5 Features IT Departments Love About Google Cloud
3668
Of your peers have already read this article.
5:30 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
Throughout the past couple of years, I have helped a good number of companies, big and small, migrate their systems to the Google Cloud Platform (aka GCP). During the course of these migrations, there are always a few of those moments where people look at a specific Google Cloud feature and say, “now, that’s cool!”.
More often than not, it is because, coming from other platforms, they have gotten used to some features requiring multiple steps, or some operations being complicated, etc. And often they find out that in GCP you can do this specific operation in a couple of clicks, or by setting up a simple text-based configuration. Then you see that light bulb turning on in their head, and there you go… happy customer.
A few of these happen so often that I compiled them in a list to share with others who might also benefit from these “aha!” moments. You could say these are the five things I wish they told me when I started using Google Cloud.
Projects: Naturally Group Resources Together
A project is a namespace where resources live. Every resource you instantiate in GCP, from load balancers to Kubernetes clusters to virtual machines, belongs to a single project, and has no access (by default) to resources in other projects. User roles and authorisations can be defined per-project and trickle down to everything in it. This has two immediate benefits: you can group things that belong together in neat logical units, and things that don’t belong together are isolated from each other (and isolation is a Good Thing)
This is powerful and quite simple, but it often takes new users off-guard. I’ve had many clients call me and ask me “How can I make sure my developers cannot access the production machines? What’s the best way to create access policies? ”
The answer to this is actually super-simple:
- have a project for development where your developers have rights,
- have a project for production where they don’t.
- That’s it.
Every machine/other resource in the production project won’t be accessible to developers.
Of course there is a lot more to it, and you can refine roles and permissions to a much greater degree using Organizations, Folders, etc. Not to mention all the crazy things you can do with per-project billing. But at least you can say “hey, if it’s a machine in the staging environment then it can be found in the “staging” project”.
Global Virtual Networks Are *Truly* Global
Imagine you are using a Cloud provider and that you have servers in the US, and servers in Singapore, and that they need to communicate.
So you create a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) network in the US data center, another one in the Singapore data center, and then you will connect them by setting up inter-region VPC peering or a VPN (Virtual Private Network) or a transit VPC or other routing magic.
Lots of work, right? And many moving parts, so lots of opportunities for things to break.
With GCP, however, what makes my clients go “aha!” is when they realize that in GCP a single VPC network covers the entire planet. Only subnets are attached to a geographic location, and virtual machines communicate between subnets on private IPs (good old RFC1918 addresses) — no extra routing needed.
So, to make your server communicate across continents on GCP, here are the steps:
- create a VPC network
- create a subnet in the US, put your US servers in it
- create a subnet in Singapore, put your Singapore servers in it
That’s all there is to it. Your VPC network spanning 2 continents is ready to use. Below is a screenshot of how it looks on my account, for a VPC network called ‘my-global-network’ with 2 subnets. The first column (“us-central1” and “asia-southeast1”) contains the name of the GCP regions (read: data centers). The second column is the subnet name that I picked when I created them.
A machine in the US (on the “us-central” subnet) with IP 10.0.0.5 can communicate directly with a machine in Singapore (on the “singapore”) subnet with IP 10.10.0.8.
Nothing else to set up.
And thanks to the way these networks work, the Google Cloud Load Balancer can present a single IP to the world, and forward traffic to the instances that are the closest to you geographically without having to setup a tedious DNS-based load balancing. But that’s worth an entire blog. I’ll save it for another day.
Firewalls with Tags and (Almost) No IP Addresses
There is no network security without a firewall so unsurprisingly GCP comes with one built-in.
Now, I don’t know about you, but nothing makes my brain hurt like a list of firewall rules displaying IP ranges and addresses and ‘Allow/Deny’ directives. It looks a bit like this:
If you imagine a normal network with a few dozen (hundred?) servers, you can quickly see how this can get out of control. You’d better have a solid printout of your network layout to refer to when you start adding and changing rules. And good luck debugging things!
Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead, you could just tell the firewall: “the HTTP traffic from outside can only reach the HTTP servers and the MySQL database is only reachable by the HTTP server(s) on the same network?”
