At Precognitive, we were able to start with a blank technology slate to support our fraud detection software products. When we started building the initial version of our platform in 2017, we had some decisions to make: What coding language to use? What cloud infrastructure provider to choose? What database to use? The majority of the decisions were straightforward, but we struggled to decide upon a database. We had plenty of collective experience with relational databases, but not with a wide-column database like Cloud Bigtable—which we knew we’d need to scale our behavior and device workloads. At launch, our products were supported by a self-managed database, but we quickly migrated to Cloud Bigtable, and we love it.  

To efficiently support our bursty, real-time fraud detection workloads, we needed a cloud database that could satisfy the following key requirements:

• Stability to keep up with increased adoption of our products
• Intelligent scaling that avoids bottlenecks
• Native integrations with BigQuery and Cloud Dataproc
• Managed services that free up our engineers’ time to work on our products

Adding Cloud Bigtable as our performance database

As we scaled our services and added customers, our data collection services for our Device Intelligence and Behavioral Analytics products were seeing thousands of events per second. Cloud Bigtable provided a stable managed database that could handle the volume we were receiving during peak hours. We weren’t always able to handle this scale, as an early version of our product utilized a self-managed database.

Every month, two or three engineers spent hours managing the database instances. Whenever the instances crashed, it would cost at least one engineer a day or two of productivity attempting to restore the instances and recovering any data from our backup database. Managing this database internally was taking precious time away from product development.

We circled back to Cloud Bigtable. After two weeks of R&D, we decided to switch the Device Intelligence and Behavioral Analytics services to Cloud Bigtable.

Cloud Bigtable solved our scaling issues. Cloud Bigtable had been attractive to us from the start because it was fully managed, and offered regional replication and other features we were lacking in our own managed instances. Cloud Bigtable provides horizontal scaling and automatically rebalances row keys (equivalent to a shard key) over time to prevent “hot” nodes. In addition, Cloud Bigtable provides a connector to BigQuery and Cloud Dataproc that allows us to analyze the terabytes of data we are processing and use that data for unsupervised machine learning.

The perks of using Cloud Bigtable

After the migration to Cloud Bigtable, we noticed a number of additional benefits: improved I/O performance, a significant cost reduction, and a sizable decrease in hours spent on database maintenance.

We measured some of our typical metrics before and after implementing Cloud Bigtable. Our request latency dropped by about 30 ms on average (to sub-10 ms) for API requests. Prior to the change, we were seeing latencies of 40+ ms on average. This latency drop on our Behavioral Analytics and Device Intelligence products allowed us to trim about an additional 10 to 15 ms off our average response time across all dependent services.

Before we moved to Cloud Bigtable, we had to scale our database instances every time a new customer was onboarded. We were over-scaling in an attempt to avoid constantly resizing our database servers. By sunsetting our self-managed database and switching to Cloud Bigtable, we cut database infrastructure costs by approximately 35% and can now scale as needed, with a couple of clicks, during onboarding.

We have spent zero hours managing a Cloud Bigtable database since launch, and we put the time we are saving every month toward product development.

Moving forward with Cloud Bigtable

As an engineering team, we love working with Cloud Bigtable. We are not only seeing improved developer experience and reduced latency, which keeps the engineers happy, but also reduced costs, which keeps the business happy. We’re able to build more product, too, with the time we’ve saved by switching to Cloud Bigtable. Stay tuned to our engineering blog for more on the lessons we’ve learned and our contributions to the wider Cloud Bigtable community.

Want to know the latest from Google Cloud? Find it here in one handy location. Check back regularly for our newest updates, announcements, resources, events, learning opportunities, and more. 

Tip: Not sure where to find what you’re looking for on the Google Cloud blog? Start here: Google Cloud blog 101: Full list of topics, links, and resources.

