The digital media and entertainment industry is experiencing dramatic growth, as audiences migrate to online experiences and content providers seek to deliver new and innovative content. According to The Global Internet Phenomena Report, streaming video accounted for 53.7% of internet bandwidth traffic, up by 4.8% from a year ago. This rapid growth of over-the-top content is straining existing infrastructure, fueling media companies’ shift to the public clouds with their global presence and greater distribution capacities. In addition, other use cases such as gaming, social networks, AR/VR experiences, and education continue to fuel the need for intelligent media services and operations.

Today, at the 2022 NAB Show Streaming Summit, we’re excited to announce the general availability of Media CDN — a modern, extensible platform for delivering immersive experiences with unparalleled scale and intelligence. Media CDN will enable media and entertainment customers to efficiently and intelligently deliver streaming experiences to viewers anywhere in the world. The same infrastructure that Google has built over the last decade to serve YouTube content to over 2 billion users is now being leveraged to deliver media at scale to Google Cloud customers with Media CDN.

Unparalleled planet-scale reach and scale

Media CDN’s foundational advantage is the Google network. We have invested decades of resources to build tremendous capacity and reach in over 200 countries and more than 1,300 cities around the globe. Modern video applications are sensitive to fluctuations in latency, so getting content closer to users enables higher bitrates and reduces rebuffers, resulting in a superior experience for the end user. Media CDN builds on the success of the existing Cloud CDN portfolio for web and API acceleration and complements it by enabling delivery of immersive media experiences.

In addition to running on planet-scale infrastructure, Media CDN tailors delivery protocols to individual users and network conditions. Media CDN includes out-of-the-box support for QUIC (HTTP/3), TLS 1.3, and BBR, optimizing for last-mile delivery . When the Chrome team rolled out widespread support for QUIC, video rebuffer time decreased by more than 9% and mobile throughput increased by over 7%.

Media CDN also achieves industry-leading offload rates. With multiple tiers of caching, we minimize calls to origin — even for infrequently accessed content. This alleviates performance or capacity stress in the content origin and saves costs. These features are built into the product and seamlessly support customer content hosted on Google Cloud, on-premises, or on a third-party cloud.

“We are excited to leverage Media CDN to continue to deliver an exceptional streaming experience for Stan users across Australia. With Google’s massive network, and a deep reach into the ISPs, we are able to deliver the highest quality video for our users, no matter where they are”—John Hogan, Chief Technology Officer, Stan

“Our mission at U-NEXT is to deliver the highest quality and most entertaining content to our users. Google Cloud’s Media CDN helps us efficiently scale our infrastructure, which is challenging with a vast library of content. Media CDN offloaded 98.3% of requests from our origin server while delivering consistent great quality.”—Rutong Li, Chief Technology Officer, U-NEXT

Broader platform for monetization and immersive experiences

While global distribution is critical for a high-quality end-user experience, it’s only one piece of delivering a world-class platform for immersive experiences. Media CDN offers additional capabilities to enable this transformation — ad insertion, ecosystem integrations and platform extensibility, and powerful AI/ML analytics for interactive experiences.

Streaming providers can improve monetization through integrated ad serving via the Video Stitcher API, which allows manipulation of video content to dynamically insert ads.

Through extensible ecosystem integrations, Media CDN connects customers to key capabilities to simplify their operations. For example, the Transcoder API supports custom streaming formats, while the Live Stream API transcodes mezzanine live signals into direct-to-consumer streaming formats, for multiple device platforms.

Media CDN is built with AI/ML that will give viewers more control over how they see, experience, and even interact with content. For example, sports fans watching a game can obtain real-time stats and analytics, viewers can purchase items from virtual billboards, etc.

Cloud-native and developer-friendly operations

Media companies are under pressure to develop and deploy innovative experiences at a furious pace. Media CDN was built by developers, for developers, with automation and observability built in, giving media providers the speed and flexibility they need to integrate delivery provisioning and management into their content release processes.

Media CDN offers comprehensive APIs and automation tools such as Terraform. Detailed, pre-aggregated metrics and playback tracing make it easy to diagnose performance across the entire infrastructure stack. Real-time visibility is provided via Google Cloud’s operations suite, and integrates with tools that developers already use such as Grafana and ElasticSearch.

