Airbus: Taking the flight to a brighter future with Google Cloud and Google Workplace
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“Any device, anytime, anywhere.” A cohort of CIOs within Airbus believed that the cloud, combined with new ways of working, could provide the foundation for this vision. Google Workspace and Google Cloud have played a pivotal role in helping Airbus realize this new path, transforming security, data management, and collaboration along the way.
Adopting a secure-by-design approach
In adopting Google Workspace and Google Cloud Airbus needed to ensure a robust, zero-trust security model that works across the entire organization, even when employees are working outside the office. Google Workspace provides a single login that enables secure access to data, based on device and user information, as well as contextual inputs that inform the security risk of each login and user action. Airbus admins also use Google Workspace to define trust rules that govern what information and files can be shared within and outside the organization, making it easy for employees to comply with best practices from anywhere.
Encryption also plays a central role in keeping information secure and private. By default, Google Workspace uses the latest cryptographic standards to encrypt all data at rest and in transit. Google Workspace also offers client-side encryption, which Airbus uses for their most sensitive projects, giving them authoritative control over their data as the sole owner of their encryption keys.
And to ensure the organization is protected against hackers, Airbus has implemented sharding as a standard practice, thereby splitting data across multiple servers and data centers. Because the company works with incredibly sensitive information—including government and military information—the ability to locate data all within European data centers continues to be a necessity.
Powerful data management
Managing an enormous volume and variety of data, Airbus needs to ensure complete compliance with internal policies, as well as with external standards, like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Given this context, Airbus requires a solution that has strong built-in governance controls. Airbus also leverages the Drive labels feature, along with manual classification, to ensure that every file added to Google Drive is tagged and labeled correctly. In turn, these labels define the loss-prevention policies assigned to each file.
Staying connected during the pandemic
Before the pandemic, nearly every employee spent their workdays at an Airbus facility. When remote work became mandatory, the company made the pivot to Google Chat and Google Meet as an essential part of supporting real-time and asynchronous collaboration. Gmail also played a significant role in secure, anywhere-anytime communication, with its built-in anti-spam and anti-malware protections. Customizable filters let administrators protect against suspicious attachments, untrustworthy links, and countless other forms of malicious content. While Gmail blocks more than 99.9% of spam and phishing messages from ever reaching users’ inboxes, more advanced security measures like sandboxing can be put in place for specific use cases.
Protecting more than just data
Google Cloud’s sustainability efforts are as equally important to Airbus as data security. Google Cloud has been working to keep its climate footprint and those who use its services as low as possible, with all of Google currently carbon neutral and with a goal to run on carbon-free energy 24/7 at all of our data centers by 2030. And with our smarter, more efficient data centers, we’re already on that path with more than six times the computing power for the same amount of electrical power we used 5 years ago.
Building the future of work
By combining Google Workspace with Google Cloud, Airbus has been able to live up to its vision of “any device, anytime, anywhere.” The new model is a core foundation for its evolving future of work. Not only has Airbus adopted a zero-trust model across the organization, it’s also transformed how data is secured, managed, and accessed by employees working across a broad range of locations. The new flexible approach has also led to changes in how collaboration happens. Google is deeply gratified to have supported Airbus as they implement these changes and we continue to be proud that we’re running the cleanest cloud in the industry.
Want to learn more about how Google Workspace helps businesses like yours do more while keeping your data secure? Read this whitepaper to find out about our zero-trust model and other ways we protect organizations.
Google Cloud’s Autism Career Program to Nurture Neurodiverse Talent
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My passion for neurodiversity began 10 years ago, when I became involved with Els for Autism, an organization that works with children and adults who have autism, as well as their families. At the time, I had a friend who was struggling to find resources for his son with autism. The foundation promotes acceptance and inclusion for people on the spectrum, helping them live independently and find jobs that harness their talents and skills. The organization’s focus on autism in the workplace resonated deeply with me, due to the rich experiences I had working with individuals with autism over the course of my career.
Approximately two percent of the population has autism, but it’s estimated this number is actually quite low as many individuals go undiagnosed. Of those that have been diagnosed, only 29% have had any sort of paid work in their lives. Personally, I find this tragic, because individuals with autism can be highly-functioning and contributing professionals in any organization. Too often, though, the interview process can pose challenges due to unconscious bias from a hiring manager or interviewer, for example, if the candidate doesn’t look an interviewer in the eyes or asks for additional time to complete a test. This bias often unintentionally marginalizes great candidates and means businesses miss out on valuable talent who can contribute and enrich the workplace.
