’s long history, the product continues to find new ways to delight its users with great experiences, new features, and constant innovation.  

How does the product team do it? 

To help us unpack this question, I interviewed Matthew Izatt, Product Lead for Gmail.

Matthew has been building and growing Gmail for the last 10+ years. He started off in mobile where he built the Android and iOS apps for Gmail, and eventually he became the lead product owner for all of Gmail’s front end. He also led the development of the new Gmail in 2018, which was a complex rebuild of the technical architecture and visual design, along with the addition of multiple enterprise focused features. Since then, he has been leading Google’s charge on redefining how we work as the product lead for the Workspace Platform and Partnerships efforts with a team of over 100.

What follows is an edited version of our interview. 

Mustafa Kapadia: Matt, thank you for joining us. Now, before we jump into how your team does its magic, can you please share with me some of the challenges you face when you build a new feature or experience on Gmail?

Matthew Izatt: Thanks Mustafa. And I think this is a great place to start.

One of the biggest challenges is that Google Workspace is used by over 3 billion users, and while that is great, there are many different ways of using our product. It’s not like a doorbell, where there is only one way of using it. With Gmail, it’s like an infinite Swiss army knife, where everyone has their own favorite way of using the product.

Second, Gmail is a critical product for many of our users. Yes, it’s fun to use, but people use it to get important work done—sending job proposals, emailing with their kids’ teachers, or booking medical appointments. This is why we have to be careful about what we experiment with and what we roll out. We can’t just throw things out there and see what works. We have to do our homework.

Third, we have to constantly innovate and think outside the box. Email is an old product, but it continues to evolve. Every day we have new startups reinventing email and challenging the big players. If we are to remain a market leader, we literally have to rethink the product every few years. Which is why creating the new Gmail was so much fun. 

Mustafa: I don’t envy you. This is not an easy product to build. Going back to something you touched on: Given these hurdles, how do you build these great experiences? Is there an example that you can share with us?

Matt: A specific example I always like to share is the story of how we came up with the right display density on our thread list. The thread list is your inbox; it’s the list of all the messages that you have. The display density is how that information is presented to you.

In Gmail you can choose to have fewer messages with a lot of information about each message. Or you can choose to see a larger number of messages with much less information about each message.

It really comes down to your preferences. And it’s one of the reasons why so many users like using Gmail. In fact, being able to set inbox display preferences is actually one of the top 10 most used settings within Gmail.

Mustafa: So you were really trying to give users choice on how they would like their information presented?

Matt: Exactly. Now, we could have added 100 different levers so that every user could customize their email feed to an infinite degree. While that is possible from a coding perspective, it’s not practical for three reasons.

First, infinite choice sounds good on paper, but in reality, too many options creates a confusing user experience. Second, development would take many months—maybe even a year. And third, it would be a long-term maintenance nightmare. 

Mustafa: So how did you go about doing it? Share with me the inner workings of Gmail in Google Workspace. How is the sausage made? 

Matt: Well, it came down to four key steps, working closely with our amazing UX Research team.

First came the primary research to find out if building this experience was worth doing. After all, what is the point of building it if no one wants it? For this we actually sat down with real users inside and outside of Google to understand their needs.

Second, we brainstormed 100 potential solutions and narrowed them down to 8 options. Then we mocked up each of the 8 options to see how they looked.

While it would have been easy to just pick the option we liked the most and build it, we wanted to create what our users want, not what we like the most. So we took those options and surveyed the users from step 1 again. We specifically asked them to rank their preferences across three dimensions: Love It, Hate It, or Meh!

Based on the user responses, we realized that 3 configurations would meet the needs of most users. These were the three options we developed and deployed to Google Workplace.

Mustafa: I love how you used data to guide your decision of what to build. This really is Google’s secret sauce—first-hand data collected from users.

Matt: Absolutely. Without their feedback, we would have never been able to narrow down to the 3 options that would satisfy most of our users.

Mustafa: Talking about risks: Getting user feedback and validating before you build is one way to de-risk your product, but you even de-risked your product launch strategy, correct?

Matt: Yes. Sometimes we launch features individually. Sometimes we launch them as a group. In this particular case, we had a lot of moving parts. We had a complete UI redesign, 10 or 12 new features, and architecture changes.

