For far too long, managing employee expenses has been a time-consuming process that requires manual data entry and reconciliation to bridge the gap between business bank accounts and ERP systems. In the absence of an integrated workflow, finance teams use multiple systems to manage credit card and cash payments, and finding receipts. In most cases, they also lack real-time visibility into company spending.

The complexity grows exponentially as businesses expand, especially into new regions. Extra administration required to manage new bank accounts, card issuers, and local accounting systems impedes decision making and negatively impacts revenues and growth. Businesses of all sizes struggle with this, but it can be especially challenging for medium to large enterprises.

Payhawk set out to help businesses overcome these challenges when we founded the company in 2018. We combine VISA company cards, reimbursable expenses, and accounts payable into a single product. Our customers can automate manual processes, maximize efficiency, and accelerate business expansion.

Setting up our first cloud cluster in less than a week

To support growth and attract investment we were keen to launch our solution on a scalable, future-proof IT architecture that didn’t require extensive technical support. This is where Google Cloud made a big impression, especially the user interface and documentation which massively reduces the resources required to set up clusters and put them into production.

I’m a CTO, not a DevOps specialist, but in less than a week I was able to set up a secure, reliable operating infrastructure. This enabled us to fast-track our application development and we were able to issue our first card in just eight months. Our Google Cloud partner, Cloud Office also gave us valuable assistance, guiding us through the deployment process and advising on Google Cloud’s extensive range of solutions.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) played a critical role, accelerating the deployment and management of our cloud native applications. We use Cloud SQL as our database while other important tools include Cloud Memorystore, Vision AI, Cloud Storage and Artifact Registry for our wider data storage and application needs. With Firebase we’ve been able to build a notification system for mobile devices.

Another incentive is that most other cloud solutions require add-on services to build and keep your product live. With Google Cloud, all the services that Payhawk needs including logging, metrics, monitoring of resources, and utilization of CPU memory come as standard.

For instance, I was really impressed by Google Cloud’s operations suite, which includes Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring. If there are any anomalies in our cloud architecture, we can track and resolve them with minimal disruption to our operations. This also removes the need to invest in an additional observability solution.

Reliability that builds customer trust

Google Cloud also supports Payhawk’s mission to put customers at the center of our organization. Thanks to Google Cloud error reporting and tracking and Google Cloud single sign on, Payhawk’s engineering team can anticipate customer issues and correct them in less than one hour. Trust is everything, and Google Cloud gives us the tools to boost customer satisfaction and build long-term relationships.

As a young business, managing costs is also a priority. The Google for Startups Cloud Program, which includes credits for Google software and tools, enabled us to push the business forward without having to worry about financing our infrastructure, especially in the first year. This gave us breathing room to work through funding, application development, and the onboarding of our first customers.

In addition, Google Cloud gives us confidence that we can grow the business fast. In most months we have seen more than 10% growth — in some cases it’s been 20%. In the first half of 2022, the business doubled in size, but Google Cloud gave us the flexibility to scale our infrastructure, adding storage, memory, and processing power as we onboarded new customers. The pricing model is also generous so that we can grow our revenues while keeping control of operational expenditure.

Since launch we have acquired a valuable mix of customers from startups to large businesses that want to reduce the costs of their expenses programs and increase employee satisfaction. They include ATU, a German automobile servicing company, which has successfully digitized its entire procurement process, and Discordia, a Bulgarian logistics business with 10,000 trucks, which has issued Payhawk cards to all its drivers.

Looking to the future, it’s no exaggeration to say that Google Cloud is a foundation of our business and has given investors confidence in our operations. From a first seeding round of €3 million, early this year we closed a Series B extension of $100 million. This gives us a valuation of $1bn and makes Payhawk the first ever Bulgarian unicorn.

We now operate in 32 countries in Europe and the US, and plan to double our team by the end of the year. It feels like we’ve come a long way since we first started using Google Cloud, and I’m thrilled that we have Google Cloud as a global technology partner supporting our mission to transform expense management and financial operations worldwide.

If you want to learn more about how Google Cloud can help your startup, visit our page here to get more information about our program, and sign up for our communications to get a look at our community activities, digital events, special offers, and more.

It’s no question that the cloud computing industry is booming and cloud experts are in high demand.  In 2020, 67 percent of organizations surveyed in the IDG Cloud Computing Report added new cloud roles and functions (source). 