Week of May 24-May 28 2021

• Google Cloud for financial services: driving your transformation cloud journey–As we welcome the industry to our Financial Services Summit, we’re sharing more on how Google Cloud accelerates a financial organization’s digital transformation through app and infrastructure modernization, data democratization, people connections, and trusted transactions. Read more or watch the summit on demand.
• Introducing Datashare solution for financial services–We announced the general availability of Datashare for financial services, a new Google Cloud solution that brings together the entire capital markets ecosystem—data publishers and data consumers—to exchange market data securely and easily. Read more.
• Announcing Datastream in Preview–Datastream, a serverless change data capture (CDC) and replication service, allows enterprises to synchronize data across heterogeneous databases, storage systems, and applications reliably and with minimal latency to support real-time analytics, database replication, and event-driven architectures. Read more.
• Introducing Dataplex: An intelligent data fabric for analytics at scale–Dataplex provides a way to centrally manage, monitor, and govern your data across data lakes, data warehouses and data marts, and make this data securely accessible to a variety of analytics and data science tools. Read more. 
• Announcing Dataflow Prime–Available in Preview in Q3 2021, Dataflow Prime is a new platform based on a serverless, no-ops, auto-tuning architecture built to bring unparalleled resource utilization and radical operational simplicity to big data processing. Dataflow Prime builds on Dataflow and brings new user benefits with innovations in resource utilization and distributed diagnostics. The new capabilities in Dataflow significantly reduce the time spent on infrastructure sizing and tuning tasks, as well as time spent diagnosing data freshness problems. Read more.
• Secure and scalable sharing for data and analytics with Analytics Hub–With Analytics Hub, available in Preview in Q3, organizations get a rich data ecosystem by publishing and subscribing to analytics-ready datasets; control and monitoring over how their data is being used; a self-service way to access valuable and trusted data assets; and an easy way to monetize their data assets without the overhead of building and managing the infrastructure. Read more.
• Cloud Spanner trims entry cost by 90%–Coming soon to Preview, granular instance sizing in Spanner lets organizations run workloads at as low as 1/10th the cost of regular instances, equating to approximately $65/month. Read more.
• Cloud Bigtable lifts SLA and adds new security features for regulated industries–Bigtable instances with a multi-cluster routing policy across 3 or more regions are now covered by a 99.999% monthly uptime percentage under the new SLA. In addition, new Data Access audit logs can help determine whether sensitive customer information has been accessed in the event of a security incident, and if so, when, and by whom. Read more.
• Build a no-code journaling app–In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, Google Cloud’s no-code application development platform, AppSheet, demonstrates how you can build a journaling app complete with titles, time stamps, mood entries, and more. Learn how with this blog and video here.
• New features in Security Command Center—On May 24th, Security Command Center Premium launched the general availability of granular access controls at project- and folder-level and Center for Internet Security (CIS) 1.1 benchmarks for Google Cloud Platform Foundation. These new capabilities enable organizations to improve their security posture and efficiently manage risk for their Google Cloud environment. Learn more.
• Simplified API operations with AI–Google Cloud’s API management platform Apigee applies Google’s industry leading ML and AI to your API metadata. Understand how it works with anomaly detection here.
• This week: Data Cloud and Financial Services Summits–Our Google Cloud Summit series begins this week with the Data Cloud Summit on Wednesday May 26 (Global). At this half-day event, you’ll learn how leading companies like PayPal, Workday, Equifax, and many others are driving competitive differentiation using Google Cloud technologies to build their data clouds and transform data into value that drives innovation. The following day, Thursday May 27 (Global & EMEA) at the Financial Services Summit, discover how Google Cloud is helping financial institutions such as PayPal, Global Payments, HSBC, Credit Suisse, AXA Switzerland and more unlock new possibilities and accelerate business through innovation. Read more and explore the entire summit series.
• Announcing the Google for Games Developer Summit 2021 on July 12th-13th–With a surge of new gamers and an increase in time spent playing games in the last year, it’s more important than ever for game developers to delight and engage players. To help developers with this opportunity, the games teams at Google are back to announce the return of the Google for Games Developer Summit 2021 on July 12th-13th. Hear from experts across Google about new game solutions they’re building to make it easier for you to continue creating great games, connecting with players and scaling your business. Registration is free and open to all game developers. Register for the free online event at g.co/gamedevsummit to get more details in the coming weeks. We can’t wait to share our latest innovations with the developer community. Learn more.

Every year at CES, people from around the world experience the latest and greatest that consumer tech has to offer. In 2021, CES will be in an all-digital format for the first time.