Introducing Google Cloud’s Autism Career Program
It is in that spirit that I am excited to announce the launch of Google Cloud’s Autism Career Program, designed to hire and support more talented people with autism in the rapidly growing cloud industry.
We are working with experts from the Stanford Neurodiversity Project (part of the Stanford University School of Medicine), which provides consultation services to employers to advise on opportunities and success metrics for neurodiverse individuals in the workplace.
One key pillar of our program is to train up to 500 Google Cloud managers and others who are involved in hiring processes. Our goal is to empower these Googlers to work effectively and empathetically with autistic candidates and ensure Google’s onboarding processes are accessible and equitable. Stanford will also provide coaching to applicants, as well as ongoing support for them, their teammates and managers once they join the Google Cloud team.
We’re taking this approach to break down the barriers that candidates with autism most often face. In addition to bias, there may be challenges with how interviews are structured or conducted without the right tools. For these reasons, we will offer candidates in this program reasonable accommodations like extended interview time, providing questions in advance, or conducting the interview in writing in a Google Doc rather than verbally on a call. These accommodations don’t give those candidates an unfair advantage. It’s just the opposite: They remove an unfair disadvantage so candidates have a fair and equitable chance to compete for the job.
This program is just one example of Google Cloud’s commitment to inclusion, and it is an important step forward to building a more representative team and creating value for customers and stakeholders.
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What’s Google Cloud Firestore Database and What are its Benefits for Business and Developers?
Cloud Firestore is a NoSQL document database that simplifies storing, syncing, and querying data for your mobile and web apps at global scale.
Cloud Firestore is a fast, fully managed, serverless, cloud-native NoSQL document database that simplifies storing, syncing, and querying data for your mobile, web, and IoT apps at global scale.
Its client libraries provide live synchronization and offline support, while its security features and integrations with Firebase and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) accelerate building truly serverless apps.
Here’s other stuff it’s good at:
Sync data across devices, on or offline
With Cloud Firestore, your applications can be updated in near real time when data on the back end changes. This is not only great for building collaborative multi-user mobile applications, but also means you can keep your data in sync with individual users who might want to use your app from multiple devices.
With Firebase Realtime Database, we felt we had built the best force-plate testing software on the market. Thanks to Cloud Firestore, in only two weeks, we built a system that’s significantly better and includes features we never thought possible to ship on Day 1.
Chris Wales, CTO, Hawkin Dynamics
Cloud Firestore has full offline support, so you can access and make changes to your data, and those changes will be synced to the cloud when the client comes back online. Built-in offline support leverages local cache to serve and store data, so your app remains responsive regardless of network latency or internet connectivity.
Simple and effortless
Cloud Firestore’s robust client libraries make it easy for you to update and receive new data while worrying less about establishing network connections or unforeseen race conditions. It can scale effortlessly as your app grows. Cloud Firestore allows you to run sophisticated queries against your data. This gives you more flexibility in the way you structure your data and can often mean that you have to do less filtering on the client, which keeps your network calls and data usage more efficient.
Enterprise-grade, scalable NoSQL
Cloud Firestore is a fast and fully managed NoSQL cloud database. It is built to scale and takes advantage of GCP’s powerful infrastructure, with automatic horizontal scaling in and out, in response to your application’s load. Security access controls for data are built in and enable you to handle data validation via a configuration language.
Trading and Investment Companies will Increase Consumption of Cloud Services: Study Confirms
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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:
- 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.
- Data providers will launch new data products such as pre-trade analytics powered by AI/ML in the cloud.
- Commercial and investment banks will offer additional connectivity, real-time data feeds, and trading applications delivered via the cloud.
- Buy-side firms will consume even more cloud-deployed data, including real-time market data, portfolio management data, and risk analytics.
- 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.
Google Cloud Launches Digital Assets Team to Power the Emerging Blockchain Space
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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 evolution.
Building on our existing work with blockchain developers, exchanges, and other companies in this space, we are announcing today a new, dedicated Digital Assets Team within Google Cloud to support our customers’ needs in building, transacting, storing value, and deploying new products on blockchain-based platforms. This new team will enable our customers to accelerate their efforts in this emerging space and help underpin the blockchain ecosystems of tomorrow.