So there are plenty of cloud jobs out there, but if you don’t have years of experience, you might find it difficult to get one. This is especially true for members of underrepresented communities, who face other kinds of systemic barriers in education and employment.

To help meet this demand and democratize opportunity, Google Cloud is introducing its first virtual Certification Journey Learning program for underrepresented communities across the United States—Cloud Career Jump Start. The program is free of charge for participants, and includes technical and professional skill development and resources with an aim to provide a readiness path to certification via the Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer Exam. 

Google Cloud’s Certification Journey Learning Program

The program offers free access to the Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer training, which provides support preparations for the Certification Exam. This industry-recognized certification helps job applicants validate their cloud expertise, elevate their career, and transform businesses with Google Cloud technology. Learn more about the exam by watching the Certification Prep: Associate Cloud Engineer webinar. 

Designed specifically for Computer Science or Information Systems-related majors (or relevant experience), the 12-week program offers:

• Exclusive free access to Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer-related training to support preparations for the Certification Exam. 
• Guided progress through the certification prep training on Qwiklabs. 
• Office hours hosted by Google Cloud technical experts. 
• Technical workshops, including sessions with Googlers who earned cloud industry certifications and have built impactful careers in cloud tech, such as Google Cloud’s Kelsey Hightower (a Principal Developer Advocate) and Jewel Langevine (a Solution Engineer). 

Earn your Associate Cloud Engineer Certification 

Curious if you qualify to apply for the program? We’ve put together a guide below to help: 

• What does an associate cloud engineer do? Associate Cloud Engineers deploy applications, monitor operations, and manage enterprise solutions. They also use the Google Cloud Console and the command-line interface to perform common platform-based tasks, to maintain one or more deployed solutions that leverage Google-managed or self-managed services on Google Cloud.
• Who’s eligible? We are encouraging applicants from groups that have been historically underrepresented in tech including Black, Latinx, Native American & Indigenous communities. Applicants should have six or more months of hands-on experience in a Computer Information Systems-related major, and/or relevant experience through online courses, boot camps, hackathons or internships. Although the ability to program is not required, familiarity with the following IT concepts is highly recommended: virtual machines, operating systems, storage and file systems, networking, databases, programming, and working with Linux at the command line.

How do you know if you are ready for the program? 

To get an idea of what the program will cover:

• Watch the Certification Prep: Associate Cloud Engineer webinar
• Complete the Skill IQ Assessment via Pluralsight
• Review the Associate Cloud Engineer Certification Exam Guide 
• Take the Associate Cloud Engineer Practice Exam

Jump start a career in cloud infrastructure and technology 

Following the hands-on training, Google Cloud will offer an additional 9 months of career development resources and activities. This includes an online support community, mentoring with Googlers & partners including SADA, EPAM Systems Inc., and Slalom, resume and interviewing support from Google Recruiting & Staffing, and additional career workshops. We are also partnering with a number of Black-owned and -operated, nonprofit and cloud training organizations like Kura Labs. 

Cloud certifications open doors 

Want to hear more about this program from two Googlers who completed it? We asked Kelsey and Jewel to share more on how certifications helped them launch their careers in the cloud industry: 

• “IT certifications introduced me to the game; opportunities and hard work helped me change it.” – Kelsey Hightower, Staff Developer Advocate, Google Cloud Platform 
• “Becoming certified as a cloud computing professional combined with prayer, networking, and practice has kept me moving on my purposeful and rewarding career path as an engineer.” – Jewel Langevine, Solution Engineer, Google Cloud Solutions Studio

Kelsey and Jewel’s wisdom doesn’t end there. They play a central role in the program, sharing more about how they navigated certifications and leveraged them for success. 

Apply today to Cloud Career Jump Start

The program is now live in the United States, with plans to expand to other regions in the coming months. It is completely virtual, and all training is on-demand so that participants can access their coursework anytime, anywhere via the web or mobile device. To determine whether you (or someone you know) would be a great fit for the Cloud Career Jump Start, check out our guidelines and apply.

Compute Engine lets you create and run virtual machines (VMs) on Google’s infrastructure, allowing you to launch large compute clusters with ease. When it comes to getting started with Compute Engine, our customers have lots of questions—but some questions come up more often than others. 