So how can a virtual show like CES create immersive experiences for attendees tuning in remotely? That’s an interesting challenge for the cloud, and of course, every challenge presents an opportunity.

Google Cloud and 5G help enterprises deliver new experiences

Earlier in 2020, we announced our enterprise telecommunications strategy to deliver workloads to the network edge on Google Cloud, and during our SearchOn event last October, we announced how cloud streaming technology can power augmented reality (AR) in consumer search results.

Now, we’re merging the best of both worlds: Technology built for consumer search can take advantage of our enterprise edge capabilities. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, this past year accelerated our support for enhanced consumer experiences across the board in novel ways. For example, we attempted to address questions such as how potential buyers can make a purchasing decision when they can’t see the product up close. This question becomes even more critical when considering a large purchase such as a new car.

That’s exactly what Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and Google Cloud are working together to solve. As part of FCA’s Virtual Showroom CES event, you can experience the new innovative 2021 Jeep Wrangler 4xe by scanning a QR code with your phone. You can then see an Augmented Reality (AR) model of the Wrangler right in front of you—conveniently in your own driveway or in any open space. Check out what the car looks like from any angle, in different colors, and even step inside to see the interior with incredible details.

“As we continue our journey towards becoming a customer-centric mobility company, FCA is adopting emerging technologies that enable us to accelerate and deliver at the speed of our customers’ expectations,” said Mamatha Chamarthi, Chief Information Officer, FCA – North America and Asia Pacific. “Through our collaborative partnership with Google, we are able to expand our efforts to provide an immersive customer experience.”

Harnessing the power of edge with 5G

In order to create a mixed-reality experience with a 3D car model, computer-aided design (CAD)-based data sources that represent a 3D vehicle with highly detailed geometry, depth, texture, and lighting were used. High-fidelity models, such as cars with full interiors, often mean large files (GBs in size). Traditionally, depending on your connection, this can result in long waiting times as assets are downloaded onto your phone. In addition, while mobile phones are more powerful than the Apollo Guidance Computer, they are no match for the power we have in the cloud. We still want to bring these high end experiences to everyone, regardless of their respective device or geographical location.

We solve this problem by rendering the model in Google Cloud, then streaming it to the devices.

Specifically, the Cloud AR tech uses a combination of edge computing and AR technology to offload the computing power needed to display large 3D files, rendered by Unreal Engine, and stream them down to AR-enabled devices using Google’s Scene Viewer. Using powerful rendering servers with gaming console grade GPUs, memory, and processors located geographically near the user, we’re able to deliver a powerful but low friction, low latency experience. This rendering hardware allows us to load models with tens of millions of triangles and textures up to 4k, allowing the content we serve to be orders of magnitude larger than what’s served on mobile devices (i.e., on-device rendered assets). Doing so leverages high-speed 5G connectivity and streams directly from Google Cloud’s distributed edge, delivering a rich, photorealist immersive experience. Customers like FCA benefit from Google’s years of investment and expertise in streaming technology (have you tried playing Cyberpunk2077 on Stadia yet?). With the expansion of 5G networks, not only will streaming enable the experience for anyone anywhere, but it will also cut the wait time of downloading large assets required for detailed AR/VR experiences, ultimately providing instant gratification.

Applications and experiences are at the core of a winning edge proposition

We’re working to make these capabilities available to all enterprise customers to enable innovative use cases such as leveraging AR to help design teams collaborate, technicians perform machine diagnostics, creating next-generation, live video experiences for sports events, enabling new customer experiences across many industries, and supporting our customers in their digital transformation. Stay tuned!

To see the Jeep Wrangler 4xe come to life whether you’re attending CES or not, scan the QR code below, or check out the FCA CES website. Depending on your OS, device, and network strength, you will see either a photorealistic, cloud-streamed AR model or an on-device 3D car model, both of which can then be placed in your physical environment.

Today we’re hosting our Retail & Consumer Goods Summit, a digital event dedicated to helping leading retailers and brands digitally transform their business. For me, this is a personally exciting moment, as I see tremendous opportunities for those companies that choose to focus on their customers and leverage technology to elevate experiences.

