What Our Google Cloud Experts Say About Multi-cloud Journey
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Do you want to fire up a bunch of techies? Talk about multicloud! There is no shortage of opinions. I figured we should tackle this hot topic head-on, so I recently talked to four smart folks—Corey Quinn of Duckbill Group, Armon Dadgar of Hashicorp, Tammy Bryant Butow of Gremlin, and James Watters of VMware—about what multicloud is all about, key considerations, and why you should (or shouldn’t!) do it.
Five important insights came out of these discussions. If you’re on a multicloud journey or considering one, keep reading.
Do: Choose to do multicloud for the right reasons
Don’t do multicloud because Gartner says so, implores Corey Quinn. Before embarking on a multicloud, define a “why” focused on business value journey, says Armon Dadger. For example, you might want to use services from each public cloud because of their differentiated services, according to Tammy Bryant Butow. Armon also calls out regulatory reasons, existing business relationships, and accommodating mergers and acquisitions. On the topic of M&A, Corey points out that if you acquire a company that uses another cloud, it’s usually expensive and difficult to consolidate. It can be smarter to stay put.
Don’t: Over-engineer for workload or data portability
Thinking that you’ll build a system that moves seamlessly among the various cloud providers? Hold up, says our group of experts. Armon points out that aspects of your toolchain or architecture may be multicloud—think of some of your workflows or global network routing—but that shifting workloads or data is far from simple. Corey says that trying to engineer for “write once, run anywhere” can slow you down, and ignores the inherent uniqueness that’s part of each platform. Specifically, Corey calls out the per-cloud stickiness of identity management, security features, and even network functionality. And data gravity is still a thing, says James, that causes some to dismiss multicloud outright.
If you’re using multiple public clouds, you take advantage of the distinct value each offers, Armon says. Use native cloud services where possible so that you see the benefits from useful innovations, built-in resilience, and baked-in best practices. The value from that cloud-infused workload may outweigh the benefits of seamless portability.
Do: Recognize different stakeholder interests and needs
James smartly points out that many multicloud debates happen because people are arguing from different perspectives. Context matters. If you’re an infrastructure engineer who invests heavily in a given cloud’s identity and access management model, multicloud looks tricky. Or if you’re a data engineer with petabytes of data homed in a particular cloud, multicloud may look unrealistic. James highlights that many developers default to multicloud because their local tools—where all the work happens—are multicloud. A developer’s IDE and preferred code framework(s) aren’t tied to any given cloud. Be aware that groups within your organization will come at multicloud from distinct directions. And this may impact your approach!
Don’t: Go it alone
Corey talks about the importance of asking others what worked, and what didn’t. Tammy offers her best practices around sharing results from experiments. It’s about sharing knowledge and tapping into it for community benefit. Others have probably tried what you’re trying, and can help you avoid common pitfalls. If you’ve just made an architectural choice that didn’t work out, share it, and help others avoid the pain.
Read research from analysts, go to conferences or watch videos to observe case studies, and join online communities that offer a safe place to share mistakes and learn from others.
Do: Experiment first using techniques like multi-region deployments
If you think you can operate systems across clouds, how about you first try doing it across regions in a specific cloud, suggests Corey. Getting a system to properly work across cloud regions isn’t trivial, he says, and that experience can help you uncover where you have architectural or operational constraints that will be even worse across cloud providers.
This is great guidance if your multicloud aspirations involve using multiple clouds to power one application—versus the more standard definition of multicloud where you use different clouds for different applications—but can also surface issues in your support process or toolchain that fail when faced with distributed systems. Start with muti-region deployments and chaos engineering experiments before aggressively jumping into multicloud architectures.
The Google Cloud take
Do the things above. It’s great advice. I’ll add three more things that we’ve learned from our customers.
- Don’t fear multicloud. You’re already doing it. You don’t single-source everything. As Corey mentioned, you probably already have one cloud for productivity tools, another for source code, another for cloud infrastructure. You’ll use software and application services from a mix of providers for a single app. You have that experience in your team and have been doing that for decades. What people do rightly worry about is using more than one infrastructure service beneath an application, as that can introduce latency, security, and logistical hurdles. Make sure you know which model your team is considering.