So to de-risk this, we put in place—I kid you not—a 26-stage launch process. We started off with the technical architecture changes—stuff that the user would not notice—to make sure that it was working. And we did it in small increments.

Then we rolled out a few features at a time, launching it first to our early access program—where users have opted in to receive updates. We measured their reaction and satisfaction first, and then moved on to the next group.

At every stage, we kept our blast radius small and put in these checks and balances where we could launch, measure reaction, and then reassess our strategy. And that worked out pretty well for us for this massive launch.

Mustafa: Agreed! Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. And good luck with building the next version of Gmail.

Matt: Thanks for having me.

Founded in 1930 and headquartered in Jordan, Arab Bank is one of the oldest banks in the Middle East. Operating out of 28 countries, we’ve earned our customers’ trust with a prudent approach to operations and respect for the cultures and customs in the region. 

With a few exceptions where cloud providers have hosted their datacenter in a Middle Eastern or North African country, the banking sector, in general, in the region has been slow to adopt cloud technology for a number of reasons, including concern about data security, maturity and security controls of cloud services (PaaS and SaaS), and regulations in place. But on the other hand, we saw the opportunity to accelerate our development and testing using the cloud, as well as to partner with the fintech community and digital service providers to integrate their solution in the banking ecosystem. We needed more flexibility to connect with the outside world, and a more open architecture to help us drive our internal innovation at a faster rate with the help of the fintech industry. By collaborating with Google Cloud, we reached those goals and accelerated app development and testing through products like Apigee and Anthos. We’re now offering innovative apps and services to our customers and employees that leverage new technological capabilities to give more agility and flexibility, and to optimize our workloads.

Embracing the cloud in a regulated industry 

To get started with the cloud, we needed to create internal awareness about cloud technology, the API layer, containers and their benefits amongst our leaders and staff. Google helped us educate and get buy-in from key functions by organizing open technology demonstration sessions and discussion panels. When considering potential cloud providers we had four decision criteria: maturity of security controls, ease of use, cost, and scalability / agility for new deployments and continuous innovation. This last factor was critical, and we were impressed by Google Cloud’s innovation roadmap, both via direct conversations and at Google’s Next conference, where we met a lot of people passionate about technology, innovation and building something new.  

Going back to our journey, given the above-mentioned regional limitations, we started to develop a hybrid cloud approach. This helped us continue to operate on-premises for a number of services in production, particularly those that have personally identifiable information (PII) or other sensitive data attached, and to leverage the cloud for development, testing and production workloads that don’t contain customer data. 

In the short term, we didn’t anticipate that our many jurisdictions would allow data to be transported to other countries. But cloud tools will allow us to tokenize or anonymize customer data while maintaining customer data on-premises. This applies to many digital journeys such as customer onboarding, credit facility online applications, or marketplace navigation. In the coming years, we predict our API integration with partners will accelerate and enrich the overall digital value proposition of our business segments, namely consumer banking, small and medium-size businesses and large corporate and institutional clients. 

Building connections and cornerstones in the cloud

The first move in our digital transformation was to implement Apigee, Google Cloud’s API management platform, to connect to the world’s digital banking ecosystem. Apigee provides the security, sharing, mediation policies, and developer portal capabilities for us to successfully meet Open Banking standards while focusing on innovation.  

On the back of the Apigee implementation, we created an accelerator program to incubate Fintech ideas that can, in turn, integrate into our digital platforms and be offered to our customers. We also developed various banking APIs, all designed and documented in accordance with PSD2 and Open Banking regulations, and made them available to our partners. These APIs exposed on our API development portal offer the needed code structure for fintech companies to design creative solutions around them.

Next, we adopted Anthos, Google Cloud’s managed application platform. Anthos has become a cornerstone of our operations because it works across hybrid cloud, offering integration of microservice containers and fueling collaborative opportunities with external parties. Our current Anthos infrastructure includes several hundreds of  microservices now running on containers in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and on-premises. We now use the cloud for collaboration, development and testing, but not for production, which is done on-premises. 

Along the way, Google Cloud’s Professional Services Organization (PSO) helped us through the entire cloud setup process, and with the adoption of Anthos. We originally built on the cloud tools through an iterative process, learning from our successes and errors along the way. Now that we have a better sense of how Anthos operates, we’re building a fresh infrastructure atop a sound, stable, and resilient foundation that will let us scale easily as we work to transform Arab Bank into a digital-first enterprise, that is our ambition. 