Turns out it’s pretty simple on GCP by using a little thing called network tags. As the documentation says:
“Network tags are text attributes you can add to Compute Engine virtual machine (VM) instances. Tags allow you to make firewall rules and routes applicable to specific VM instances.”
So let’s see how it works. Firewall rules in GCP are defined in terms of source and target (the traffic flows from the source to the target). You can define filtering rules that apply to the source or the target, and in both cases you can use tags.
This is simpler shown with an example. The rule below states that on the default network, the traffic to the VMs with the tag mysql-server can come from the VMs with the tag http-appserver. Any other traffic is “Deny”-ed by default.
All you have to do is to tag your machines properly, and they will automatically be covered by the rule. You don’t need to enter their IP range.
That’s neat if you ask me. It makes it a lot simpler to grasp what’s happening.
Of course, there’s a TON more to firewalls in GCP. Tags also apply to routes and you can mix and match IP-based rules with tag-based rules. Not to mention that thing called service accounts, but I’ll leave those for another day.
The bottom line is that you can create most rules by just expressing a business need and not having to remember complicated network layouts. I have no hard stats, but I’m pretty sure this has saved me hours of work.
Console Access to VMs from the Browser
Easily access virtual machines (VMs) from the Google Cloud console was one of my first “aha!” moments when I started using GCP.
This is a screen capture of my Google Cloud console, with a virtual machine and its internal IP.
The last column has a header that says “Connect” and when you click on the word “SSH” a separate windows pops up. You wait for a few seconds, and… this is what you get. Your personal shell access — in a browser popup no less.
You are connected through ssh to the virtual machine of your choice. You did not have to download ssh keys and put them in the ~/.ssh directory, do the correct chmod command and run a long-winded ssh -i ~/.ssh/somekey me@<it-took-me-forever-to-copy-paste-the-address-here>
In addition, you have access to a few nifty features such as uploading and downloading files, changing the user etc. Just use the menu behind the cog icon at the top right.
In truth, you should not need to connect directly that often, but when you have to, this is a godsend.
Your Personal Jumphost from the Google Cloud Console
The Google Cloud console has a cool trick: you can actually connect to a virtual environment that is managed by the Google Cloud console itself. It serves a bit as a jump host. You can access most resources from the projects from it, and you can activate it directly from the top menu with, no particular setup on your side. It’s called the Cloud Shell.
This is how it looks at the top right of the console:
When you activate the Cloud Shell, the session opens at the bottom of the console. You get a command line prompt and it’s fully configured with the gcloud command line tool (the jack-of-all-trades of Google Cloud scripting).
You can do a great many things from there, and this even includes uploading and downloading files, editing code or deploying it, a web preview for your AppEngine application, and more.
So you can get access to a fully configured shell environment in your project from any laptop where you can connect with your credentials. On top of this, it persists between connections so you can fine-tune it to your needs and have these changes available the next time you re-connect.
This has saved me many times during my previous life as a traveling consultant!
Live migration
Did I say 5 “Aha!” moments ? Well, you’ve been patient reading all the way to here, so here’s one more for free.
Google Cloud has an amazing way to literally “teleport” a running virtual machine between physical hosts without stopping it. It’s called Live Migration. It allows Google to move your virtual machine away from a defective host, or a host that needs a patch or an upgrade, or for any other infrastructure related reason.
It’s all done in the background, and is totally transparent, so you never really see it happening. Unless you look VERY closely. I once did a demo to a client, where a machine was live migrated while he was simulating a solid network load — and we did not lose a single packet, with no noticeable degradation in latency.
And that’s a wrap!
So there you go. These are 5+1 things that made me go “Aha!” when I became more familiar with the Google Cloud Platform, and that still make my clients do the same.
There is a lot of depth to the platform, and my examples above only scratch the surface of our features. I encourage you to try it yourself. There is a generous free tier, and when you are ready to take the plunge and create that new company, please contact us at Google Cloud for Startups. We’ll get you up and running in no time.
