If you’re looking to migrate and modernize your Microsoft and Windows workloads, Google Cloud is your premiere destination. No matter what migration strategy you’ve selected or what value you’re looking to achieve, with Google Cloud you’re able to:

• simplify your migration and modernization journey
• reduce your on-prem footprint and increase agility
• optimize license usage to reduce costs
• modernize to reduce single-vendor dependencies
• rely on enterprise-class support backed by Microsoft

Whether you’re looking to migrate applications running on Windows virtual machines, adopt Windows containers in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), convert SQL databases to Cloud SQL, or something else, Google Cloud offers you the first-class experience you need. 

But we don’t want you to take our word for it. Try it out yourself with our new online Microsoft and Windows on Google Cloud Demo Center without any commitment or friction.

The demo center uses hands-on guided simulations to walk you through several scenarios for solving business critical challenges with Google Cloud’s Microsoft and Windows solutions. Because these are all simulated, you’ll see how it works without any deployment, configuration, or commitment. It’s a seamless way for you to see exactly how Google Cloud can help you.

Run dedicated hardware and optimize with sole tenant

Sometimes you might want to run your workloads on dedicated hardware (with oversubscription options) for compliance, licensing, and management. Google Cloud provides sole-tenant nodes that allow you to easily deploy your virtual machines onto dedicated machines to avoid “noisy neighbor” issues, address regulatory or licensing constraints, and optimize inter-VM communications.

Plus, the CPU Overcommit option allows oversubscribing sole-tenant node resources by up to 2x, therefore helping save on per-physical core licensing for many licensed workloads like SQL Server.

Learn how to set up a sole tenant group and node.

Optimize license costs with premium images & custom VMs

One of the easiest ways to optimize your cloud experience with virtual machines (VM) is to pick the right VM image. Google Cloud provides premium license-included VM images that are thoroughly tested and optimized, including SQL Server options with pay-as-you-go licensing. These are great for workloads that don’t need to run all the time or when you do not have spare licenses for bring your own license (BYOL). 

Explore some Windows & SQL images and learn how CPU/Memory options can help optimize deployment and save on licensing.

Modernize your databases with Managed SQL Server

Sometimes you need to manage your SQL Server instance to achieve certain business or operational goals. But more often, managing SQL Server deployments can be undifferentiated: backups, high-availability, updates, and patching are just some of the many things you have to take care of when going the do-it-yourself route. One way to modernize your database tier is to migrate to a managed service like Cloud SQL, which is a fully managed Relational Database service for SQL. 

Explore the process of creating an instance in just a few clicks!

Extract apps from VMs and move to containers in GKE with Migrate for Anthos

Many Windows workloads running on virtual machines such as Internet Information Services (IIS) are ideal candidates for migrating to containers without major changes like rewriting or rearchitecting. However, doing this migration manually can be tedious, which is why Migrate for Anthos can help easily re-platform a .NET app running on IIS into a container-based app. 

Simulate intelligently extracting, migrating, and modernizing applications to run natively on containers in GKE and Anthos clusters.

Move .NET applications to GKE on Windows without code changes

When you’re looking to go fully cloud native, you can leverage Windows containers in GKE without rewriting your .NET applications. Simply create clusters with Windows nodes and deploy containerized Windows workloads in a few clicks, even alongside Linux containers. These deployments reduce operational overhead with features such as auto-upgrade, auto-repair, and release channels. 

Learn  how easy it is to build a GKE cluster with a Windows node and deploy an app. 

Now that you’ve gotten a feel for what’s available, go check out the Demo Center. You can also visit us at Windows and Microsoft on Google Cloud to learn more.

Looking back on the past year, I see challenges—but also reinvention. Reinvention in how children are educated. Reinvention in how medical professionals provide care. Reinvention in how customers purchase products. This reinvention was made possible by all of the IT leaders around the world who had a vision about what could be possible with technology.

Technology has allowed people to work and complete critical activities safely outside of their standard locations. But, it has also enabled transformation in ways we have not seen before: in how people collaborate, in how businesses operate, and most important to me, in how organizations innovate.

Rethinking what it means to transform

The leading indicator for organizations that are accelerating their innovation during this time is how they are thinking about transformation. Instead of asking infrastructure questions about where their apps and services should run, they are asking transformation questions about how to build an environment that enables every person, process, and technology to adapt in order to bring the highest level of innovation to the business. 