Currently products running on Anthos include customer acquisition and onboarding via mobile apps, and our Arabi-Pay app, which allows customers to instantly pay each other via WhatsApp or other messaging platforms. Leveraging Anthos, our instant loan service for Arab Bank salaried employees can grant and disburse loans up to $7,000 in less than seven minutes.

In addition, we’ve built a number of digital journeys for our Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) customers, such as our SME client digital onboarding process and paperless SME lending platform.

While some may think that digital adoption in this part of the world can be slow, as customer contact remains anchored in our customs, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital banking services and electronic payments, inspiring more confidence to buy and pay online. Thanks to our rich and user-friendly banking app that relies on Apigee and Anthos for critical customer journeys, over 90% of new-to-bank customers are using our mobile apps. Within the next 18 months, we predict that number will be closer to 100%. 

Of course, with higher customer adoption comes the challenge of potential service interruptions. A single moment of downtime can be highly visible to many digital customers. But Google Cloud’s Anthos and Apigee give us the flexibility to resume processes at a fast rate, so any interruptions are almost invisible to our customers. In fact, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, though our branches could be open only for limited hours each day, our consumer clients in particular were able to take advantage of our digital services in a very self-sufficient manner. Being well positioned with Google Cloud, we could also keep our internal teams and external partners connected and productive. Without Google Cloud, continuing the digital transformation of the bank at the pace we wanted would have been a big challenge. 

Collaborating across borders and time zones

With Google Cloud, our ability to collaborate and partner has transformed significantly. We operate 24/7 now because our developers are scattered across multiple geographies and different time zones. Because testing and deployment can run around the clock, including on weekends, we currently deploy a new digital journey in a few weeks, faster than ever before. This has given our organization a spirited mindset that prioritizes innovation, and raised the bar in terms of our operating model.  

Another consideration about Google Cloud tools is the elimination of inefficient processes typically seen in a software development lifecycle. We now build in a completely agile manner, from design squads until deployment in production. Compared to where we were two years ago, when we had an annual maximum of two systems releases in production, we now have close to monthly releases of our digital packages. In addition, we also  supplement those monthly releases with additional ad-hoc releases and fixes in between. As a result, we have removed internal silos and improved tremendously the collaboration between the product and sales teams, operations, IT Dev Factory and Infrastructure, as well as our supporting functions.

Through the agile process facilitated by APIs, we introduced Design Thinking workshops involving external customers and prospects early on to understand their true pain points better and emotions during the existing journeys and how to make new digital journeys frictionless. As a result, the relevance of our products for various customer personas has improved tremendously. 

Transcending banking 

With Google Cloud, we can offer our customers so much more than just banking. We’ve become more digitally relevant to their lives. For example, we recently launched a mortgage app that helps customers all the way from home selection through mortgage negotiations and closing, and even to getting the home decorated. It’s an end-to-end journey in which API integration with key regional players was a cornerstone to our success. 

For other digital products, we have an extensive roadmap of lifestyle-based solutions relevant to each segment and age group. We’ve only scratched the surface of the services we can provide, and we see the cloud as the future for everything we want to do.

Read more about Google Cloud’s Open Banking solution to learn how you can simplify and accelerate the process of delivering open banking as required by PSD2. You can also view our video on Open Banking, powered by Apigee API Management.

As digital transformation continues apace, cloud native adoption has skyrocketed — and so has the volume, velocity, and variety of data that organizations must monitor to maintain visibility over their IT environments. Rather than a fixed number of virtual machines (VMs) running a single application each, systems are more flexible and ephemeral — with thousands of containers and microservices emitting data — and services and systems have greater interdependencies. All of this has led to an explosion in complexity that makes it nearly impossible to reliably and efficiently operate cloud-native services using traditional observability solutions without dramatically increasing overhead. 

Built on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Chronosphere is the only cloud-native observability solution that helps teams quickly resolve incidents before they affect the customer experience and the bottom line. And the relationship between Google Cloud and Chronosphere has developed into a growing partnership. Chronosphere brings the ability to rapidly and reliably control observability data and costs to Google Cloud customers, while maintaining open source compatibility. Recently, GV (Google Ventures) participated in Chronosphere’s $115 million round of Series C funding. Chronosphere is also available on Google Cloud Marketplace, making it easy for customers to procure and deploy.

