If you’re managing a crucial application that has to be fully fault-tolerant, you need your system to be able to handle every fault, no matter the type and scope of failure, with minimal downtime and data loss. Protecting against these faults means juggling numerous variables that can impact performance as well as recovery time and cost.

Today’s managed database services take over the operational complexity that used to exist for database administrators. Growing your organization’s tolerance required adding machines, compute, and storage, plus the operational costs of IT management: performing backups, writing scripts, creating dashboards, and carrying out testing to make sure your platform is ready when problems arise–all in a secure way.

At Google, our Cloud SQL managed database service offers three fault tolerance mechanisms —backup, high availability, and replication—and there are three major factors to consider for each of them:

• RTO (recovery time objective): When a failure happens, how much time can be lost before significant harm occurs?
• RPO (recovery point objective): When a failure happens, how much data can be lost before significant harm occurs?
• Cost: How cost-effective is this solution?  

We’ve heard from customers like Major League Baseball, HSBC, and Equifax that they have strict data-protection needs and require highly fault-tolerant multi-region applications—and they’ve all chosen Cloud SQL to meet those needs. 

Let’s take a closer look at how the decision-making process plays out for each recovery solution.  

High availability (HA)

If your application is business critical, you require minimum RTO and zero RPO— a high availability configuration ensures that you and your customers are protected. If the primary instance fails, there’s another standby instance ready to take over with no data loss. There’s an additional cost here, but doing this manually brings a great operational cost, since you have to detect and verify the fault, do the failover, and make sure it’s correct—you can’t have two primary instances or you risk data corruption—then finally connect the application to the new database.

Cloud SQL removes all that complexity. Choose high availability for a given instance and we’ll replicate the data across multiple zones, synchronously, to each zone’s persistent disk. If an HA instance has a failure, you don’t have to think about when to fail over because Cloud SQL detects the failure and automatically initiates failover, for a full recovery and no data loss within minutes. Cloud SQL also moves the IP address during failover so your application can easily reconnect. MLB, for example, uses Cloud SQL high availability to serve prediction data to live games with minimal downtime. Dev/test instances don’t need those same guarantees, but can use local backups to recover from any potential failure.

Cross-region replica

If a whole Google Cloud region goes down you still need your business to continue to run. That’s where cross-region replication comes in, a hot standby replica in another Google Cloud region provides RTO of minutes and RPO typically less than a minute . If you create a read replica in a region separate from your primary instance and you get hit with a regional outage, your application and database can start serving customers from another region within minutes. But this solution can be complex and enabling it yourself can be difficult and time-consuming. Securing cross-geography traffic demands end-to-end encryption and can bring connectivity issues too. 

This is where the fully managed Cloud SQL solution shines. We offer MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server database engines as a cross-region replication solution that’s easily configured and bolstered by Google’s interconnected global network. Just say, “I’m in U.S. East, I want to create a replica in U.S. West,” and it’s done, reliably and securely.

Backup

When you suffer data loss because of an operations error (for example, a bug in a script dropped your tables) or human error (for example, someone dropped the wrong table by accident), backups help you restore lost data to your Cloud SQL instance. Our low cost backup mechanism features point-in-time, granular recovery, meaning that if you accidentally delete data or something else goes wrong, you can ask for recovery of, for example, the state of that database down to the millisecond, such as Monday at 12:53pm. Your valuable data is replicated multiple times in multiple geographic locations automatically. This enables the automatic handling of failover in cases of major failure. You can always rest assured that your database is available and data is secure, even in the times of major failure crises. 

Cloud SQL provides automated and on-demand backups. With automated backups, Google manages the backups so that you can easily restore them when required. Also, the scheduled backing is automatically taken by default. With on-demand backup, you can create a backup at any time. This could be useful if you are about to perform a risky operation on your database, as Cloud SQL lets you select a custom location for your backup data. When the backup is stored in multiple regions, and there’s an outage in the region that contains the source instance, you can restore a backup to a new or existing instance in a different region. This is also useful if your organization needs to comply with data residency regulations that require you to keep your backups within a specific geographic boundary.

Putting it all together

For critical workloads, MLB configures their Cloud SQL instances with backups, high availability, and cross-region replication. Doing so ensures they can recover from many failure types.

• To recover from human error (“Oops, I didn’t mean to delete that”), MLB uses backups and point-in-time recovery to recovery to a millisecond or specific database transaction
• To automatically recover from primary instance failures and zonal outages, MLB uses Cloud SQL’s high availability configuration
• To protect against regional outages, MLB uses cross-region replication

Creating a robust configuration, like MLB did, takes just a few minutes. Get started in our Console or review documentation.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Consumer Goods Technology Magazine

Shifting work habits, more online shopping options, rising inflation, and stretched supply chains are just a few factors making it harder to discern what’s top-of-mind for shoppers today.