Jerome is a Startup Architect at Google Cloud. Based in Singapore, he helps startups make the most of the Google Cloud Platform.
8 Must-Have Google Cloud Products for Startups
3190
Of your peers have already read this article.
2:30 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
Startups worldwide turn to Google Cloud tools to build fast on a strong and easy to use platform that helps them get to market and launch products faster, all while building on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Startups leverage Google Cloud and our Google for Startups Cloud Program to go from idea to IPO, and there are a variety of products on Google Cloud that can help them.
Here are the 8 top products that startups use on Google Cloud to innovate and grow:
Firebase for app development
Speed up innovation with Firebase, a mobile development platform that’s fully integrated with Google Cloud. Work in a simpler cloud environment, easily pull in products or services, and build your apps faster.
Cloud SQL for database needs
Build your startup’s foundation with Cloud SQL, a fully managed relational database solution that integrates with Google Cloud services. Create and connect to your first database in minutes and scale with a single API call.
AI and machine learning products
Solve tough problems with AI and machine learning products, built with the best of Google’s technology. Train deep learning and machine learning models cost-effectively so you can iterate and innovate faster.
BigQuery for data analytics
Drive agility with BigQuery, a serverless, cost-effective, multi-cloud data warehouse. Query streaming data in real time, predict business outcomes with built-in machine learning, and share analytics with just a few clicks.
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) for containers
Unlock faster, more secure app development with GKE, the most scalable Kubernetes platform. Streamline operations with release channels that fit your business needs and leave cluster monitoring to Google engineers.
Looker for data visualization
Get more from your data to keep moving ahead of the competition with Looker, a trusted business intelligence and data platform. Generate real-time reports and get insights at the right time with proactive alerts.
Cloud Run for serverless computing
Create scalable containerized apps in any programming language on Cloud Run, a fully managed compute platform. Pair it with container tools like Cloud Build and Docker, and only pay when your code is running.
Cloud Armor for security
Protect your startup from Web attacks with Cloud Armor, a leading Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDOS) defense service. Use it with an HTTP Load Balancer for Managed Instance Groups across regions to keep your workloads highly available and secure.
To learn more about products best-suited to the unique demands of startups, check out our startups solution page. Our team is looking forward to discussing how these products can help you. If you’re not already in the program, you can get started here.
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.
Google Announces New Cloud Region in Israel to Meet Growing Customer Demands
4868
Of your peers have already read this article.
2:00 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
Google has long looked to Israel for globally impactful technologies including popular Search features, Waze, Live Caption, Duplex and flood forecasting. At our Decode with Google 15RAEL event last week, we celebrated 15 years of Google innovation in Israel and our longstanding support of the country’s vibrant startup ecosystem.
Over the years, we’ve expanded our enterprise investments in the country, too. In addition to our over a decade long investment in the space, Google has acquired Israeli-based companies like Alooma, Elastifile and Velostrata, and Uri Frank joined Google Cloud last month to lead our server chip design team from our offices in Tel Aviv and Haifa.
As we continue to meet growing demand for cloud services in Israel, we’re excited to announce that a new Google Cloud region is coming to Israel to make it easier for customers to serve their own users faster, more reliably and securely.
Our global network of Google Cloud regions are the foundation of the cloud infrastructure we’re building to support our customers. With cloud’s 25 regions and 76 zones around the world, we deliver high-performance, low-latency services and products for Google Cloud’s enterprise and public sector customers. With each new Google Cloud region, customers get access to secure infrastructure, smarter analytics tools, an open platform and the cleanest cloud in the industry.
Having a region in Israel will help accelerate innovation for customers of all sizes, including PayBox, a digital wallet application owned by Discount Bank, one of Israel’s largest banks. “When we acquired PayBox, our goal was to improve the security and the user experience for its products, but we also wanted to keep the startup’s agility and innovation. Google Cloud has enabled us to do just that,” said Sarit Beck-Barkai, Managing Director of PayBox at Discount Bank.
“We are very excited that leading vendors like Google are investing and launching a local cloud region in Israel. This will make a significant change in the technology landscape of the public-sector, enterprise and SMB markets in Israel. Matrix is proud to be a major part of the transition to the cloud,” said Moti Gutman, CEO at Matrix, technology services company and Google Cloud partner.
