Managed containers: An enterprise standard at Colgate-Palmolive
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Kubernetes is an increasingly key part of the application deployment strategies at large organizations, and one of the most recommended options for the teams we work with. An idea brought to life at Google, organizations throughout the world use containers and Kubernetes on-premises, in Google Cloud, or in a multi-cloud scenario, and it has emerged as a leading application deployment platform. And because it’s open source, anyone can pop the hood, so to speak, to see how each component of it works, creating a trusted, verifiable framework that users can rely on.
Customers begin their Kubernetes and containerization journeys using various offerings in our product portfolio. Some, like Colgate, started their modernization journey with Kubernetes. Colgate is an $18B global consumer products company with ~34,000 diverse and dedicated people serving over 200 countries and territories. Through science-led innovation, they drive growth and reimagine a healthier future for all people, their pets, and our planet.
During ideation, they talked through various considerations: What technology strengths does their organization have? What skills do their teams need? What will this initiative look like a decade from now? They implemented the following Kubernetes-focused architecture:
Supporting a variety of use cases and teams
Google Cloud also helped Colgate break new ground over the years, especially in the areas of cloud-native networking, security, monitoring, pub/sub, managed containerization, and multi-tenant environments.
Over time Colgate began to leverage Google’s managed container portfolio, which includes Cloud Run. Cloud Run lets you run containers on top of a serverless platform, unlocking workload possibilities for public websites, private services, APIs and batch jobs and eliminating a lot of the time spent on infrastructure management. Cloud Run also requires no prior knowledge of Kubernetes or containers.
Simplified enterprise-level management
Many teams have found that they prefer the serverless, hands-off approach that Cloud Run provides, and Colgate now evaluates Google Cloud’s serverless solutions alongside GKE for any applications destined for the cloud. At the same time, Cloud Run lets them continue to leverage their investment in workloads based on the Open Container Initiative.
For example, Cloud Run is designed for Kubernetes compatibility with consistent management capabilities such as the ability to manage resources using kubectl via the config controller, and the ability to browse logs and metrics from both platforms in Cloud Logging and Monitoring. Cloud Run and GKE data planes are also interoperable, allowing Cloud Run and GKE services to be exposed behind a VPC behind private IPs using an internal load balancer. Cloud Run as an option has contributed to faster innovation, allowing Colgate to bring smiles to many more faces globally.
Google’s managed container offerings provide a composable and comprehensive set of solutions for customers’ applications. At Colgate, container-based managed services are used across the stack: on the front-end, where they use Identity-Aware Proxy to manage authentication and External Load Balancers to handle incoming traffic with high availability and low latency; at the application layer, where they can choose from Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, or GKE, depending on the level of control they need over the application; and at the internal load balancing level where NGINX® controllers serve internal applications. Together, these managed services ensure that Colgate has the flexibility to choose the right toolchain and maximize their goals for each use case.
Colgate wanted to build internal applications on Cloud Run in a way that complied with their organization’s policies while maximizing developer productivity. They were able to use new features like the Cloud Run Identity Aware Proxy GA to build a secure, serverless deployment for their applications.
A great partnership with Google Cloud
Colgate and Google Cloud have enjoyed a deep partnership for many years, engaging across many technologies, teams, and design patterns.
They’ve engaged with Product and Engineering across compute, networking, Kubernetes, and serverless as they brought this new way of thinking to their users.
For Colgate and many of our customers looking to address the needs of the modern user, Google’s managed container offerings are a breath of fresh air. Its reliability, scalability, and control offer the flexibility to build applications that meet the demands of both internal and external consumers. In addition, the variety of container offerings available on Google Cloud — GKE and Cloud Run — allow customers to make app deployment decisions based on the amount of Day 2 operations the users are willing to take on. Platform administrators appreciate the reduced management effort, users enjoy reduced downtime, and developers can simply deploy.