“Leveraging the same infrastructure as YouTube, Google Cloud’s Media CDN combines geographic reach, API-first architecture and integration with the Cloud operations suite. This is a transformative move that is aligned with the future of the CDN industry.”— Ghassan Abdo, Research Vice President, WW Telecom, Virtualization and CDN, IDC

“Viewers around the world are demanding best-in-class video quality and performance across modes of consumption. A video-first delivery network can be a game changer in this space. We’re excited to partner with Google Cloud and to leverage Media CDN to enable premium video experiences and customer engagements.”—Juan Martin, Founder and CTO, Firstlight Media

Planet-scale advanced security

Media CDN lets streaming media providers take advantage of Google’s decades-long experience delivering video safely, securely, and reliably. The platform includes deep integration with Google Cloud Armor for planet-scale DDoS protection and a rich set of capabilities to detect and mitigate attacks, prevent abuse, manage risk, and comply with regulatory or licensing requirements.

If you want to deliver rich, immersive experiences to global audiences with an extensible, modern delivery platform, we’d love to hear from you. For more information, including technical specifications and platform architecture, please visit cloud.google.com/media-cdn. To get started with Media CDN, contact your sales team.

As enterprises accelerate their migration to the cloud, they experience more notable mid- and late-phase migration challenges. Specifically, 41% face challenges when optimizing apps in the cloud post-migration, and 38% struggle with performance issues on workloads migrated to the cloud. Further, organizations have also increased reliance on outside consultants and other service providers for early-stage cloud migration tasks to ongoing management post-implementation.1

To help customers through these challenges with a simple, quick path to a successful cloud migration, Google Cloud created our comprehensive Rapid Assessment & Migration Program (RAMP). And we’ve got some exciting developments to share with our customers and partners:

Expanded focus on post-migration TCO/ROI

Given the complex nature of cloud migrations, we are committed to meeting our customers where they’re at in their cloud journeys and partnering with them to achieve their business goals — be it building customer value through innovation, driving cost efficiencies, or increasing competitive differentiation and productivity. RAMP is a holistic framework based on tangible customer TCO and ROI analyses, that supports our customers’ journeys all the way through: from assessing their digital landscapes across multiple sources including on-prem and other clouds, and identifying prioritized target workloads to building a comprehensive migration and modernization plan.

Accelerate positive outcomes with expert partners

Customers can also now expect a more streamlined migration experience through our ecosystem of partners who have completed their cloud migration specialization. Last week, we announced industry-leading updates to our partner funding programs with new assessment and consumption packages that simplify and accelerate our customers’ journey to Google Cloud, at little-to-no cost. These packages offer prescriptive pathways for infrastructure and application modernization initiatives, empowering our partners to support our customers at every stage — from discovery and planning to migration and modernization.

Through our partner ecosystem, our customers can expect:

• Distinct funding packages for assessment, planning, and migration
• Faster approval processes for accelerated deployments
• More partners eligible to participate in RAMP and access these new funding packages

Sustainability through migration

Another major focus area for RAMP is helping enterprises optimize their migration planning and maximize their ROI by including their business and technical considerations early in the process and including any sustainability goals they may have. To aid with their sustainability efforts, we are excited to share that customers can now receive a Digital Sustainability Report along with their IT assessments – enabling sustainability to be built into their migration strategies. The report provides actionable insights to measure and reduce their environmental impact, and is based on some of Google Cloud’s own best practices, having been carbon-neutral for decades and looking to run on carbon-free energy by 2030.

We are committed to solving complex problems for our customers and partners, and these updates are a reflection of the feedback we receive. Simplify your cloud migration strategy today by requesting your free assessment, finding a partner to work with, or talking to your existing partner to get started.

^{1. Forrester Consulting, State Of Public Cloud Migration; A study commissioned by Google, 2022}

Editor’s note: To kick off the new year and in preparation for NRF The Big Show, we invited partners from across our retail ecosystem to share stories, best practices, and tips and tricks on how they are helping retailers transform during a time that continues to see tremendous change. Please enjoy this entry from our partner.

If you put a pot of water on the stove, it doesn’t heat up instantly. It simmers slowly at first, eventually picking up steam to reach a rolling boil. The retail landscape is not so different. Capgemini’s research shows the sector has evolved over four generations, from the early days of fragmented outlets to omnichannel and customer-centric focuses, with a fifth generation on the horizon that promises to be centered on consumption.