What We’re Doing Today (and Into the Future)
Blockchain and distributed-ledger-based companies like Hedera, Theta Labs, and Dapper Labs have already chosen to build on top of Google Cloud for scalability, flexibility, and security. Moving forward, Google Cloud’s Digital Assets Team will undertake a number of short- and long-term initiatives to support companies in the digital assets/blockchain ecosystem, including:
- Providing dedicated node hosting/remote procedure call (RPC) nodes for developers, allowing users to deploy blockchain validators on Google Cloud via a single click (“click to deploy”).
- Participating in node validation and on-chain governance with select partners.
- Helping developers and users host their nodes on the cleanest cloud in the industry, supporting their environmental, social, and governance initiatives.
- Supporting on-chain governance via participation from Google Cloud executives and senior engineers.
- Hosting several public BigQuery datasets on our Marketplace, including full blockchain transaction history for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Litecoin, Zcash, Theta, Hedera Hashgraph, Band Protocol, Polygon, XRP, and Dogecoin.
- Driving co-development and integration into Google’s robust partner ecosystem, including participating in the Google Cloud Marketplace.
- Embracing joint go-to-market initiatives with our ecosystem partners where Google Cloud can be the connective tissue between traditional enterprise and blockchain technologies.
As we build out our team, we’re also exploring opportunities in the future to enable Google Cloud customers to make and receive payments using cryptocurrencies.
Why Partner with Google Cloud
Our customers in this space—both traditional firms seeking to implement blockchain strategies and blockchain-native companies, such as exchanges, app providers, and decentralized platforms—are choosing Google Cloud for three key reasons:
- First, their businesses and their developer ecosystems can build on the industry’s cleanest cloud. Growing in a sustainable manner is top-of-mind for many businesses, but is particularly relevant in the blockchain space, where the ability to run and scale sustainably is critical. Google is carbon neutral today, and we’ve announced our goal to run on carbon-free energy, 24/7 at all of our data centers by 2030. We’ve also rolled out the ability for customers to choose a Google Cloud region in which to run based on carbon footprint data.
- Second, developers building on blockchain-based platforms can benefit from Google’s world-class developer platform. Google Cloud infrastructure ensures that developers can speed up the delivery of software and data on the blockchain, delivering fast access to applications for users.
- Third, Google Cloud technologies and services will ensure that blockchain-based companies can scale securely and reliably. Google can ensure that data, applications, games, or digital assets like NFTs will be delivered on a stable, secure, and trusted global network.
Google Cloud’s Approach to Blockchain and Digital Assets
Blockchains and digital assets are changing the way the world stores and moves its information —as well as value. As an infrastructure provider, Google Cloud views the evolution of blockchain technology and decentralized networks today as analogous to the rise of open source and the internet 10-15 years ago. Just as open source developments were integral to the early days of the internet, blockchain is yielding innovation and value creation for consumers and businesses. As the technology becomes more mainstream, companies will need scalable, secure infrastructure on which to grow their businesses and support their networks.
As such, we’re applying Google Cloud technology to the blockchain market with the following principles:
- Consistent with Google Cloud’s core business: We are specialists in data-powered innovation with leading infrastructure, industry solutions, and other cutting-edge technology. We pursue blockchain projects and partnerships that align with our mission and our expertise.
- User trust and governance: Blockchain networks raise novel questions concerning legal compliance and user privacy. We will maintain our commitment to our users through a robust focus on privacy and user trust, as well as an uncompromising focus on compliance with applicable laws.
- Network-agnostic: Google’s infrastructure will seek to preserve optionality of networks for the benefit of users.
We’re inspired by the work already done in the digital assets space by our customers, and we look forward to providing the infrastructure and technologies to support what’s possible with blockchain technologies in the future. If you’re eager to learn more about Google Cloud’s new Digital Assets Team, please reach out to your Google Cloud sales representative or partner manager.
Custom AI Solutions, Global Delivery Centers and More Resources Dedicated for Customer Success
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At Google Cloud, our customers are at the forefront of digital transformation—launching entirely new businesses and products built in the cloud, redefining entire industries with data and artificial intelligence, delivering innovative new consumer experiences, or committing to sustainable new ways of doing business.