“In the last year, Panorays more than tripled its customer base and scaled its infrastructure, practically at the click of a button. Google Cloud made it easy for us to scale without worrying about DevOps, which meant that our engineers could focus on developing new and better features for our customers. The new region launching in Israel will allow us to serve our local customer base even better, as we’ll be able to experience higher availability and deploy resources in specific regions, thus reducing latency.” said Demi Ben-Ari, Co-founder and CTO, Panorays, a third-party security platform and Google Cloud customer.
“This new cloud region will provide even better access and growth potential for our mutual customers with tech hubs in the region. We are serving hyper growth companies who need Google Cloud’s services and will benefit greatly from this regional presence,” said Yoav Toussia-Cohen, CEO of DoiT International.
When it launches, the Israel region will deliver a comprehensive portfolio of Google Cloud products to private and public sector organizations locally. We look forward to welcoming you to the Israel region, and we’re excited to support your growing business on our platform.
Learn more about our global cloud infrastructure, including new and upcoming regions, here.
Mid-Sized B2B Firm Achieves the Business Trifecta with a Single Strategy
6918
Of your peers have already read this article.
2:45 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
Thirteen years’ experience in e-commerce has given Teddy Chan, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer, AfterShip, a deep understanding of the challenges of shipping and tracking packages to customers worldwide.
“The key problem many merchants face is customers asking ‘where is my order?’ and ‘when I will get the package?’” Chan says. “When I considered this issue, I came up with the idea of AfterShip.” Chan helped found AfterShip in 2011 to enable merchants to keep track of packages sent to customers via a web portal or an API. AfterShip also allows merchants to notify customers of anticipated delivery times.
“Using AfterShip, merchants can provide the same experience to buyers regardless of which couriers they use,” Chan says. “Merchants can also improve their customer engagement by including up-selling or marketing content with their delivery notifications.”
Hong Kong-headquartered AfterShip continues to grow quickly and now has a 40-person team. Thirty members of this team are based on the China special administrative region and 10 are based in India.
“Google Cloud Platform has a network of global datacentres with deep connectivity that enables us to put our infrastructure close to our customers. In addition, the ability to horizontally scale our global database using tools such as Google Cloud Spanner eliminates any limits on our geographic expansion.”
—Teddy Chan, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer, AfterShip
By October 2017, the business was tracking about 30 million packages per month and had expanded its services to include label and rate calculation and self-service return. Revenue, package transaction numbers and team size have doubled every year for the past three years, while more than 300,000 merchants and 426 couriers are signed up to the service. Key customers include Wish, Etsy and Groupon.
Close to half AfterShip’s customers are based in the United States, about one third in Europe and the remainder are located in Asia. AfterShip had initially delivered its applications and services from an incumbent public cloud service. However, the company wanted to continue its growth trajectory while automating key infrastructure processes, implementing a continuous deployment model and controlling costs.
The business needed to achieve these objectives while maintaining a global presence and high-quality service. AfterShip started reviewing its options and decided to migrate to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). “Google Cloud Platform has a network of global datacentres with deep connectivity that enables us to place our infrastructure close to our customers,” Chan says.
“In addition, the ability to horizontally scale our global database using tools such as Google Cloud Spanner eliminates any limits to our geographic expansion. Furthermore, the managed services provided through GCP would allow us to focus on building better features for online merchants.” The reliability provided by GCP would also enable AfterShip to meet the stringent service level requirements of large digital marketplaces in the United States, Asia and elsewhere.
“Google Cloud Platform could manage the high volumes and enable us to deliver the service levels that would realise our ambition of becoming the number one tracking API platform in the world,” Chan says. “For example, with Google Cloud Platform, we can provide a 99.95% monthly uptime service level to our customers.” Finally, GCP provided managed solutions, including Google Kubernetes Engine powered by open source container orchestrator Kubernetes, that would enable AfterShip to automate processes such as scaling and enable its team to focus on developing applications.