• Generation 1: Fragmented outlets
• Generation 2: Chain concentration
• Generation 3: Omnichannel
• Generation 4: Consumer-centric
• Generation 5: Consumption-centric

Although incremental change allows companies to experiment and iterate during their digital journeys, the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly accelerated the evolution of online and contactless shopping. Evolution became a revolution, with most Consumer Product and Retail (CPR) companies still mastering the omnichannel generation of their digital transformation to create a seamless shopping experience. Companies that are more digitally mature are already aspiring to the consumer-centric phase, embracing opportunities made possible by technology such as personalization and automation.

What consumers want

Customers have more choices in how they shop and engage with brands. This has made it harder for brands to predict and anticipate needs across customer journeys. And that’s convincing some companies to innovate more quickly as consumer demand drives the need for speed and scale.

Think about your own online behavior. Say you’re shopping for an item and searching online for the closest store in your neighborhood. Google is likely your go-to for finding that information. Looking to troubleshoot an issue with a product or seek out a service? Again, you’ll likely hit up Google first, not even considering going directly to a brand’s website for answers.

Both scenarios point to a disconnect between virtual and physical worlds, a gap technology can bridge in numerous ways such as breaking down silos and integrating fragmented media channels. Interestingly, though, not everything will be centered online all the time. In our recent study on consumer behavior, The great consumer reset, Capgemini discovered 57 percent of shoppers plan to return to brick-and-mortar stores post-pandemic, which is basically unchanged from the 59 percent who often interacted with physical stores before.

But business as usual? Not even close. Consumers have come to expect a frictionless shopping experience (buy online, pick up in store) or an immersive one (products displayed online using augmented reality), and are not content to return to in-store lineups, empty shelves, or a one-size-fits-all approach. Moreover, customers want personalized interactions while ensuring their data and privacy are protected.

So the role of the store is changing. In fact, many online-only brands are opening brick-and-mortar establishments to drive customer experience. In our research on “smart stores,” we found the majority of consumers (66 percent) believe automation can improve their shopping experience by solving the challenges they face at retail stores.

From personalization to serendipity

Retailers must recognize that they have to win consumer trust and confidence. Many consumers believe retailers’ use of tech is focused on reducing costs rather than easing friction. And they’re right. That same Capgemini research found that only one-third (35 percent) of retailers consider “solving customer pain points” as the most important criteria when deciding which automation use cases to implement.

“Retailers are largely in the early stages of adopting automation, and that’s an opportunity to rethink how they’re using technology, not just to smooth out friction and engender consumer trust but to build unexpected consumer benefits,” says Neerav Vyas, Head of Customer First, Co-Chief Innovation Officer, Insights & Data, North America, Capgemini. “We’re trying to move towards this idea of delivering serendipitous experiences to bridge the physical and digital divide.”

The focus is not solely on shoppers seeking out a specific product. “When consumers are in an exploratory mood, retailers can recommend products and services customers didn’t even know they wanted,” says Vyas. For example, business teams that use personalization platforms as part of an integrated media strategy can optimize algorithms against outcomes such as improving conversion and driving engagement.

Vyas says the elevated experience from “personalization to serendipity” fosters trust in the ability of recommendation architectures to persuade and influence consumers’ choices in beneficial ways. A case in point: our research found that half (52 percent) of spending by millennials goes towards experience-related purchases. As always, the key is to meet consumers where they are. Even better, according to Vyas, is to anticipate and understand when signals like customer intent are changing.

How to create value throughout the customer journey

One solution companies can implement right now is an integrated media spend platform that incorporates reporting, planning, and strategy across the entire customer journey. This offers value throughout the customer journey by using technology to reduce friction along the way. Think of it as starting with the customer looking for a product (search and discovery), moving on to the purchase (omnichannel basket, “shoppable” screens) and pick up/delivery (QR code scan in store), and through to post-purchase engagement with the retailer (Google Contact Center AI).

Such a holistic approach also accelerates data acquisition, integration, and reporting using advanced analytics to break down silos and emphasize the importance of privacy and first-party data. This in turn guides end-to-end interventions across customer journeys that enable optimized media spend, empowers businesses to analyze their spend distribution, fine-tunes owned and paid tactics with agencies, and promotes stewardship to support audit efficacy.

A culture of experimentation

With this data-driven focus, CPRs can create a 360-degree perspective of the customer. That intelligence can be used to enhance and humanize automated shopping experiences by putting the customer in control, whether online, in store, or across company brands. Moreover, by using Google Cloud’s emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), we help companies accelerate value across the spectrum, from supply-chain optimization and customer innovation to consumer experience.