Google Cloud contributors: Rex Orioko, Rachel Tsao
Colgate-Palmolive contributors: Matthew Tattoli, Nicholas Farley, and David Wiser
New Map Customization Features for Enhanced User Experiences
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A customized map can be key to delivering a frictionless experience that engages users and sets you apart in users’ minds–whether you’re a real estate company fine-tuning points of interest (POIs) on a map to help buyers decide where to live, or a regional pharmacy styling a map to ensure your locations stand out from the competition. That’s why we’ve focused on empowering you with these capabilities through features like POI density and POI filtering controls, zoom level customization, and even industry-optimized map styles. But we’re not done helping you take your map to the next level. Today, we’re making two updates generally available—a new Maps SDK for Android and the extension of Cloud-based maps styling features to our Android and iOS SDKs. Together they enhance the native mobile map experience and make it easier for you to deliver consistent, optimized maps across all your platforms. We’ll also give you an early look at additional features that we’re working on.
Update your Maps SDKs for Android for an enhanced user experience
Developers around the world depend on the Maps SDK for Android to power critical experiences like helping drivers make a delivery or helping retailers visually confirm an order’s shipping address. With consumers spending an increasing amount of time in apps, it’s more important than ever that mobile experiences meet the high consumer expectations that come with essential, everyday use.
Today we released version 18.0.0 of the Maps SDK for Android, which delivers an enhanced map experience to app users, thanks to a new renderer. The new renderer introduces optimizations to our tile serving and rendering architecture, reducing payload size. This can help to reduce network load, on-device processing, and memory consumption for a more stable and smoother end-user experience. You’ll also see specific improvements with map labels. Now more fluid and clearly positioned, they pave the way for future marker management features. We’ve also enhanced overall gesture handling for better animations and smoother panning and zooming.
Because the Maps SDK for Android continues to be distributed as part of the Google Play services SDK, you can upgrade to v18.0.0 along with all its improvements with no increase to your APK size.
A consistent cross-platform maps experience with Cloud-based maps styling for mobile
Earlier this year at Google I/O, we announced the general availability of Cloud-based maps styling for JavaScript. Since then customers have used the richer customization capabilities and efficient cloud-enhanced deployment workflow to power millions of mapping experiences, from a curated interactive map of Munich to fun virtual Easter egg hunts hosted by Cadbury. Starting today, Cloud-based maps styling features are supported in the GA versions of our Maps SDK for Android (v18+) and Maps SDK for iOS (V5.0+).
Cloud-based maps styling moves map customization code off the client and into the cloud–where it can be easily modified to use new features or test new configurations. This decoupling of client code and customization code makes it easy to manage a single branded and optimized style across any number of apps across all supported platforms. It also makes it possible to simultaneously publish changes to a map style across platforms and install bases with the click of a button. Cloud-based maps styling is the foundation for a growing set of new customization features including POI filtering and POI boosting, zoom level customization, landmarks, and commercial corridor styling.
Mobile developers can now take advantage of Cloud-based maps styling features and simple cross-platform customizations for their Dynamic Maps by creating a MapID in Google Cloud Console and using it within their Maps SDK for Android or Maps SDK for iOS. Dynamic maps loaded with a Map ID via our Maps SDK for Android or Maps SDK for iOS will be billed to the same SKU as Maps JavaScript API (Dynamic Maps) and covered under the same $200 monthly credit and volume pricing. Developers can upgrade to the new Maps SDK for Android and continue using client-styled maps for no charge as they always have.
Additional capabilities we’re working on¹
We know you have a range of map customization needs to engage your users with differentiated experiences. We’re working on developing more Cloud-based maps styling features–focused on marker capabilities, map elements, and data-driven styling–to help you do just that. We’re working on a new set of markers capabilities, easier pin customizations, marker collision management, performance optimizations, and the ability to build custom marker elements that you can use to quickly deploy deeply customized, highly optimized marker-driven experiences. For those seeking greater detail in their maps, we’re working on expanding the availability and customization of detailed street maps to even more cities. We’re also working on features to make it easier to programmatically style map elements by exposing new APIs to enable things like the simple creation of choropleths by styling Google geographical boundaries based on your data.