AfterShip has moved its websites into GCP infrastructure in three datacentres around the world and anticipates completing the migration in Q4 2017. “Google provided a lot of assistance, particularly early in the project when we needed it,” Chan says. “They briefed us on several services we hadn’t known about that could replace the equivalents in the public cloud we were using previously.” The business then completed the migration using its own skilled team members. As well as Google Kubernetes Engine and Google Cloud Spanner, AfterShip is using Google BigQuery to store and analyse transaction information.
“Google Cloud Platform could manage the high volumes and enable us to deliver the service levels that would realise our ambition of becoming the number one tracking API platform in the world.”
—Teddy Chan, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer, AfterShip
Deployment times down from one hour to two minutes
With deployment times falling from up to one hour in its previous cloud environment to about two minutes in GCP, AfterShip has been able to adopt a continuous deployment model. “This has improved our service levels,” Chan says. “If there are any issues we can fix them quickly, while we can iterate faster to create new features in response to customer requests or changes in the market. “This enables us to continue to lead our competitors.”
Targeting a 30 percent reduction in costs
AfterShip is now targeting a 30% reduction in costs by optimising its use of Docker containerisation technology on GCP.
“By using Docker with Kubernetes, we have been able to fine-tune our use of compute resources and better control our costs,” Chan says. “We’re extremely pleased with Google Cloud Platform as it really is built for engineers,” he adds. “In addition, its documentation is extremely clear, allowing us to troubleshoot or carry out activities on the platform ourselves. “We look forward to continuing to grow and extend our package tracking and associated services with Google Cloud Platform.”
Casper on Google Cloud: Revolutionizing Web3 Development with Flexibility & Security
1443
Of your peers have already read this article.
1:30 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
Casper Labs announced a collaboration with Google Cloud that will allow developers to launch public and/or private Casper nodes directly from Google Cloud. This enables a much more seamless and highly secure process for the millions of developers who want to build in blockchain environments without having to learn new, highly specialized programming languages. Additionally, Google Cloud will provide its scalable and reliable infrastructure to developers building on the Casper Protocol.
Blockchain technology is maturing
As blockchain technology matures, a growing number of businesses are embracing it as a key way to drive new efficiencies and realize cost savings.
According to a recent Casper Labs study, 87% of executives polled in the United States, United Kingdom and China reported plans to invest in a blockchain solution in 2023. This is due in no small part due to recent innovations that help organizations overcome the so-called Blockchain Adoption Trilemma, which previously held that it was impossible for any blockchain to be simultaneously a) decentralized, b) scalable, and c) secure.
Thanks to the rise of proof-of-stake blockchains like Casper, new models have emerged that enable a more scalable and secure architecture that no longer forces a compromise on decentralization.
Another trend facilitating these growing adoption rates is the rise of WebAssembly (WASM) as a baseline technology for newer blockchains, including Casper. WASM (created by W3C) makes application development in blockchain environments far more accessible and interoperable to the millions of developers worldwide who specialize in languages like Java, Javascript, C++ and Rust. Previously, any blockchain-based build required a high degree of specialized developer knowledge, which made it a much more challenging option for most organizations.
Meet Casper
Casper is a permissionless, decentralized public blockchain based on WASM that was built explicitly to foster enterprise adoption of blockchain technology. Beyond its more accessible model, Casper is the first and only blockchain to offer native upgradable smart contracts. This means that organizations can have the option to securely and consistently update software code even after it is running on Casper. This gives organizations the control and flexibility to use industry best practices, such as continuous deployment and continuous integration, which are already in use in their IT departments. Casper is also highly configurable and allows organizations to support public, private, and/or hybrid deployments.
Casper is also noteworthy for the presence of Casper Labs, a software development and professional services firm that supports organizations building on the Casper network. Unlike most blockchains that follow a more traditional open-source project, Casper Labs provides around-the-clock support and bespoke software development for enterprise organizations. Recently, Casper Labs helped patent management company IPwe execute the largest-ever blockchain deployment, featuring more than 25 million patents being added as custom NFTs to the Casper Blockchain.