Building a culture of experimentation is a team effort. “It’s not ever just one person who had a big idea. It’s all incremental steps,” says Jennifer Marchand, Google Cloud COE Leader, Capgemini. “Finding the right use case and timing is everything.” Take Google Glass Enterprise, she continues. For greater consumer experience, it can enable in-store associates to better serve with hands-free checkout, customer personalization and recommendations, and special offers. At the same time, Computer Vision and Smart Shelves can help prioritize tasks for employees, notifying them of low stock or a spill in the store.

Marchand points out that companies and consumers alike might not be ready to fully adopt some technology like facial recognition, but since almost everyone has a smartphone these days, they can benefit from automation with ease. “What’s interesting,” she adds, “is the way Google thinks about these types of problems, solving them for the long term.”

The store of tomorrow

Imagine a truly frictionless shopping experience, where state-of-the-art computer vision and AI identifies the products you pick up, put back, and keep, allowing you to head home, completely bypassing the checkout, with a 99 percent accuracy rate and receipts sent directly to your mobile app. That utopian experience is already taking shape at CornerShop, Capgemini’s live experimental store in London, UK.

Jamie MacLoud, Transformation & Strategy Consultant at frog, part of Capgemini, describes the retail space, which runs on Google Cloud, as the store of tomorrow, and not the distant future. It’s an experiential space where retailers and brands can explore, develop, and test technological shopping innovations in real-time. The outcome is a clearer understanding of how digital innovation can enable new ways to progress the customer experience, improve in-store operations, and help consumers to rediscover the joy of in-person retail through new ways to shop and engage with brands.

“We build, test, and learn about store concepts of tomorrow that we believe could be implemented into actual stores in the next one to two years. Getting these experiences in front of real customers in the CornerShop allows us to generate tangible learnings that we can share with our clients and use to shape future store strategy” says MacLeod. CornerShop was opened to the public in two eight-week stints, which allowed real-time testing to see what technologies resonated with customers, which brands can adapt and scale. Frictionless checkout, not surprisingly, was a big win for customers, but the technology underpinning the “virtual try-on” of clothing was deemed more suitable for the store of the future.

So, unlike an innovation lab, CornerShop lets companies experiment risk free, speeding up the process from hypothesis to full-scale implementation. It’s also another step toward solving the challenges customers face, while delivering those serendipitous experiences that build brand loyalty and longevity.

Learn more about how Capgemini is partnering with Google Cloud to help retailers create next-generation shopping experiences today.

We would like to acknowledge Jamie MacLoud, Transformation & Strategy Consultant at frog, part of Capgemini and Neerav Vyas, Head of Customer First, Co-Chief Innovation Officer, Insights & Data, North America at Capgemini who supported with invaluable insights and subject matter expertise in the writing of this blog post.

Over the past few years, as the education sector was going through transformative change, EdTech startups rose to meet the demand of learners and help address some of the biggest challenges in education. At Google Cloud, we’re inspired by how EdTech startups continue to solve challenges with agility, innovative technology, and determination. We’re proud to help EdTechs make learning more personal, safe, and accessible, and we’re working to connect EdTech startups with the right people, products, and best practices that will help them grow

Announcing a new partnership with StartEd

Google Cloud is excited to announce a partnership to offer mentor-based programming for EdTechs with StartEd — an organization that accelerates education innovators addressing Early Childhood, K-12, HigherEd, Workforce, and Adult Learning. 

Founded by entrepreneurs nearly ten years ago, StartEd is on a mission to attract and develop a network of innovators working to ensure equitable, quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all. The company trains and connects thousands of diverse entrepreneurs, educators, and investors at for-profit and not-for-profit organizations each year, working alongside corporations, foundations, and higher education institutions across the United States. 

StartEd has helped grow more than 2,500 companies and built a mentor network of over 800 senior leaders with deep expertise in early-stage EdTech companies. The StartEd community now numbers more than 25,000 members. 

“I am thrilled to embark on this transformative partnership with Google Cloud,” said Ash Kaluarachchi, StartEd CEO and managing director. “This alliance not only amplifies our mission to empower and nurture the world’s education innovators at every point in their journey, but it also unlocks unprecedented potential for the entire EdTech ecosystem. Together, we’re poised to redefine the future of education and work and to create lasting, positive impact for generations to come.”