Innovative companies have moved beyond migrating their data centers to the cloud, changing not only where their business is done but, more importantly, how it is done. For example, Papa John’s recently announced they are building a digital platform that looks at real-time data across the business to improve its loyalty programs, website, and customer and partner experiences. Albertsons Companies is transforming itself by reinventing grocery shopping, both the digital and physical aisle, through shoppable maps, AI-powered conversational commerce, and predictive grocery list building. Airbus is reimagining their work environment to embrace the hybrid work reality. And Siemens is partnering with Google Cloud to reinvent industrial manufacturing with AI to empower employees, automate mundane tasks, and improve product quality.  

Here, transformation is made possible with technologies that enable new innovations for their customers versus decisions about where infrastructure should be run. And this aligns with a recent study by Forrester that states the top two IT initiatives for the next 12 months are to increase innovation and to invest in technology that helps employees do their jobs better.¹

Some of the best conversations I’ve had with customers are focused on how to:

• Accelerate transformation while also maintaining the freedom to adapt to market needs.
• Make every employee—data scientists to sales associates—smarter with real-time data to make the best decisions.
• Bring people together and enable them to communicate, collaborate, and share with each other when they can not meet in person.
• Protect everything that matters to us—our people, our customers, our data, our customers’ data, and each transaction we undertake.

This new customer thinking is driving new technology requirements—requirements that can be solved through a transformation cloud. A transformation cloud accelerates an organization’s digital transformation through app and infrastructure modernization, data democratization, people connections, and trusted transactions. The result is an organization – and its workers –  that can take advantage of all of the benefits of cloud computing to drive innovation.

The new requirements for innovation

Organizations want to work with multiple cloud providers to choose the best technology for each of their apps and services while also mitigating against inevitable cloud outages and vendor lock in. They value the flexibility of open source based solutions and look to our multicloud platforms like Google Kubernetes Engine and Anthos to instill freedom in how they innovate and drive differentiated customer experiences. It is no surprise that, in a recent Google-commissioned IDG research study, 78% of Global IT leaders stated that multi/hybrid cloud support is a major consideration when selecting a cloud provider and 74% preferred open source cloud solutions.² Customers like MLB, DenizBank, and Macquarie Bank understand the necessity of a multicloud strategy and are taking advantage of Google Cloud’s open, hybrid architecture to give them the maximum flexibility to run their business how and where they want.

These organizations also want to use data to better understand their customers, enhance their products, and improve inventory accuracy in order to make real-time decisions—and bring it together into a cohesive data cloud. They value how analytics solutions democratize access to data for all employees and how embedded AI helps them predict and automate the future. The Forrester study mentioned above also shows that companies focused on improving their use of data for better decision-making, are taking actions to improve data self-service capabilities and make access to data and insights more democratic.³ Customers like Twitter, PayPal, The Home Depot, HSBC, and Stanford Medicine, unify their data across their organizations to power deeper AI-driven business insights, make better real-time decisions, and build and run their data-driven applications. 

And while technology is driving many of the transformations we see, so are an organization’s people. Workers are finding new ways to strengthen human connections, deepen their impact, and serve customers while transforming how work happens—as shown in the fact that 59% of organizations in the IDG study accelerated or newly introduced remote working and collaboration capabilities in 2020.⁴ Customers like Kia Motors, Cambridge Health Alliance, and PwC are using Google Workspace to enable teams of all sizes to connect, create,  collaborate, and to drive innovation from any device, and any location.

Finally, the innovation that we see in every digital transaction is matched with new ways to protect and secure the business. Organizations want to protect their employees, customers, and partners against emerging threats, analyze massive amounts of data to secure infrastructure, and build a long term strategy for strategic governance of their assets regardless of their location. Getting this right is essential as organizations see security as a top pain point impeding innovation.⁵ Customers like Equifax and Evernote are using Google Cloud’s secure platform and security products to extend customer confidence anywhere their systems may operate.

Google Cloud technologies are already powering customers’ transformation clouds

Supporting our customers’ reinventions are our top priority and we believe that together, we can pave the way for what is next. With our investments in multicloud and AI/ML, to sustainable infrastructure, industry solutions, and technology that improves our communities, such as COVID-19 vaccine distribution, we are proud that our customers trust Google Cloud solutions to digitally transform their business.

We have lots more to tell you about in the coming months, starting with our Data Cloud Summit on May 26th. Between this event, and the multiple other events we have this summer, you will learn about how our industry leadership and collaboration with our partners are enabling our customers to build powerful transformation clouds to support their continued reinvention.