We looked at an internal list of the most popular Compute Engine documentation pages over a 30-day period to find out what topics were explored by users again and again. Here are the top four questions users have about Compute Engine, in order.

1. What are the different machine families

Compute Engine lets you select the right machine for your needs. You can choose from a curated set of predefined virtual machine (VM) configurations optimized for specific workloads, ranging from small-level purpose to large-scale use cases or create a machine type customized to your needs with our custom machine type feature. 

Compute Engine machines are categorized by machine family, including: 

• General-purpose: Best price-performance ratio for a variety of standard and cloud-native workloads 
• Compute-optimized: Highest performance per core for compute-intensive workloads, such as ad serving or media transcoding  
• Memory-optimized: More compute and memory per core than any other family for memory-intensive workloads, such as SAP HANA or in-memory data analytics 
• Accelerator-optimized: Designed for your most demanding workloads, such as machine learning (ML) or high performance computing (HPC)

Read the documentation to learn more about each machine family category.

2. How to connect to VMs using advanced methods

In general, we recommend using the Google Cloud Console and the gcloud command-line tool to connect to Linux VM instances. However, some of our customers want to use third-party tools, or require alternative connection configurations. 

In these cases, there are several methods that might fit your needs better than the standard connection options:

• Connecting to instances using third-party tools (e.g. Windows PuTTY, Chrome OS Secure Shell app), or MacOS or Linux local terminal) 
• Connecting to instances without external IP addresses
• Connecting to instances as the root user Manually connecting between instances and running commands as a service account

Read the documentation to learn about advanced methods for connecting Linux VMs.

3. How to set up OS Login

OS Login lets you use IAM roles and permissions to manage access and permissions to VMs. 

OS Login is the recommended way to manage users across multiple instances or projects. OS Login provides:

• Automatic Linux account lifecycle management
• Fine-grained authorization using Google IAM without having to grant broader privileges
• Automatic permissions updates to prevent unwanted access
• Ability to import existing Linux accounts from Active Directory (AD) and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)

You can also add an extra layer of security by setting up OS Login with two-factor authentication or manage organization access by setting up organization policies.

Read the documentation to learn how to configure OS login and connect to your instances.

4. How to manage SSH keys in metadata 

Compute Engine allows you to manually manage SSH keys and local user accounts by editing public SSH key metadata.

You can add  public SSH keys to instance and project metadata using: 

• The Google Cloud Console The gcloud command-line tool 
• API methods from the Google Cloud Client Libraries

Read the documentation to learn how to manually manage SSH keys and local user accounts in metadata.

Don’t see your question here? Check out the Compute Engine documentation for all of our recommended guides, tutorials, and resources.

We introduced the Google Cloud Ready – Sustainability designation earlier this year to showcase those partners committed to help global businesses and governments accelerate their sustainability programs. These partners build solutions that enhance the capabilities and ease the adoption of powerful Google Cloud technologies, such as Google Earth Engine and BigQuery, allowing customers to leverage data-rich solutions that help reduce their carbon footprints.

Today, we’re pleased to announce growth of the Google Cloud Ready – Sustainability program, with 12 new partners joining the initiative and bringing their climate, ESG, and sustainability platforms to Google Cloud. These partners include:

Aclima is pioneering an entirely new way to diagnose the health of our air and track climate-changing pollution. Powered by its network of roving and stationary sensors, Aclima measures air pollution and greenhouse gasses at unprecedented scales and with block-by-block resolution.

Sustainability at Airbus means uniting and safeguarding the world in a safe, ethical, and socially and environmentally responsible way. Airbus has a comprehensive sustainability strategy built on four core commitments, which guide the company’s approach to the way it does business and how it designs its products and services: Lead the journey toward clean aerospace, respect human rights and foster inclusion, build the business on the foundation of safety and quality, and exemplify business integrity.

Atlas AI is a predictive analytics platform that analyzes, monitors, and forecasts regions of growth, vulnerability, and opportunity around the world to offer insight into where organizations can grow most successfully, and where investment can boost historically underserved communities. Atlas AI’s platform has been used to expand water and sanitation infrastructure, promote new electrification, target community health services, and broaden internet access in countries across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

BlueSky Resources makes sense of sensors from both public and private sources by harmonizing inputs from ground, aerial and space based inputs. Expertise in atmospheric science and cloud technology allows BlueSky to provide understanding and insights related to the correlation of emissions insights to assets and activities. This powerful combination of data, climate science and delivery of insights is enabling focused sustainability impact across clients in various industries including energy, waste management, industry and natural resource management.