How to get started with Casper on Google Cloud
Developers who want to start building on Casper can find a comprehensive series of tutorials here.
The Casper Association also recently announced a $25 million grant program to support projects and developers building on Casper. Interested participants can apply here.
IT Team Figures Out Easiest Way to Build Data Pipelines and Create ML Models
14134
Of your peers have already read this article.
5:15 Minutes
The most insightful time you'll spend today!
Building a strong brand in today’s hyper-competitive business environment takes vision. It also requires a flexible, easily managed approach to digital asset management (DAM), so marketing professionals and other stakeholders can easily share, store, track, and manipulate assets to build the brand.
Many of today’s leading companies, including JetBlue, Slack, TripAdvisor, Lyft, and HealthONE, rely on Brandfolder to deliver consistent, organized, and efficient brand experiences. Brandfolder provides an easy-to-use platform that can scale across an entire company with little end-user training, empowering customers to distribute digital assets wherever they are needed. Customers also gain much greater insight into how those assets are used, and how to use them more effectively in marketing campaigns and brand messaging.
“Google Cloud made it easy to build an ML platform to quickly iterate through different brand intelligence use cases and release data-driven product features into the Brandfolder platform.”
—Ajay Rajasekharan, Head of Data Science, Brandfolder
Brandfolder is constantly advancing its development efforts to introduce new data-driven features without complicating the user experience. Big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) are key to meeting customers’ unique business needs, and essential for Brandfolder to compete in the fast-moving DAM industry. To enhance these capabilities, Brandfolder sought a public cloud provider that could help it scale its data pipeline cost effectively while providing access to advanced AI technologies.
After graduating from the Techstars startup accelerator program in 2013, Brandfolder tried two other cloud providers before standardizing on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
“We saw a difference with Google Cloud from the very beginning because the interactions felt like a strategic relationship,” says Jim Hanifen, Head of Product at Brandfolder. “Google gave us startup credits and a lot of face-to-face support, which we hadn’t experienced with other cloud providers. We decided to move our entire infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform.”
Building an ML platform for brand intelligence
After performing an initial lift-and-shift migration of virtual machines (VMs) onto Compute Engine, Brandfolder built an ML platform using GCP managed services to seamlessly deliver its data products. The platform leverages Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage as the data lake, Cloud Dataproc for cloud-native Apache Spark computing clusters, Cloud Composer as the batch job scheduler, Cloud Pub/Sub as the backbone data pipeline, Container Registry to store Docker images, and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) as the application orchestrator. Cloud Dataflow brings data into the data lake and into BigQuery for analysis.
“Google Cloud made it easy to build an ML platform to quickly iterate through different brand intelligence use cases and release data-driven product features into the Brandfolder platform,” says Ajay Rajasekharan, Head of Data Science at Brandfolder, who describes the architecture in a detailed blog. “We simply ingest raw application and event data on one end and output an ML service on the other.”
“Moving to Google Cloud Platform allows us to complete more sophisticated data analysis and ML models much faster, and at a much lower cost. We can create brand-specific ML models 12x faster and get them into production quickly to address our customers’ unique business needs.”
—Brett Nekolny, Head of Engineering, Brandfolder
For many general use cases, Brandfolder does not need to build custom ML models, and instead relies on pre-trained API models from GCP. For example, it uses Vision API and Video Intelligence API to auto-tag creative assets on import to enable fast, intuitive searches across images and videos. When more product- and brand-specific modeling is required to address unique customer use cases, Brandfolder builds and trains custom ML models using its GCP pipeline or Cloud AutoML, a suite of products built on Google transfer learning and neural architecture search technology. For example, if a Brandfolder customer makes different types of grills, Brandfolder can use AutoML Vision to train a model to recognize the different grills.
“Moving to Google Cloud Platform allows us to complete more sophisticated data analysis and ML models much faster, and at a much lower cost,” explains Brett Nekolny, Head of Engineering at Brandfolder. “We can create brand-specific ML models 12x faster and get them into production quickly to address our customers’ unique business needs.”