^{1. Forrester Analytics Business Technographics® Priorities And Journey Survey, 2021
2. IDG Communications, Inc: “No Turning Back: How the Pandemic Has Reshaped Digital Business Agendas”, 2021
3. Of the companies that prioritize data in decision making, 37% are improving data self-service capabilities and 30% are making access to data and insights more democratic (Forrester Analytics Business Technographics® Priorities And Journey Survey, 2021)
4. IDG Communications, Inc, “No Turning Back: How the Pandemic Has Reshaped Digital Business Agendas”, 2021
5. 33% of organizations stated Security risks & concerns as a top pain point impeding innovation (IDG Communications, Inc, “No Turning Back: How the Pandemic Has Reshaped Digital Business Agendas”, 2021)}

The ability to quickly introduce and evolve payment options for products or services is essential for businesses, as nearly 50% of consumers who can’t use a preferred payment method abandon their purchase. At the same time, gift cards, branded credit cards and rewards programs are critical tools that companies rely on to build more loyal and lasting customer relationships. With Highnote, companies have an all-in-one embedded platform to quickly create payment cards and wallets, offer innovative rewards programs and credit, and provide sustainable wage access. It is the first platform that allows enterprises to make card issuance an embedded capability of their product without creating an entirely new (and costly) organization.

Creating an exciting fintech future with Google Cloud

When thinking about building the industry’s first end-to-end embedded finance platform, we quickly realized Highnote would only be successful if it enabled companies to truly innovate and quickly roll out new programs. To do so, the platform would have to be built on scalable infrastructure capable of securely delivering services with speed and reliability while offering easy access to actionable Big Data analytics.

Working closely with the team at the Google for Startups Cloud Program, we successfully implemented Google Cloud as a versatile, future-proof foundation of our platform—and built Highnote from the ground up in just one year. Highnote’s GraphQL-based API platform reinvents the card issuance process. Utilizing the developer-friendly Highnote platform, product and engineering teams at digital enterprises of all sizes can easily and efficiently embed virtual and physical payment cards (commercial and consumer prepaid, debit, credit, and charge), ledger, and wallet capabilities into their existing products. This creates compelling value while growing revenue and building a unique and differentiated brand.

We leverage Cloud Spanner, BigQuery, and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to create a unified and highly secure PCI DSS-compliant platform with GraphQL APIs that provide rapid and flexible money transfers. This gives us a reliable platform to deliver and test customer experiences, respond to outcomes, and make better business decisions. Powered by Google Cloud, our data models and application domains are architected to support configurations and customizations that unlock a diverse set of new use cases across industries, including retail, travel, logistics, healthcare, and sustainable wage access programs.

We are especially proud to highlight our enablement of sustainable wage access, as this program helps the 50% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck. Embedding this program within payroll systems provides a viable alternative to payday lenders who often charge exorbitant fees and interest rates. In real world terms, this means Highnote helps people access earned wages before payday at no cost.

The other customer we just went live with was Tillful, and their Tillful card helps small businesses build their business credit. This program will help new and emerging businesses as well as underrepresented owners of small businesses by making the credit ecosystem accessible. Highnote’s platform is designed to support multiple use cases across many industries. For example, we also help the trucking and logistics companies to develop fleet and fuel cards, and spend management companies who are looking to uplevel offerings.

Delivering high-performance transactions with Cloud Spanner

Building one of the world’s most modern card platforms would not have been possible without Cloud Spanner. We needed a solution that would keep our massive petabyte databases from buckling and more securely deliver data anywhere in the U.S. Cloud Spanner does all this and more, as it routinely connects purchases from millions of customers to tens of thousands of vendors. We also wanted to reduce overhead by 80% by eliminating manual sharding, partitioning, and optimization of data. These processes are automatic with Cloud Spanner so we can operate at maximum efficiency.

We specifically selected Cloud Spanner as our distributed SQL database management and storage solution because of its outstanding availability, zero plan maintenance downtime, security certifications, and the highest consistency guarantees of any scale-out database. We continue to optimally scale without any downtime or compromises to the integrity or security of our data. This is key for us because we can address unexpected spikes, long-term growth, and new services without costly rearchitecting.

Highnote is designed to perform over billions of transactions on Cloud Spanner, and the average latency of less than 250 ms is a testament to the robustness of Google Cloud services.