- Embrace the right foundational components, including Kubernetes. Will everything run on Kubernetes? Of course not. Don’t try to do that. But it also represents the closest thing we have to a multicloud API. Companies are using Kubernetes to stripe a consistent experience across clouds. And this isn’t just to orchestrate containers, but also to manage infrastructure and cloud-native services. Also, consider where you need other fundamental consistency across clouds, including areas like provisioning and identity federation.
- Use Google Cloud as your anchor. Here’s a fundamental question you have to decide for yourself: Are you going to bring your on-premises technology and practices to the cloud, or bring cloud technology and practices on-prem? We sincerely believe in the latter. Anchor to where you’re trying to get to. We offer Anthos as a way to build and run distributed Kubernetes fleets in Google Cloud and across clouds. By using a cloud-based backplane instead of an on-prem one, you’re offloading toil, leveraging managed services for scale and security, and introducing modern practices to the rest of your team.
We learned a lot about multicloud through these discussions, and it seems like others did too. That’s why we’re going to do a second round of interviews with a new crop of experts so that we can keep digging deeper into this topic. Stay tuned!
Google Announces New Cloud Region in Toronto
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For over a decade, we’ve been investing in Canada to become a go-to cloud partner for organizations across the country. Whether they’re in financial services, media and entertainment, retail, telecommunications or the public sector, a rapidly growing number of organizations located or operating in Canada are choosing Google Cloud to help them build applications better and faster, store data, and deliver awesome experiences to their users, all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. To support this growing customer base, we’re excited to announce that the new Google Cloud region in Toronto is now open.
As you’d expect, we’re thrilled about this news, but we aren’t the only ones that have been looking forward to this launch. We asked some of our customers operating in Canada for their take on the upcoming cloud region. Here’s what they had to say:
“Our alliance with Google is truly distinctive in the Canadian market as we are working together to co-innovate and create new services for key industries, including communications technology, healthcare, agriculture, security, and the connected home. The new cloud region in Toronto marks another key milestone that will propel TELUS’ digital leadership by further leveraging the scalability, reliability and cost effectiveness of Google Cloud to support improved customer experience and build stronger, healthier and more sustainable communities.”—Hesham Fahmy, Chief Development Officer, TELUS
“We’re simplifying, modernizing and digitizing Scotiabank to enhance the customer experience for our 25 million customers across the globe. By leveraging powerful cloud-based services including Google Cloud, we’re able to put the most advanced software engineering, data analytics and machine learning tools in the hands of our talented employees. We welcome Google Cloud’s investment in Toronto and look forward to the opportunities the Toronto Cloud Region will present to our Technology team.”
—Michael Zerbs, Group Head Technology & Operations, Scotiabank
“Cloud technologies—and the access to scalable compute, rich geospatial datasets and smart analytics tools—will be critical contributors to support climate action and sustainable policy decisions. At Natural Resources Canada, scientists and researchers are applying innovative digital solutions to support Canada’s natural resource sector. The new Google Cloud region in Toronto will provide our scientists, technologists and researchers with the products and services necessary to turn Earth data into actionable insights.”
—Vik Pant, PhD, Chief Scientist and Chief Science Advisor, Natural Resources Canada
“At Accenture, we bring together technology and human ingenuity to create and respond to change. We’re thrilled to join forces with Google Cloud and their newest region in Toronto with an important mutual goal: to accelerate cloud innovation in Canada. Our clients already know us for our deep industry intelligence, cloud-first expertise and market-renowned delivery. We’re now combining that with Google’s human-centric design to bring even more opportunities to our clients across all industries.”
—Jeffrey Russell, President of Accenture in Canada.
“We are thrilled to see Google’s commitment to Canada. We look forward to helping our joint customers transform their operations, leveraging Google Cloud’s latest data center in Toronto. At Deloitte, we believe cloud is THE opportunity to reimagine everything.”
—Terry Stuart, Deloitte Chief Digital Officer, Canada.
“As Canadian organizations increasingly leverage cloud to transform their businesses, we are excited about the new opportunities that the Toronto Google Cloud region brings to the market. We look forward to continuing our strong partnership with Google Cloud to bring customized and innovative solutions that help Canadian companies fully realize the value of cloud technology, so that they can compete and win on the global stage.”
