Quanta Services is the leading specialty contractor with the largest and highly-skilled trained workforce in North America. It provides fully-integrated solutions for the electric power

pipeline industrial and telecommunications industries the company’s geographic footprint which includes North America Latin America and Australia.

It’s network of companies ensures world-class execution with local delivery and has over 40,000 employees.

“The exciting thing about Backstory is it allows us to land massive amounts of data from all of our different security tools and then Chronicle worries about how to correlate and aggregate this information for us. We can then focus on the highest priority threats.”

Richard Breaux, Manager Security Operations Quanta Services

Because Quanta Services’ customers provide energy and telecommunications to their customers, they have world-class cybersecurity requirements.

“We must ensure that Quanta leads the industry given the fact that our business is building the core infrastructure that powers people’s lives. It’s crucial that we meet their cybersecurity requirements,” says James Stinson, VP-IT, Quanta Services.

To support this goal Quanta implemented a number of security tools that generate terabytes of security telemetry. Over time, however, these systems generated an information overload for the company’s limited pool of qualified security resources.

“Our logging tools also couldn’t keep up with the rapidly growing information. With limited resources we need to focus our security analysts time on high quality work instead of digging through mountains of data,” says Stinson.

They achieve this by implementing Backstory and Chronicle, which is on Google Cloud.

“The exciting thing about Backstory is it allows us to land massive amounts of data from all of our different security tools and then Chronicle worries about how to correlate and aggregate this information for us. We can then focus on the highest priority threats,” says Richard Breaux, Manager Security Operations Quanta Services.

As a result, the company’s security  team spends less time getting to the core information they need to address these incidents.

“What used to take us 15 minutes or more, we can now accomplish in seconds,” says Breaux.

Microsoft and Windows on Google Cloud provides a first-class experience for Windows workloads. You can self-manage workloads or leverage managed services and use license-included images or bring your own licenses. Now, easily migrate, optimize, and modernize your Windows workloads for agility and scalability.

Start with migration

Migrate to increase IT agility and reduce on-premises footprint. Tools like Migrate for Compute and Migrate for Anthos can help migrate and upgrade.

Optimize license usage to reduce cost

Optimize VM usage. Managed SQL Server and Active Directory reduce total cost of ownership. Move .NET to .NET core. Move SQL Server to Linux.

Modernize to reduce single-vendor dependency

Create an open path to modernization—containerization of Windows server, cloud-native development, and multi-cloud readiness with Anthos. 

Drive a strategy for migration, optimization, and modernization

Plan for the future while reducing your Microsoft licensing dependency. Get all you need to migrate, optimize, and modernize your legacy platform.

Bring your own licenses

In addition to on-demand licenses, Google Cloud provides you with flexibility for bringing your existing licenses and running them on Compute Engine. Use Sole-Tenant Nodes to run on dedicated hardware with configurable maintenance policies to support your on-premises licenses while maintaining workload uptime and security through host-level live migration.

License-included VM images

You can deploy your Windows applications (including SQL Server) on our fully tested images with bundled licenses on Compute Engine and take advantage of many benefits available to virtual machine instances such as reliable storage options, the speed of the Google network, and autoscaling.

Fully managed SQL Server and Active Directory

Use an easy-to-manage and compatible relational database service in the cloud to reduce operational overhead. Use a highly available, hardened service to manage authentication and authorization for your AD-dependent workloads, automate AD server maintenance and security configuration, and connect your on-premises AD domain to the cloud.

Windows on Kubernetes

Running your Windows Server containers on GKE can save you on licensing costs, as you can pack many Windows Server containers on each Windows node.

In the last year, there’s been an upward trend in cloud adoption in India. In fact, NASSCOM finds that cloud spending in India is estimated to grow at 30% per annum to cross the US$7 billion mark by 2022.

At Google, in our conversations with customers, discussions have evolved beyond cost savings and efficiencies. While those are still very relevant reasons for adopting cloud technologies, Indian enterprises are looking to Google Cloud to help them drive digital transformation, identify new revenue generating business models, reach previously untapped consumer markets, and build customer loyalty through greater insight and personalization.

Here are some companies and their stories.

Tata Steel: Mining data and maximizing its power

Tata Steel is a great example of an established enterprise from a traditional industry that is modernizing and embracing cloud computing. With an ambition to be a leader in manufacturing in India and a digital-first organization by 2022, Tata Steel believes smart analytics is key to enhancing operational efficiency and gaining business advantage. 

To organize data from siloed systems across the organization and make it easily accessible to all employees, Tata Steel is using Cloud Search and plans to scale it to more than one million documents and 28 disparate enterprise content sources including enterprise resource planning (ERP) and SharePoint. In fact, Tata Steel is one of the first Indian enterprises to harness the power of Cloud Search to meet some of the most aggressive ingestion demands, with indexing durations reduced from weeks to seconds.

They are also leveraging Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services like Google Cloud Storage and BigQuery to build their data lake and enterprise data warehouse so they can take advantage of advanced analytics and machine learning. Managed services such as AI Platform further enable Tata Steel to manage end-to-end AI/ML workflows within the GCP console. This complements their existing on-premise reporting and analytics tools, and brings data management to the forefront of everything they do—from forecasting market demand to predictive equipment maintenance.

“Digital is not just a goal, it’s become a way of life. We are digitizing everything from the deployment of factory vehicles to improving material throughput to marketing and sales. As a result, we have petabytes of structured and unstructured data that is not only waiting to be mined, but that we can generate intelligence from to create opportunities across our multiple lines of business using GCP,” said Sarajit Jha, Chief Business Transformation & Digital Solutions at Tata Steel.