This is just a peek into what we’re excited to be building for our developer community. While we’re working hard to bring these additional features to life, visit our website to learn more and our developer documentation to start customizing and enhancing your mobile maps.
¹Product capabilities, timeframes, and features are subject to change.
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Booking.com’s Apigee Hybrid on Anthos is the Largest Hybrid Deployment Ever
Apigee API Management Platform helps unlock the value of data in legacy systems and applications to accelerate end-user/customer experience by modernizing apps and building multi-cloud environments. With Apigee Hybrid on Anthos, a service mesh technology, Booking.com was able to achieve its goal of providing customers a connected trip experience. Watch the video to understand how Booking.com, a biggest brand in Booking Holdings portfolio with over 1.5 million room bookings in 24 hours moved to hybrid cloud and unified APIs to one platform offering a end-to-end customer journey for a connected trip!
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The rapid growth in mobile, big data, and cloud technologies has profoundly changed market dynamics in every industry, driving the convergence of the digital and physical worlds, and changing customer behaviour. It’s an evolution that IT organizations struggle to keep up with. To succeed, a new approach is required; one that enables agile and web-scale innovation so that IT can meet evolving business requirements while enabling existing systems to continue running reliably, efficiently, and securely.
There’s a way to enable the stability of enterprises’ operational systems of record while also fostering the speed and agility necessary to create powerful new applications and services that serve customers, partners, and employees in a digital economy that’s moving at blinding speed.
Whether you think about this as bimodal IT, two-speed IT, or traditional IT/agile IT, this new approach recognizes the value of both the back-end operational systems and the fast-changing world of user engagement. Read this eBook to explore how two-speed IT can usher a new approach that recognizes the value of both the back-end operational systems and the fast-changing world of user engagement.
How Smart Parking Transformed into a Data-Intelligent Business
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Google Cloud Results
- Reduced smart parking/smart city IoT installation and operational support effort by more than half
- Enabled development of a Smart Cloud IoT platform in just four months
- Democratised data access and use across the organisation
- Built core infrastructure in under 4 months
Smart Parking’s core product is a sensor-based system called SmartPark, used in environments such as shopping centres, airports, commercial parking operations, universities, and municipal streets.
Smart Parking has deployed over 50,000 sensors worldwide to support parking systems. It estimates at least 70% of production-scale and currently operating smart parking environments globally are using its technologies.
“Our products include ground sensors that use an advanced combination of infrared and magnetic technologies to reliably register a vehicle’s arrival and communicate to a gateway,” says Brian Granatir, Technical Team Lead, Smart Parking. This enables operators to gain live insights into parking environment usage and manage capacity. They can also provide automated guidance and signage to tell customers how many vacant spaces are available on each level of a parking structure or street area of a city.
Additional functionality enables parking operators to identify whether vehicles parked in limited-time spots have overstayed. The operators may notify inspectors who can undertake enforcement actions such as issuing infringement notices.
Another Smart Parking mobile product enables parking operators to photograph licence plates to identify vehicles that have overstayed. The business is also developing applications that enable users to view the number of parking spots available in nearby parking structures.
Smart Parking is extending its operations into smart city developments. The business views this as a natural progression as its parking systems establish a powerful common foundation from which to deliver many other services. “Parking is just part of a very complex ecosystem that requires sophisticated interoperability and generalised analytics,” John Heard, Chief Technology Officer, Smart Parking, explains.
“The biggest trend in the space is towards the Internet of Things (IoT)–the integration of a large number of generic and specialised devices,” Heard adds. “This has led us to shift from the idea of our devices being the centre of the universe. Instead, we put data intelligence at the core.”
In October 2016, Smart Parking decided to develop a SmartCloud platform that would enable cities to manage and react to information from a connected network of IoT devices. The business wanted to start by rolling out the platform based on an event-driven architecture that could connect any device that sends or receives a sequence of data events to existing Smart Parking customers.