Industry-leading security and performance
Google Cloud’s security model helps Brandfolder give existing and prospective customers peace of mind that their data will be protected. Cloud Identity & Access Management (Cloud IAM) provides enterprise-grade access control, while Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (Cloud IAP) enables remote users to work more securely without the hassles of a VPN client. GCP also isolates cloud resources into projects, making it easy to assign permissions and keep data and VMs organized and segregated.
“With Google Cloud, everything begins and ends with security, which makes things very easy for us,” says Jim. “If we’re under a security review, we can submit a Google security white paper. If a potential customer has security concerns, we tell them we are hosted on GCP, and those concerns go away.”
To give customers even better application performance for accessing their brand assets, Brandfolder uses Cloud Memorystore, an in-memory data store service for Redis, to cache data and provide sub-millisecond data access for production applications.
“It was much easier for us to use Cloud Memorystore versus running Redis on our compute instances,” says Brett. “The high availability, replication across zones, and automatic failover with no data loss are big for us.”
Global private network interconnects between Google Cloud and the Fastly content delivery network (CDN) dramatically reduce latency, allowing Brandfolder’s customers to deliver and update even very large creative assets quickly around the world.
“What’s beautiful about the relationship between Google and Fastly is that if one of our customers uploads a new version of an asset, we can propagate that out to Fastly, and the new version will automatically show up in all the places where it’s referenced,” says Brett.
“The ability to quickly solve problems with AI has a substantial impact on our revenue, and that’s more apparent every quarter. Few of our competitors are doing product- or brand-specific modeling because it takes a lot of time and resources. We overcame those hurdles with Google Cloud.”
—Jim Hanifen, Head of Product, Brandfolder
Improving employee and customer productivity
Brandfolder also uses Google solutions for real-time collaboration and productivity, using G Suite to connect employees with intuitive, cloud-based apps. Teams use Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, Sheets, Slides, and Hangouts Meet every day to move the business forward. Many of Brandfolder’s customers are also G Suite users, and Brandfolder offers a plug-in that allows them to view their creative assets inside of Docs and pull images in as needed. Customers can also log into Brandfolder with their G Suite credentials, making the solution even easier to use.
“We’ve been using G Suite since the beginning, and it’s helped us collaborate efficiently to build a successful, growing company,” says Jim. “Our teams expect to have that kind of close collaboration, and everyone here enjoys the G Suite experience.”
Driving 99 percent annual business growth
With automated tagging and other innovative AI-based features, Brandfolder is helping customers locate and distribute assets faster. As a result, Brandfolder is building customer loyalty and increasing sales, growing its business by 99 percent year-over-year. Since moving to GCP, Brandfolder has been able to scale its analytics and data pipeline 50x without a corresponding increase in costs and has not had to expand its development team.
“The ability to quickly solve problems with AI has a substantial impact on our revenue, and that’s more apparent every quarter,” says Jim. “Few of our competitors are doing product- or brand-specific modeling because it takes a lot of time and resources. We overcame those hurdles with Google Cloud.”
More Relevant Stories for Your Company
Confused about Cloud? Here is a Primer to get all Your Doubts Answered
When you have decided on moving workloads to the cloud, the task of choosing the right cloud platform can be a tough one with many questions looming in your mind. From which specific product to choose from the plethora of options available to how and where to store your data
Explore Google Cloud SQL’s 3 Fault Tolerance Mechanism to Ease Data Pro
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
Google Cloud Launches Digital Assets Team to Power the Emerging Blockchain Space
Blockchain technology is yielding tremendous innovation and value creation for consumers and businesses around the world. As the technology becomes more mainstream, companies need scalable, secure, and sustainable infrastructure on which to grow their businesses and support their networks. We believe Google Cloud can play an important role in this
Ease Your Migration and Modernization Journey with Microsoft and Windows on Google Cloud Demo Center
If you’re looking to migrate and modernize your Microsoft and Windows workloads, Google Cloud is your premiere destination. No matter what migration strategy you’ve selected or what value you’re looking to achieve, with Google Cloud you’re able to: simplify your migration and modernization journeyreduce your on-prem footprint and increase agilityoptimize license