Enabling actionable customer insights at scale

BigQuery is another key Google Cloud solution that we rely on to deliver deep insights and visibility for our customers on a highly secure and scalable platform. When building Highnote, we knew we needed a cost-effective solution that excelled at data analytics. This is particularly critical for accurately measuring the performance—whether profitability or efficacy—of any program or card.

Using BigQuery, we successfully run analytics at scale with as much as a 34% lower three-year TCO than cloud data warehouse alternatives. Over the past year, BigQuery has enabled our customers to unlock data-rich capabilities with a ledger that tracks money in real time and serves up complete debit and credit entries for every event across their accounts. Companies also access real time balances for revenue, fees, customer accounts, and available funds management without complicated spreadsheets.

To quickly and efficiently roll out Highnote to our customers, we needed a simple way to automatically deploy, scale, and manage Kubernetes. When selecting a Kubernetes management tool, our top priorities were rapidly spinning up and securely scaling across multiple sites. As part of Google Cloud’s expansive ecosystem, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) was the top choice due to seamless and automatic Kubernetes scaling and management.

We quickly got off the ground with single-click clusters and scaled up by using the high-availability control plane—including multi-zonal and regional clusters—to easily accommodate multiple active-active regions (which other solutions cannot do). As an embedded finance platform, stringent security protocols were obviously a key consideration for us. GKE is secure by default and runs routine vulnerability scans of container images and data encryption. Further security assistance was provided by Google Cloud partners 66degrees and DoiT International to help us rapidly validate VPC PCI compliance and ensure the uninterrupted performance of thousands of transactions per second.

Winning in fintech with Google for Startups

Building the industry’s first end-to-end embedded finance platform would have been extremely challenging without the extensive Google Cloud support. By working closely with our Startups team and Google partners, we had access to Google Cloud services to more easily validate VPC PCI compliance and address most issues before we exited stealth. Their responsiveness is incredible and stands out compared to support services we’ve seen from other technology providers.

Our participation in the Google for Startups Cloud program has been instrumental to our success. With Google Cloud, we are making embedded payments accessible to our customers without a big budget price tag. By doing so, we help unleash the creativity of emerging enterprises by enabling them to innovate with payment services and rewards programs to reach new markets and customers. If companies can dream, we can enable them to realize it on Highnote. Our platform really is that flexible. We’re excited where we can go and grow with Google Cloud.

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.

San José is one of the most diverse U.S. cities, with residents speaking more than 100 languages. Several years ago, we set out to improve city community interactions through more equitable service management and delivery. This demanded a new approach to automating the intake of requests from a majority population whose first language is not English.

We first created the 311 portal and app, which was an important step as we effectively separated resident service requests from emergencies. The way we describe it to our citizens, you call 311 for a burning question, and 911 for a burning building. In the last fiscal year, San José 311 received nearly 210,000 contacts by phone and an additional 211,000 service requests through the SJ 311 app. 

Through the portal and app, we gave citizens an omnichannel experience enabling them to interact with the city to request improvements, access useful information, and get emergency help when they need it. 

In order to truly serve our diverse communities, we recognized language translation services would be required to offer truly equitable services to everyone. That’s when we started working closely with SpringML, Google Cloud, and other partners with involvement from our Mayor and City CIO.

Building public services with community engagement in mind

When we first rolled out the My San José website and mobile app, we used an out-of-the-box translation service that ended up not working. It had poor accuracy and did not meet our needs to provide all citizens with coherent services. After looking at many other options, we decided to partner with SpringML and Google Cloud to leverage the AutoML Translation with other technologies such as our virtual agent.

SpringML was selected through an open RFP process, and helped us to build and optimize our integrations, interfaces, and more between several systems, making the app and website more intuitive to manage. SpringML delivered the product we needed on time and up to specifications, and additional value came from the training sessions they provided to our team. This enabled us to understand everything we could do with AutoML and opened the door to other enhancements such as simplifying the vernacular used with our residents, making government access easier to navigate regardless of natural language spoken. 

After establishing the My San José app’s translation capabilities using AutoML, SpringML also helped us incorporate Dialogflow virtual agents. Dialogflow also positions us to make modifications with our own staffing practices – something that has become increasingly important amid the frequent changes in service levels from COVID-19 response in the past year.

Responding to community needs

With the app up-and-running, our next step was to bring in community members to help with testing, improvements, and more. We wanted the app and the website to not just be something we provided to the community, but rather something they helped us build so they would readily adopt it.