But we’re starting to get a clearer picture of what consumers say they value most right now. New Harris Poll research commissioned by Google Cloud reveals how U.S. shoppers are thinking about consumer goods brands in new ways—from apparel, electronics, and beauty products, to food and beverage.

While price unsurprisingly continues to be a major consideration in purchases, the average shopper is increasingly paying close attention to the values of consumer goods brands and how eco-friendly their products and practices are.

Shoppers want to buy from brands aligned with their values

COVID-19 drove people to reflect on their priorities, elevating concepts like community service, equity, and sustainability. A decade ago, most consumer goods companies would not have made these front-and-center, operational priorities. But today’s consumer not only wants savings and convenience, they also want that good feeling that comes from spending their money with a company that aligns with their values.

Our new research reveals that 82% of shoppers prefer a consumer brand’s values to align with their own, and they’ll vote with their wallet if they don’t feel a match. Three-quarters of shoppers reported parting ways with a brand over a conflict in values.

Even with their favorite consumer goods products, a majority of shoppers will not compromise on principles. If there’s a value mismatch, 39% of shoppers said they’d permanently boycott their favorite brand, and 24% would break ties at least temporarily. Most won’t be quiet about their concerns either: 28% of consumers that found their values at odds with a brand said they have shared their concerns with friends and family, and another 15% have shared their qualms on social media.

Consumer goods companies need to prioritize sustainability

A majority of today’s consumers (52%) are especially interested in supporting sustainable brands. They want to know how companies are managing their resources, specifically whether they are sourcing responsibly. These shoppers want to see meaningful, measurable efforts from CPG firms to save energy and reduce waste, like how Nuuly, URBN’s digital rental and resale business, has woven sustainability into its business operations, from its distribution centers to reusable packaging.

In fact, 66% of shoppers are now seeking out eco-friendly brands, with 55% saying they would pay more for more sustainable products. But these same shoppers are skeptical too: 72% think that companies and brands overstate their sustainability efforts. And they’re right to question brands’ practical application of their values. According to another Harris Poll survey recently commissioned by Google Cloud, 58% of executives polled across 16 countries admit that their organization has overstated its sustainability efforts.

Product availability is table stakes

A final point from the research: The global supply chain has stretched past its limits, and 60% of consumers are voicing some level of concern about it. At the end of the day, if a preferred brand isn’t actually on the shelves of a real or digital store, it doesn’t matter what the brand’s values or sustainability efforts are. A staggering 98% said they’d either buy from a different brand or search other stores or websites.

What’s a brand to do?

After more than 25 years working in the consumer goods industry in roles ranging from marketing and product development to business strategy and technology, at companies like Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly Clark, Carter’s, and now Google Cloud, I’ve seen successful brands do four things well when it comes to their values:

1. Don’t be generic.
   Your brand’s values need to be authentic, and they need to have teeth. But being too bold could run the risk of alienating some consumer segments. This is where technology can help. Personalizing your messages and outreach to specific shopper profiles is one way to ensure that your core values reach the right customers at the right time.
2. Make your values clear and consistent.
   When focusing on which values to highlight with your consumers and the world, make sure they make sense for your brand and that you’ll stick to them over time. For example, it’s painfully obvious when a brand is being opportunistic and inserting itself into conversations around values like sustainability or social justice, when it doesn’t have a history of voicing those values. The key to clear and consistent messaging of values is balancing authenticity with relatability and the appropriate amount of promotion.
3. Develop sustainability practices and communicate their impact to everyday people.
   How everyday people perceive a consumer goods brand’s sustainability initiatives is different from how an investor or general business audience does. Shoppers don’t read business sustainability plans or impact reports. To increase awareness of your brand’s sustainability efforts, consumers need to identify and interact with your brand and products directly. Some of my favorite examples are how I love that Google Maps gives me the choice of eco-friendly driving directions, and that I know I can buy low-waste, packaging-free cosmetics from a company like Lush.
4. Reward customer loyalty.
   Shoppers have more choices than ever before, and supply chain woes are testing preferences even further. But when someone chooses a specific brand because they feel aligned with their values or like their eco-friendly products, that shopper doesn’t always get recognized or thanked. Implementing a rewards program or following-up with customers after their purchases is one way you can make loyal shoppers feel appreciated while creating a lasting relationship that extends as long as possible.