Electricity Maps provides companies with actionable data quantifying the carbon intensity and origin of electricity. This data is available on an hourly basis across 50+ countries and more than 160 regions. Electricity Maps’ mission is to organize the world’s electricity data to drive the transition toward a truly decarbonized electricity system.

FlexiDAO is a global climate tech company based in the Netherlands and Spain. The company works closely with other critical stakeholders to co-create the international standard around energy-related emissions compliance. Thanks to FlexiDAO’s end-to-end 24/7 Carbon-free Energy platform, companies can quantify and confidently showcase their contribution to society’s decarbonization.

LevelTen Energy helps organizations achieve carbon-free energy usage targets (on an annual and 24/7 basis) by delivering access to the world’s largest clean energy marketplace, and the software, data, analytics, and expertise required for efficient transactions. The LevelTen Platform connects energy buyers and over 40 sustainability advisors with more than 1,800 carbon-free energy projects in 24 countries across North America and Europe.

Ren is a SaaS platform built on Google Cloud that enables companies with global supply chains to source the cleanest energy possible. Despite using country-sized amounts of energy, most companies have no idea how to transition to renewables due to complex financial, technical, and logistical challenges. Ren unlocks cost savings, provides the cleanest energy possible, and ensures companies meet their carbon commitments on time.

Sidewalk Labs, an urban innovation unit in Google, builds products to radically improve quality of life in cities for all. Delve is a product that helps real estate teams design more sustainable buildings and neighborhood blocks, faster. Mesa automates building controls to deliver savings and comfort to commercial building owners and tenants. With these products and others, Sidewalk Labs helps commercial real estate developers, building owners and city planners make more sustainable choices for the built environment that are better for communities and the planet.

Tomorrow.io is The World’s Weather and Climate Security Platform, helping countries, businesses, and individuals manage their weather and climate security challenges. The platform is fully customizable to any industry impacted by the weather. Customers around the world use Tomorrow.io to dramatically improve operational efficiency. Tomorrow.io was built from the ground up to help teams prepare for the business impact of weather by automating decision-making and enabling climate adaptation at scale.

UP42 is a geospatial developer platform and marketplace bringing together industry-leading data and ready-to-use processing algorithms. The platform enables organizations to build, run, and scale geospatial products. With the ability to choose from a wide range of high-resolution commercial and open satellite data, aerial, weather, and others, solution providers can apply best-in-class machine learning and/or processing modules to gain valuable geospatial insights and streamline their processes.

Woza is a sustainable innovation platform that leverages deep geospatial knowledge and existing best-in-class technologies to develop a new generation of streamlined analytics workflows focused on sustainability. Companies in agri-food, energy, and public sector are partnering with Woza to accelerate their journey to Industry 4.0.

Adding expertise to accelerate sustainability use cases

New partners in the initiative join our existing Google Cloud Ready – Sustainability partners like Carto, Climate Engine, Geotab, NGIS, and Planet Labs PBC bringing a wealth of industry knowledge, offering solutions for sustainability challenges ranging from first-mile sustainable sourcing and spatial finance to fleet electrification and rich geospatial visualizations.

CARTO is the world’s leading Location Intelligence platform, enabling organizations to use spatial data and analysis for more efficient delivery routes, better behavioral marketing, strategic store placements, and much more. The company’s solutions extend the geospatial capabilities available in BigQuery, while leveraging the near limitless scalability that Google Cloud provides. When it comes to sustainability, CARTO’s platform is trusted by a wide range of organizations, including Greenpeace, Vizzuality, Litterati, Indigo, WWF, the Marine Conservation Institute, The World Bank, and the Institute for Sustainable Cities.

Climate Engine leverages data from Google Earth Engine and other ecosystem partners to help organizations improve their climate change-related risk planning in areas such as water use, agriculture, storm risk, and wildfire spread. By linking the economy and the environment, organizations can understand how environmental risks are affecting their markets and discover opportunities to reduce their emissions and potential supply chain or operational disruptions from climate-related events.