Thanks to the greater accuracy of translation supported by Google Cloud services, we were able to leverage the expertise of a small pool of community members to evaluate translations. AutoML Translation and Glossary proved to be a powerful combination that pushed us closer to our goals. 

Our primary targets were Spanish and Vietnamese translations. We are now seeing 90 percent accuracy in automated Spanish translations while Vietnamese translations continue to improve. We continue to work to simplify the language used in these services, which makes a big difference in terms of ensuring optimal language accessibility.

This work includes best serving our community members who primarily use phones to get in touch with us through 311 services. Using Google Cloud Contact Center AI, we have been able to effectively manage the calls we receive 24×7 and communicate with residents who speak Spanish as well as English. No matter which channel one of our residents choose to use to reach out, we can serve them efficiently. 

A well-timed release

We’re proud of the work we’ve done. We’ve made many government services available to our community 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — accessible through many channels. Regardless of a person’s native language, the consistency of experiences enjoyed by everyone is improving every day thanks to AI. We’re also actively incorporating more language translation capabilities to better serve more people.

While we began this process several years ago, the recent integration of machine learning language translation with our customer relationship management system in late 2020 was very well-timed because we were able to incorporate this into our COVID-19 pandemic response. 

We’re also beginning to work with other municipalities across the U.S. to share some of the lessons we’ve learned and success we’ve seen in hopes of furthering more equitable citizen services far beyond our City limits. 

We are excited to continue working with SpringML, Google Cloud, and other partners to improve our city and the equity and quality of services that our residents enjoy.

Learn more about how you can work with a Google Cloud Partner here.

The past year has given everyone lots to think about—about our priorities as people and as businesses. As the world retreated behind closed doors, we saw how shared interests and experiences can bring us together. As the world grappled with a common enemy, we witnessed just how differently individuals, communities and indeed entire countries can experience a situation. And as we faced seemingly unending obstacles to making it through the pandemic, we saw how making smart decisions based on data can drive meaningful solutions—fast.

That’s why we here at Google Cloud are so proud to partner Univision, the country’s leading Spanish-language content and media company. By partnering with Google Cloud, Univision will be able to accelerate growth across its portfolio of properties, deliver an enhanced user experience for Spanish-speaking audiences and provide the enterprise solutions needed to create the Spanish-language media company of the future.

According to Instituto Cervantes, there are over 580 million Spanish language speakers worldwide. Those viewers, like people everywhere, are avid consumers of streaming content. In Q4 of 2020 alone, viewing time for that content increased by 44%¹, and in 2020, from 50%² more sources. With that surge in demand, Univision needed a cloud provider whose infrastructure could reach Hispanic viewers around the world. With two-plus decades spent building out its network and data centers, as well as global content-delivery capabilities, Google Cloud has the infrastructure Univision needs to reach viewers across the Spanish-speaking world.

At the same time, with such a diverse audience for their content, Univision needs to target that content to viewers’ specific preferences. By applying Google Cloud’s artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology across its content, Univision intends to personalize content based on shows users have previously watched, enhancing their engagement and viewing experience. 

And as Univision transforms the user experience, it can use Google Cloud’s data and analytics suite to garner deeper insights into its audience and forge stronger relationships with them on an individual basis. With Looker and BigQuery, Univision employees will have access to real-time data to help them make business decisions about programming.

Univision will also migrate video distribution and production operations to Google Cloud, where we’ll help them streamline media workflows and develop innovative new capabilities. Meanwhile, Google Cloud’s tight business and technical integration with other Google services will help ensure Univision reaches viewers on the device of their choice, wherever they are in the world. For example, in the coming years, Univision will expand its global YouTube partnership and will integrate with entertainment features on Google Search that help people better discover TV shows and movies. The company will also use Google Ad Manager for global ad decisioning and Google’s Dynamic Ad Insertion for PrendeTV and future video-on-demand offerings. Finally, Univision will distribute its content and services on Google Play across Android phones and tablets, as well as Google TV and other Android TV OS devices.

We’re thrilled to partner with Univision to help them reach the Spanish-speaking world with their content. With our cloud portfolio, we can help them reach individual viewers around the world, with personalized content that they can consume however they see fit. Best of all, together, we can help them achieve this vision fast, leveraging established cloud, content delivery, and data analytics technologies. You can learn more about the partnership here.