—Andrew Caprara, Chief Operating Officer, Softchoice
Toronto joins 27 existing Google Cloud regions connected via our high-performance network, helping customers better serve their users and customers throughout the globe. In combination with our Montreal region, customers now benefit from improved business continuity planning with distributed, secure infrastructure needed to meet IT and business requirements for disaster recovery, while maintaining data sovereignty.
The new region launches with three zones, allowing organizations of all sizes and industries to distribute apps and storage to protect against service disruptions, and with our core portfolio of Google Cloud Platform products, including Compute Engine, App Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Bigtable, Spanner, and BigQuery.
We’re working to bring you new cloud products and capabilities in Canada, and our goal is to allow you to access those services quickly and easily—wherever you might be in the country. The past year has proved how important easy access to digital infrastructure, technical education, training and support are to helping businesses respond to the pandemic. We’re particularly proud of the teams who faced the unique challenges of building a cloud region during this time to help our customers and community accelerate their digital transformation.
To support all of our users, customers and government organizations in Canada, we’ll continue to invest in new infrastructure, engineering support and solutions. We’re currently hosting our first ever Google Cloud Accelerator Canada to bring the best of Google’s programs, products, people and technology to startups doing interesting work in the cloud. We’ve recently received Protected B accreditation with Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, which is crucial for healthcare, education, and regulated industries adopting cloud services. We’re also pleased to announce the preview of Assured Workloads for Canada—a capability which allows you to secure and configure sensitive workloads in accordance with your specific regulatory or policy requirements.
For help migrating to Google Cloud, please contact our local partners. For additional details on Google Cloud regions, please visit our locations page, where you’ll find updates on the availability of additional services and regions. You can always contact us to help you get started or access our many educational resources. We’re excited to see what you build next with Google Cloud.
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How does Google Pick its Data Center ?
Google is well known for its sustainable tech and hardware initiatives. Did you know alongside its environmental friendly designs of its data centers, it takes into account various factors such as redundant power supplies, data replication, network connectivity, etc. Watch the video to learn more.
How to Get Your Cloud Migration Journey Started Off on the Right Foot
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When moving to the cloud, many organizations concentrate their focus on the change in technology, and overlook an area just as complex: cultural change.
At Google, we’ve spent years nurturing our culture and workforce to best operate in the cloud, and the Google Cloud Professional Services team leverages the lessons we’ve learned for the benefit of enterprise customers embarking on their own cloud journeys.
While it can be tempting to believe in a universally ‘correct’ strategy for change management, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Every organization will have its own unique considerations. But with that said, there are some core strategies we’ve found to be relevant and useful across a broad range of businesses.
1. Define your purpose for moving to Cloud
While pockets of cloud use and experimentation can evolve independently and in parallel across an organization, it’s important to make some deliberate decisions before starting a larger migration. At this stage, we recommend having a detailed answer to two key questions to ensure a successful cloud migration:
- Where do you want to go? (Or “What’s your cloud vision?”)
- How do you plan to get there?
Start by having a conversation with leaders and those who will be key to the journey about how far you want to push your cloud vision. This alignment ensures everyone is on the same page—and will provide greater direction, allowing more deliberate action.
2. Find the change path which is right for you
Whether a ‘lift and shift’ approach to the cloud is right for you, or a more transformative approach with a lot of re-architecting—the most important thing is to find the flavor of change which is appropriate to your context and level of ambition.This will both shape your key migration activities, but also the level of impact to be managed within your organization.
There are many ways to embark on a change journey for cloud migration (which one can find in the chart below). It is important to deeply understand the needs of your business and its people and determine what strategy makes the most sense.
3. Learn from best practices
Based on the lessons we’ve learned along our own journey, and the work we’ve done with customers, there are a number of recommendations we can share that can make a cloud migration more successful. We go into these in more detail in our new whitepaper, but below you can find the ones we think are most relevant:
- Share the vision—and measure, measure, measure. Once you’ve crystallised your cloud vision with leadership and key stakeholders, share that vision widely. Set success goals and communicate them to hold yourself accountable.