While some traditional financial services companies have more slowly transitioned to the cloud, capital markets firms have embraced cloud computing across their entire value chains — front-, middle-, and back-office. We wanted to understand the dynamics behind this rapid adoption, the most common use cases, and the types of technology most in use, particularly as it relates to market data. Google Cloud commissioned Coalition Greenwich to survey 102 institutional capital markets professionals — at exchanges, trading systems, data aggregators, data producers, asset managers, hedge funds, and investment banks — in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. 

Our research found that while there are many drivers, demand for easier accessibility is fueling widespread adoption of cloud-based market data services, and associated trading infrastructures, across the buy side and sell side. In fact, 68% of sell-side and buy-side users find it critical for market data providers to offer public cloud-based data services. At the same time, exchanges, market data providers, aggregators, and trading systems are embracing the cloud as a delivery model by offering access to data directly via their own cloud services, APIs or partners.

Here were five noteworthy takeaways from the study: 

1. Cloud services are becoming ubiquitous for data delivery. Today, the cloud is pervasive, with 93% of exchanges, trading systems and data providers offering cloud-based data and services, according to surveyed executives. Moreover, 100% of those surveyed intend to offer new cloud-based services, such as derived data, in the next 12 months.

2. Commercial and investment banks are offering additional connectivity, real-time data feeds, and trading applications delivered via the cloud,demonstrating that it’s not only exchanges, trading systems, and data providers that are moving rapidly to the cloud. Internal use cases abound as well, with 67% of those surveyed consuming cloud-deployed market data, primarily for data analytics. 88% of surveyed sell-side firms intend to consume cloud-based market data services, with digital transformation, data science and quant research as the top use cases.

3. Buy side firms will consume even more cloud-deployed data. Today, 90% of surveyed buy-side firms are consuming cloud-deployed market data, mostly for portfolio management. 70% of buy-side firms intend to consume more public cloud-based market data services in the next 12 months, adding services such as compliance and regulatory reporting.

4. AI/ML, powered by cloud, is moving out of the pilot phase and into mainstream use. Today, 50% of exchanges, trading systems, and data providers are offering data products or services powered by AI/ML, and of those, 42% intend to offer AI-powered trade execution and trading analytics services in the next 12 months. Within commercial and investment banks, 55% said they are currently using AI/ML in the cloud, and while that was true for only 14% of overall buy-side respondents, 44% of large buy-side respondents are using it.

5. Exchanges, trading systems, and data providers are prioritizing public cloud for internal insights. 71% of these firms are using the public cloud, mostly for data transmission, processing, analysis, and long-term data storage. Over the next 12 months, 33% of new public cloud workloads will focus on data mining, data insights and advanced analytics, while 28% of new AI/ML tooling and infrastructure investments will focus on faster analytics and risk reviews, and 27% on data quality maintenance.

“We see new, dramatic shifts on the adoption of cloud across market data,” said David Easthope, Senior Analyst for Coalition Greenwich. “And we expect further proliferation of cloud-based services and greater consumption across the trading and investing lifecycle.”

Conclusions and future predictions

Based on the survey results, Coalition Greenwich predicts five following trends over the next 12 months:

1. Exchanges and trading systems will continue to launch a wide array of new cloud-based and possibly cloud exclusive data services across derived data, end of day data, reference data and pricing data.
2. Data providers will launch new data products such as pre-trade analytics powered by AI/ML in the cloud.
3. Commercial and investment banks will offer additional connectivity, real-time data feeds, and trading applications delivered via the cloud.
4. Buy-side firms will consume even more cloud-deployed data, including real-time market data, portfolio management data, and risk analytics.
5. Exchanges, trading systems and data providers will explore proof-of-concepts around core systems on the cloud. Improvements to AI/ML tooling or infrastructure will ramp up as firms seek more rapid responses to risk initiatives.

To learn more about these findings, download our two full reports, The Future of market data: Distribution and consumption through cloud and AI and Exchanges and data providers: Prioritizing the cloud and AI for internal insights or our short infographic.

Research methodology

The survey was conducted online by Coalition Greenwich on behalf of Google Cloud from March 2021 to April 2021 among 102 executives in North America (n=82), EMEA (n=17) and other (n=3) who are employed full-time and who are participants or influencers in decisions around cloud and/or senior management with a role at a company which is an institutional asset manager, hedge fund, alternative investment manager, exchange and/or trading system, information provider, information aggregator, or other asset manager/asset owner. The survey included wide perspectives from a range of firm size and asset class focus, including equity, fixed income, FX, commodities, multi-asset, and other asset classes.

Foot Notes

1.  We defined market data as direct feeds, consolidated feeds, terminal and desktop products, security and reference data, pricing data, historical data, alternative data, and index data.