Geotab is advancing security, connecting commercial vehicles to the cloud, and providing data-driven analytics to help customers better manage their fleets. Processing billions of data points daily, Geotab helps businesses improve and optimize fleet productivity, enhance safety, and achieve sustainability goals and stronger compliance.

Geospatial solutions provider NGIS built a SaaS-based first-mile sustainable sourcing solution called TraceMark using Google Cloud’s geospatial platform and technologies from other ecosystem partners. Several global CPG firms have already used TraceMark to modernize their geospatial workflows and help facilitate the use of space-based data for supply chain sustainability transformation.

Planet Labs PBC operates the largest fleet of Earth imaging satellites in history, with approximately 200 satellites in orbit. Planet’s mission is to image the whole earth’s landmass every day to make global change visible, accessible, and actionable. As a Public Benefit Corporation, Planet’s Public Benefit Purpose is to accelerate humanity toward a more sustainable, secure, and prosperous world by illuminating environmental and social change.

How the Google Cloud Ready – Sustainability program works

If you are a Google Cloud partner with sustainability solutions and expertise to share, the Google Cloud Ready – Sustainability program is open for applications. Entry into the program requires that the partner solution delivers quantifiable results for climate mitigation, adaptation, or reporting needs. To apply for the Google Cloud Ready – Sustainability designation, the solution must:

• Be available on Google Cloud
• Address ESG risk, and assist customers in achieving ESG targets and/or support typical ESG goal frameworks, such as the United Nations’ SDGs
• Demonstrate repeatability
• Meet minimum Google Cloud application development best practices, including security, performance, scalability, availability, and carbon footprint reporting for available services
• Have Google Cloud Carbon Footprint Reporting enabled
• Have at least one public customer case study available.

The selection process begins with an evaluation of the solution. If a partner meets the above criteria, Google Cloud provides a suggested roadmap for tier progression within the program and then issues a formal acknowledgement of participation in the Google Cloud Ready – Sustainability program. Together, Google Cloud sustainability partners can deliver platforms that are helping businesses and governments accelerate progress aligned to their environmental goals.

Google Cloud will showcase the validated solutions on the Google Cloud Partner Directory Listing, Google Cloud Ready Sustainability Partner Advantage page, and — if applicable — via the Google Cloud Marketplace. We hope to help customers better understand how these technologies can help them meet their ESG goals, find the right solution for their particular challenge, and implement a solution faster.

Prospective partners can visit the Partner Portal to learn more about the Google Cloud Ready – Sustainability program or complete an application.

If you took one look at the title of this blog and thought, “just show me how, because I already know a million reasons why I’m stressed about billing things” then check out the interactive tutorial right here.

For everyone else, read on, because we’ll walk through some common sense tips, and a few step-by-step tutorials for all things billing related. If you’ve ever wished you could sit down with someone from Google Cloud, and walk through your bill, the console, and your options — you’re in the right place! Consider this Cloud Billing 101 – an intro level course that’ll get you started on the right foot.

6 simple tips to manage your Google Cloud billing accounts:

1. Get to know your billing statement and console: Knowledge is power, after all. Take a tour of the billing console so you can better understand your options, along with what’s included in your monthly bill and the different components.
2. Set up authorized users, alerts and budgets: Make sure anyone who needs to have access to payment settings is authorized. Allocate budgets for projects, and get notifications when your usage or spending exceeds a certain amount so you can take action as needed.
3. Use cost-saving tools: We’ve got  a range of tools and services to help you save money, like Committed Use Discounts, and even Recommenders for actionable, AI-powered intelligent recommendations around your cost trends and product usage.
4. Optimize your resources: Use the Google Cloud Resource Manager to see how your resources are being used and identify areas for optimization, temporarily suspend, or even shut down unused projects. 
5. Review your billing history with reporting and data visualization: Regularly check your billing history with reports to help track your spending, identify any trends or patterns, and even anticipate future costs. You can even export your data to BigQuery for detailed analysis, or use a tool like Google Data Studio to visualize your data.
6. Use the pricing calculator: Estimate your monthly costs and make informed decisions with the Google Cloud pricing calculator. It can help you get a ballpark figure for your usage, and determine if your use case fits within cost-free parameters.

I hope these common sense pointers and tutorials empower you to effectively manage your Google Cloud billing and stay on top of your spending. Get started right now by managing your billing methods and payment settings in this 5-minute tutorial, and then take a tour of the billing console to get familiar with your setup.