Why Chronosphere chose to build on Google Cloud

Chronosphere’s founders, CEO, Martin Mao, and CTO, Rob Skillington, wanted to build an observability solution that solved some of the same problems they encountered when leading the observability team at Uber. The challenges at Uber focused on scale, reliability and cost, with a key emphasis on how these were not easily solvable for monitoring of cloud-native applications. Martin and Rob were looking to build a solution that was cloud-native, highly reliable, and capable of managing the high volume of data that modern organizations process every day. For those reasons, Martin and Rob chose to build Chronosphere on top of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE): 

Cloud-native mindset: When Martin and Rob launched Chronosphere, one of the first considerations was this: A cloud-native problem needs a cloud-native solution. Google Cloud and Chronosphere work together to provide a purpose-built software-as-a-service (SaaS) observability solution platform for cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes. Chronosphere runs much of its critical infrastructure on Google Cloud, using the service’s global infrastructure to deliver secure and reliable services to hypergrowth customers.  

Open platform: Martin and Rob have a commitment to openness — a commitment that Google Cloud makes to its customers as well. All of the ins and outs of Chronosphere are open source compatible –built on GKE, the platform  ingests both metric and trace data in a variety of open source formats, such as Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, and StatsD, so teams can get onboard easily while avoiding vendor lock-in. And they remain fully in control of how much data to ingest, how it’s ingested, how it’s stored, and for how long. That way, customers remain in control of their observability costs while their systems and data continue to grow, and can troubleshoot and remediate issues more quickly. 

Mission-critical performance: Observability is a mission-critical service because it is essential for the reliability and performance of mission-critical systems. For this reason, Martin and Rob wanted to offer the strongest service level agreements (SLAs) possible for availability, reliability, and performance. Google Cloud provides the secure global infrastructure that allows them to do so. 

Data volume: Modern organizations emit huge volumes of data that they have to sift through in near-real time to gain full visibility. Google Cloud offers the same infrastructure and networks that Google uses to support billions of users every day, capable of processing petabytes of data with ease. 

How Chronosphere works with Google Cloud

GKE provides specific technical benefits that Chronosphere leverages to offer customers the performance and availability they need to spend less time managing their observability systems and more time creating value. 

The Chronosphere collector is a Kubernetes-native, Prometheus-compatible agent that collects, processes, and exports telemetry data, including metrics and traces. When you install the collector in a Kubernetes cluster, it automatically discovers all your workloads and starts to gather data from them. 

The Chronosphere UI tailors the experience to each user based on what services that individual owns or which teams that person belongs to. This makes the overall user experience friendlier and less overwhelming while helping people get to the bottom of issues faster.

Running on GKE means that Chronosphere can leverage Google Cloud’s multiple zones in each geographic region to distribute workloads evenly, ensure customer data stores are isolated from each other, and build tolerance for zonal failures. It also allows for data persistence across multiple zones. At the same time, Google Cloud’s global load balancers bring the data physically closer to the customer, shortening the time it takes for a data point to be visible to a user after its emission.

What this means for customers

The partnership brings together the best in cloud-native services and cloud-native observability. With the power of Google Cloud and Chronosphere, observability teams can transform their observability data based on need, context, and utility, storing only the useful data to reduce costs and improve performance. With purpose-built solutions for a cloud-native world, teams gain faster issue detection and resolution, and also benefit from Chronosphere’s 99.99% availability and open source compatibility — eliminating vendor lock-in. 

“Companies growing their online infrastructure risk huge hits to their bottom line if they don’t also manage increased complexity and cost,” says Martin. “Our partnership with Google Cloud brings together the world’s leading cloud services platform with our powerful observability solution to unlock the benefits of a cloud-native world, while optimizing for efficiency, reliability, and cost.”

Google Cloud and Chronosphere: The perfect match

Google Cloud and Chronosphere offer an industry-leading observability solution built from the ground up to abstract away the complexities of cloud computing for already stressed teams. And the future of this partnership is sure to bring new innovations around performance, reliability, and cost efficiency as both companies continue to invest in these three areas. The goal: to deliver the best performance for cost in the industry. 

Learn more about what Chronosphere and Google Cloud are doing for customers, and check out the Chronosphere listing on Google Cloud Marketplace.