We’re committed to our customers’ success, and over the past two years we’ve invested significantly in providing ongoing and integrated support through our customer care portfolio, including launching new Premium and Mission Critical Support offerings that allow us to monitor, prevent, and mitigate impacts quickly, while delivering the fastest response times in the industry.
Today, I’m proud to unveil several new resources and offerings for our customers, including a new Custom AI Solutions practice, new Global Delivery Centers, expanded Executive Briefing Centers, and new leaders to help continue to drive our organization forward.
Helping businesses innovate with a new Custom AI Solutions practice
We are investing in services and offerings to help our customers innovate and drive innovative change to business processes, culture, and customer experiences with Google Cloud products and services. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies are foundational for many such digital transformations, and to help customers create real business value with these technologies, we’re excited to launch a Custom AI offering to address our customers’ most critical innovation needs.
AI and ML technologies are foundational to digital transformations, yet they are not “one size fits all.” Each customers’ problems and opportunities are unique; a rideshare company will use AI differently than a brick and mortar retailer, or a healthcare company, or an insurance firm. To help organizations deploy AI and ML more effectively, we’re launching a new Custom AI Solutions practice, offering customers custom-built AI and ML solutions built into Vertex AI; access to Google’s engineering expertise; and predictable, subscription-based pricing.
Our teams are already partnering closely with early customers to build and deploy custom AI solutions. For instance, USAA, the large North American insurer, is using Google Cloud ML to process near-real-time damage estimates based on digital images to create a streamlined operations experience.
Learn more about our Custom AI Solutions practice offering here, and how we work together with our customers here. To get in touch, please contact our sales team.
Launching new Global Delivery Centers
Our drive to digitally transform our customers’ businesses is often manifested through our Global Delivery Centers, which expand our professional consulting and emerging practices capabilities available to customers and partners around the world.
The teams at our Global Delivery Centers help customers get up-and-running on Google Cloud quickly and cost effectively, and consult with customers to rapidly build capacity in areas like data analytics, hybrid and multi-cloud, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. More importantly, they help customers successfully execute projects in support of their most mission-critical business objectives. Critically, these centers also help our global partner ecosystem quickly ramp their Google Cloud practices, and get fast, expert consultation for their customers too.
In 2022, we aim to triple the size of our Global Delivery Center teams in Argentina, Poland, and India. In addition, we’ll invest in building deep Google Cloud talent in Mexico and Portugal, furthering our commitment to the industry’s best expert consultation for customers and partners around the world.
Expanding our Executive Briefing Centers footprint
In addition to our Global Delivery Centers, we’re also pleased to expand our resources and facilities that enable digital and face-to-face meetings and working sessions with our customers. This year, we will launch four new Executive Briefing Centers, located on Google Cloud campuses in London, Paris, Singapore, and Munich.
These centers provide an opportunity to listen to our customers, share the best of Google Cloud’s solutions, and inspire digital transformation, in conversations facilitated by Google Cloud leadership, engineers, and industry experts. By bringing this experience to our customers in-region we can foster deeper partnerships and develop cloud solutions that meet their requirements for security, privacy, and digital sovereignty without compromising on functionality or innovation.
Adding new leadership to enable customer success
Finally, I’m excited to welcome two new leaders to Google Cloud on the Customer Experience team, who will help scale our Delivery Centers and deliver exceptional experiences for our customers.
Heading our Global Delivery Center experience is Sunil Rao. Sunil comes to Google Cloud from Accenture, where he spent 18-plus years working with large technology customers across many industry verticals and managed large global teams in Accenture Advanced Technology Center. Sunil will also lead our Technical Onboarding Center, which helps businesses around the world get up to speed with technologies that are critical to understanding customer and business process contexts, and delivering great experiences.
Additionally, Lee Moore is joining Google Cloud to lead Customer Experience in North America. Lee spent nearly 30 years at Accenture in various leadership positions, including services integration for complex problem-solving, product development across a number of industry verticals, and building long-term customer relationships.
You’ll be hearing much more from us in the coming months, as we build out even more powerful and effective cloud-based services and offerings, work with customers to deliver new analytics- and AI-based tools and services, and work with our growing list of partners to help ensure customer success, across the globe.
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