- Be clear about the capabilities you will need in the future—and where you’ll get them. For example, if your vision is to become a cloud-first, data and AI-led organization, ensuring you have the right data science skills and machine learning capabilities in your organization to achieve that vision becomes a critical step—be they home-grown or bought-in.
- Find the right balance between capabilities that should be under central control, and capabilities that should be decentralized, or agile. For example, should machine learning be something that sits centrally, or should it be spread across your organization? For every business, the solution will be a little different, and there’s no “one true answer.” There’ll be lots of different opinions about this, so the sooner the conversation starts, the better.
- Start thinking about the needed tech and non-tech skills now, and how you’ll fill the gaps. Building the tech skills will take time, and not everyone will feel comfortable with the future picture of collaboration, innovation, and agility.
To help businesses navigate their own cloud journeys, Google Cloud Professional Services has released a new whitepaper that can help guide organizations. “Managing Change in the Cloud” is closely aligned with the Google Cloud Adoption Framework and is a practical guide for organizations looking to maintain momentum in their cloud adoption. You can download the whitepaper here.
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Everything COOs need to know to make an informed decision
about migrating and modernizing their businesses’ core
technology estate to the cloud.
Synopsys & Google Cloud: Helping Semiconductor Companies Drive Electronic Design Automation Innovation
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Google Cloud and Synopsys Inc are partnering to help semiconductor companies drive Electronic Design Automation (EDA) innovation in the cloud to accelerate time to market, and lower costs across the entire semiconductor product life cycle. Synopsys is the industry’s largest provider of EDA technology used in the design and verification of integrated circuits, or semiconductor chips. Bringing Synopsys technology onto Google Cloud enables customers to benefit from scalable cloud bursting and complementary licensing models to help them quickly deploy and scale Synopsys’ EDA tools. Semiconductor companies can significantly accelerate chip design and production, increase designer productivity, and empower innovation in power-performance-area optimization.
Google Cloud Platform has enabled high performance computing workloads, such as those used by today’s semiconductor chip designers, to deliver exceptionally fast results and reduce prototyping from years to months. Google Cloud’s HPC services have delivered highly scalable solutions across multiple industries – from scientific research to autonomous vehicle testing and simulation.
EDA software is a large consumer of high performance computing capacity in the cloud. With the release of Synopsys Cloud bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) solution on Google Cloud, chip designers can now scale their Google Cloud infrastructure with Synopsys’s leading EDA tools under the flexible FlexEDA pay-per-use model and access unlimited EDA software license availability on-demand by the hour or minute.
The Synopsys Cloud BYOC deployment architecture on Google Cloud is enabled through their unique cloud metering service which uses Google Cloud regional MIGs (Managed Instance Groups) for autoscaling and multi-zone deployment. This enables the service to scale up to meet customer workload demands and scale down to optimize costs. Secrets used by Synopsys Cloud are securely stored in Google Secret Manager and usage data is encrypted using Google Cloud key management, providing customers with a highly secure design environment.
Synopsys Cloud also leverages Google Cloud’s Ops Agent and Operations Suite Dashboards are used to show metric data, alerting policies, and log entries, providing customers with detailed analytics visibility to make better chip design project lifecycle management decisions. The Synopsys Cloud BYOC solution has been validated with EDA workloads scaling out to thousands of cores on Google Cloud, using Google Filestore network file storage during validation to provide the highest throughput performance.
Vikram Bhatia, Head, Synopsys Cloud Product Management, Synopsys said, “With the release of Synopsys Cloud BYOC solution on Google Cloud, we are transforming the way our mutual semiconductor customers can design the chips of the future. Google Cloud has been leading the innovation wave for semiconductors in the cloud and we are excited about being an early adopter in leveraging those innovations for our unique EDA offerings on the cloud.” Customers can evaluate a full featured Synopsys Cloud BYOC environment on Google Cloud for free by signing up at: synopsys.com/cloud.
“Combined with GCP’s unique platform services for AI, security, and shared storage, the Synopsys Cloud BYOC solution creates a compelling package for semiconductor designers who will create the next generation of chips for the world’s insatiable needs” says Simon Floyd, Industry Director, Manufacturing & Transportation, Google Cloud.
Google Cloud provides everything you need, including free Google Cloud credits to get you up and running. Click here to learn more about Semiconductors on Google Cloud.
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