Helping L&T Financial Services reach customers in rural communities

In rural communities, quick access to financial services can make a tremendous difference to livelihoods. L&T Financial Services provides farm-equipment finance, micro loans and two-wheeler finance to consumers across rural India backed by a strong digital and analytics platform. Their digital-loan approval app, which runs on GCP, makes it significantly faster and easier for people to apply for financial assistance to purchase important things such as farming equipment and two-wheelers. It also helps rural women entrepreneurs get quicker access to funds for their businesses through micro loans.

L&T Financial found G Suite to be a far better collaborative tool to help staff work together efficiently. Employees can interact with each other in real time using Hangouts Meet, and the task of information sharing is more seamless and secure through Drive. BigQuery also helps L&T Financial Services generate behavior scorecards to track credit quality of its micro-loan customers.

“Cloud is the technology that enables us to achieve scale and reach. Today there are countless data points available about rural consumers which enable us to personalize our products to serve them better. With access to faster compute power, we can also on-board consumers more efficiently. Our rural businesses have clocked a disbursement CAGR of 60% over the past three years.” said Sunil Prabhune, Chief Executive-Rural Finance, and Group Head-Digital, IT and Analytics, L&T Financial Services.

Creating conversational connections for Digitate’s customers

Digitate, a venture of TCS (Tata Consultancy Services), has integrated Dialogflow into its flagship brand ignio, an award-winning artificial intelligence platform for driving IT operations, workload operations and ERP operations for diverse enterprises. This integration is the next step in ignio’s product development journey, and will enable users to chat or talk with ignio to detect issues, triage problems, resolve them and even predict system behavior.

“ignio combines its unique self-healing AIOps capabilities for enterprise IT and business operations with Dialogflow’s AI/ML-based, easy to use, natural and rich conversational capabilities to create an unparalleled, intuitive and feature-rich experience for our customers,” says Akhilesh Tripathi, Head of Digitate.

Indian enterprises going G Suite

The base of Indian enterprises that are making the switch to G Suite to streamline their productivity and collaboration also continues to grow. Sharechat, BookMyShow, Hero MotorCorp, DB Corp and Royal Enfield are now able to move faster within their organizations, using intelligent, cloud-based apps to transform the way they work.

A hybrid and multi-cloud future in India

IDC predicts that by 2023, 55% of India 500 organizations will have a multi-cloud management strategy that includes integrated tools across public and private clouds. (IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Cloud 2019 Predictions  — India Implications (# AP43922319). We look forward to sharing more success stories of Indian enterprises that have taken the next step in their digital transformation journey.

Today’s Google Doodle reminds us of the enormous changes our planet is experiencing due to climate change. Everyone, from businesses to governments to technologists, has the opportunity to meet this challenge — transforming themselves and their organizations to be more sustainable. For this Earth Day 2022, and indeed Earth Week, Google Cloud celebrates the organizations and individuals who are fighting climate change with innovative technology. We don’t want you to miss a thing, so here’s a recap of all our news in one handy location.

We asked global CEOs: what is it going to take to make progress on sustainability in your org?
In a survey of 1,500 CXOs across 16 countries, many executives say they are willing to do what it takes to have more sustainable practices. But despite their ambition, real measures of impact are lacking. To see what will change that, check out the blog.

We announced a new innovation challenge supporting climate science and research…
Our blog on Monday announced the Climate Innovation Challenge Research Credits program, to support researchers as they work to better understand climate change, increase climate resilience and develop new, promising solutions to urgent climate challenges. You can apply for research credits here.

…and shared stories of researchers making a difference
We interviewed Dr. Richard Fernandes from Natural Resources Canada, who built the LEAF toolbox that maps and assesses vegetation with satellite data from Google Earth Engine. You can read our Q&A here.

Canada has approximately 10 million square kilometers of land and the annual data volume of these maps is equivalent to streaming HD movies for over 750 hours non-stop. Cloud computing allows us to manage all this data in a useful and accessible way.

Dr. Fernandes, Research Scientist

We also published a story about the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, and how they use Google Cloud processing and analysis tools to help sustainably manage 193 million acres of land.

We turned the lights on at new clean energy projects in four countries…
We shared details of our battery project in Belgium, solar projects in Denmark, and wind projects in Chile and Finland. Our battery project in Belgium is the first of its kind, enabling us to switch from diesel generators to a cleaner backup solution that will keep the internet up and running in the event of a power disruption. These will all help us continue to operate the cleanest cloud in the industry.

…and made it easier to learn how to build applications more sustainably
We launched a new lab that walks users through our Carbon Sense suite of products. From using our region picker app to make low-carbon architecture decisions, to analyzing the carbon footprint of your Google Cloud app with Carbon Footprint, we’re building sustainability into the tools you use every day. You can also find Carbon Footprint training in the new Data Warehouse Cloud On-Board.

We formed an ecosystem of partners to help accelerate sustainability projects…
The Google Cloud partner ecosystem is critical to helping our customers act sustainably today. A new whitepaper produced in partnership with Enterprise Strategy Group shares real-world solutions that could make an immediate impact — not in the next decade, but right now.

…and shared stories of innovative startups changing the game with Google Cloud.
Take Enexor and its partners, who are producing clean and sustainable energy from discarded plastics and agro-waste. The blog from Lee Jestings, Enexor Founder & CEO, shares how Google for Startups got them started, and which Google Cloud tools help them build predictive models. Check out their story.

Or Nuuly, the rental and resale business created by the URBN portfolio, which also includes Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and Free People. In the blog you can read how Nuuly is using technology to provide a sustainable experience to employees and customers — from upcycling clothing, to recyclable and reusable packaging.

Whether you’re a startup, scientist, executive or developer, at Google Cloud we’ll continue to work hard to help make your digital transformation a sustainable one.

Learn more about our sustainability work here, and don’t miss the inaugural Cloud Sustainability Summit this June. Register now.