Mentoring and networking opportunities for EdTech startups

Through this partnership, U.S.-based EdTech startups can apply to a new program, StartEd sponsored by Google Cloud. The program offers startups access to personal coaching, hands-on training, business support, and a large network of industry experts to help them accelerate their growth and transform education. Beyond the benefits from StartEd, startups will gain access to cloud credits, technical support from Google Cloud, and coaching from Google’s education leadership.

Apply to StartEd, sponsored by Google Cloud, today.

Every year at CES, people from around the world experience the latest and greatest that consumer tech has to offer. In 2021, CES will be in an all-digital format for the first time.

So how can a virtual show like CES create immersive experiences for attendees tuning in remotely? That’s an interesting challenge for the cloud, and of course, every challenge presents an opportunity.

Google Cloud and 5G help enterprises deliver new experiences

Earlier in 2020, we announced our enterprise telecommunications strategy to deliver workloads to the network edge on Google Cloud, and during our SearchOn event last October, we announced how cloud streaming technology can power augmented reality (AR) in consumer search results.

Now, we’re merging the best of both worlds: Technology built for consumer search can take advantage of our enterprise edge capabilities. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, this past year accelerated our support for enhanced consumer experiences across the board in novel ways. For example, we attempted to address questions such as how potential buyers can make a purchasing decision when they can’t see the product up close. This question becomes even more critical when considering a large purchase such as a new car.

That’s exactly what Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and Google Cloud are working together to solve. As part of FCA’s Virtual Showroom CES event, you can experience the new innovative 2021 Jeep Wrangler 4xe by scanning a QR code with your phone. You can then see an Augmented Reality (AR) model of the Wrangler right in front of you—conveniently in your own driveway or in any open space. Check out what the car looks like from any angle, in different colors, and even step inside to see the interior with incredible details.

“As we continue our journey towards becoming a customer-centric mobility company, FCA is adopting emerging technologies that enable us to accelerate and deliver at the speed of our customers’ expectations,” said Mamatha Chamarthi, Chief Information Officer, FCA – North America and Asia Pacific. “Through our collaborative partnership with Google, we are able to expand our efforts to provide an immersive customer experience.”

Harnessing the power of edge with 5G

In order to create a mixed-reality experience with a 3D car model, computer-aided design (CAD)-based data sources that represent a 3D vehicle with highly detailed geometry, depth, texture, and lighting were used. High-fidelity models, such as cars with full interiors, often mean large files (GBs in size). Traditionally, depending on your connection, this can result in long waiting times as assets are downloaded onto your phone. In addition, while mobile phones are more powerful than the Apollo Guidance Computer, they are no match for the power we have in the cloud. We still want to bring these high end experiences to everyone, regardless of their respective device or geographical location.

We solve this problem by rendering the model in Google Cloud, then streaming it to the devices.

Specifically, the Cloud AR tech uses a combination of edge computing and AR technology to offload the computing power needed to display large 3D files, rendered by Unreal Engine, and stream them down to AR-enabled devices using Google’s Scene Viewer. Using powerful rendering servers with gaming console grade GPUs, memory, and processors located geographically near the user, we’re able to deliver a powerful but low friction, low latency experience. This rendering hardware allows us to load models with tens of millions of triangles and textures up to 4k, allowing the content we serve to be orders of magnitude larger than what’s served on mobile devices (i.e., on-device rendered assets). Doing so leverages high-speed 5G connectivity and streams directly from Google Cloud’s distributed edge, delivering a rich, photorealist immersive experience. Customers like FCA benefit from Google’s years of investment and expertise in streaming technology (have you tried playing Cyberpunk2077 on Stadia yet?). With the expansion of 5G networks, not only will streaming enable the experience for anyone anywhere, but it will also cut the wait time of downloading large assets required for detailed AR/VR experiences, ultimately providing instant gratification.

Applications and experiences are at the core of a winning edge proposition

We’re working to make these capabilities available to all enterprise customers to enable innovative use cases such as leveraging AR to help design teams collaborate, technicians perform machine diagnostics, creating next-generation, live video experiences for sports events, enabling new customer experiences across many industries, and supporting our customers in their digital transformation. Stay tuned!

To see the Jeep Wrangler 4xe come to life whether you’re attending CES or not, scan the QR code below, or check out the FCA CES website. Depending on your OS, device, and network strength, you will see either a photorealistic, cloud-streamed AR model or an on-device 3D car model, both of which can then be placed in your physical environment.