The platform would enable Smart Parking to address a wide range of highly complex and interrelated interactions. “Internally, we use the example that if everyone leaves a parking structure at 3pm, what will be the impact on traffic?” Heard says. “So, how can we correlate multiple factors to answer a larger question?”
Heard’s team elected to deploy SmartCloud on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), due primarily to its support for sophisticated big data management and machine learning in a serverless architecture. Furthermore, Google technologies were proven to operate at scale and GCP had baked-in best practices that could manage internet-scale datasets in near real time.
“By running on Google, we were able to develop SmartCloud at an incredible pace,” Granatir says. “We built the core infrastructure in under four months.” Furthermore, GCP enables the SmartCloud platform to operate at metropolis scale, combining streams of distributed data to deliver an unprecedented view of the events and interactions taking place in a city.
Smart Parking now uses a wide range of GCP services to deliver SmartCloud. Google Cloud Dataflow provides processing and Google BigQuery provides management and analytics of big data. Google Cloud Pub/Sub provides real-time messaging and Google Cloud Functions enables a serverless environment to enable delivery of streaming data. Google Cloud IoT Core connects, manages, and ingests data from Smart Parking devices while Google Cloud Identity & Access Management enables Smart Parking to control access to information. Google Cloud Pub/Sub and Google Cloud Functions also support the event-driven architecture.
Installation time and operational burdens cut by at least half
Using Google Cloud IoT Core has cut Smart Parking’s parking and smart city system installation times by at least half and eliminated the need to build a registration system, a device authorisation system, and a feedback loop for each project. This delivers a streamlined and simpler methodology for site installations, which flows on to a dramatic decrease in the operational burdens involved in monitoring and maintaining deployments of all scales.
Using GCP has revolutionised Smart Parking’s software development processes. “We’re building and deploying systems at a speed I could never have imagined before Google Cloud Platform,” Granatir says. Furthermore, using GCP has made data accessible to anyone within the Smart Parking business, and this is being extended to customers via SmartCloud information services.
This democratised approach has already realised considerable benefits. “One of our project managers was experimenting with the Google Data Studio service for visualising data and was able to make a query about utilisation efficiency,” Heard adds. “We found that simply changing the maximum stay time by a small amount could hugely impact the percentage of parking utilisation and, therefore, throughput.
“This is an illustration of a significant insight by someone who simply had a hunch and quick access to mountains of live and accurate data.”
Transition to a data-intelligence company
Using GCP has enabled Smart Parking to chart a path from a sales and maintenance organisation to a smart cities data-intelligence company. “How? Simply by providing amazing services that focus on massive data volumes and sharing documentation that helps us leverage best practices,” Heard says. “Because of Google Cloud Platform and its pricing, we don’t walk in the shadow of giants, we ride on their shoulders.”
Smart Parking is now looking to further extend its use of Google services to add value to its smart parking and future smart city clients. “With Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine, we could gain the ability to identify trends across every customer parking site and make recommendations to operators,” Heard says. “For example, we could provide data-driven insight and advice to operators about how to adjust their parking spot time limits and guidance about how to transform throughput and convenience while increasing revenue.”
Heard concludes, “As a result of being able to dramatically decrease our traditional development burdens by using GCP, we now have a number of exciting new capabilities we have been able to bring in to our roadmap and expand the journey we are able to open up for our customers as well.”
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A Winner’s Story of Optimizing IT Operations for Informed Business Decisions with Google Cloud
An award-winning leader in the enterprise software industry, Broadcom Software is known for modernizing, securing and optimizing the most complex and largest hybrid environments. It’s broad portfolio of industry-leading, enterprise infrastructure and security software built on different tech stack and vision of tech leaders, are run on on-prem, private and public cloud and operated differently. To have a unified standard platform to run their wide range of products, Broadcom Software needed infrastructure as a service and Kubernetes orchestration layer, standard DevOps and security practices as well as common set of DevSecOps tools. Although the company knew there was no common ground to run all their products, migrating products into container-based architecture, they discovered many common strands that they could leverage for efficiency. Watch to learn the role played by Google Cloud in the Broadcom’s transformation!
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