Our event includes breakout sessions to help retailers and brands become customer centric, embrace the digital moment and transform their operations. Some of my favorite sessions include: 

• Why Search Abandonment is the metric that matters, highlighting Retail Search, and featuring a conversation with Macy’s
• Driving Consumer Closeness in a Privacy-Centric World, discussing how retailers and brands can create a successful first party data strategy, featuring a conversation with P&G
• The Modern Store: 7 Innovation Hotspots, sharing how retailers and brands can approach store transformation to unlock the most value from technology, featuring a conversation with The Home Depot.   

I’ll be speaking in our Retail Spotlight session, discussing the current retail landscape and our industry approach, followed by conversations with Albert Bertilsson, Head of Engineering – Edge at IKEA Retail (Indga Group) and Neelima Sharma, Senior Vice President, Technology Ecommerce, Marketing and Merchandising at Lowe’s. 

Let me share a bit more about the topics we’ll discuss in that session.

In retail specifically, digital-first shopping journeys are blurring the lines between the physical and digital brand experience. Shoppers want to know what’s available before they visit your stores, and they expect fulfillment options like curbside pickup. We see this when tracking trends for interest in curbside pickup or in-stock items.

This has left many retailers asking how they can get smarter with their data, tackle the $300 billion dollar problem of “search abandonment,” move faster to create new customer experiences, and do a better job of connecting their employees and customers – with confidence.

Our team has been spending time thinking about how we can rise and succeed in this new era together. We continue to focus on areas where we can bring the best of our capabilities to our retail customers around the world. And we’re focused on ways we can bring the best of what Google has to offer through cloud integrations.

Our goal is to help retailers become customer-centric and data-driven, capture digital and omni-channel revenue growth, create the modern store and drive operational improvement.

Let’s dig into each of these strategic pillars in a bit more detail. 

Become customer centric and data driven

Customers today expect experiences that are timely, targeted, and tailored for them and their needs, and reject experiences that can’t deliver these features. Data modeling, legacy technology, and siloed systems often prevent retailers from providing that level of personalized experience. 

At Google Cloud, we work with global retailers and our ecosystem partners to activate and bring value from first-party data, particularly in the field of customer data platforms (CDPs). This includes integrations from Google Cloud, such as our business intelligence platform Looker and other popular platforms to power one source of customer data through the organization. We also help retailers modernize their data warehouse with Looker for gathering business intelligence across their organization. This is important not just for consumer data, but inventory, supply chain, and store operations as well. 

Capture Digital and Omnichannel Growth 

We power some of the largest e-commerce sites in the world, helping them scale for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and other holiday events. While scale is critically important, it’s also important to consider the quality of the online experience. How do your customers find products? How can you help deliver seamless online and omnichannel experiences? 

To help, we’re building product discovery solutions that bring together the best of our technologies that help retailers drive engagement with their consumers. Retail Search, for example, gives retailers the ability to provide Google-quality search on their own digital properties – search that is customizable for their unique business needs and built upon Google’s advanced understanding of user intent & context. 

The imperative is clear. Recent research found that retailers lose more than $300 billion to search abandonment — when purchase intent is not converted into a sale due to bad search results — every year in the US alone. 

Today, we announced that Retail Search is available to a larger set of retailers. If you are interested in learning more about Retail Search you can contact your sales representative for additional details.

Create the modern store  

With the rise of buying trends like curbside pickup and proximity-based search, our Google Maps Platform team is working on new products and features to help raise inventory awareness for your shoppers. We want to help you make it easier for them to understand what’s available to purchase in their channel of choice.

With Product Locator, each product page connects customers with information they need for local pickup and delivery options. This ensures customers are aware of pickup and delivery options throughout the buying journey—not just checkout. 

Awareness of local inventory can boost a wide range of key metrics for your business. Shopify recently shared that shoppers who opt for local pickup over delivery had a +13% higher conversion rate and that 45% of local pickup customers make an additional purchase upon arrival.

This is just one quick example of how our Google Maps Platform team can improve experiences for your shoppers.

Operational improvement

It can be challenging to operate in a world and at a time when consumer behavior and supply chains are so disrupted and volatile, and where entire retail teams had to go remote during the pandemic and beyond. 

We’re working with retailers to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to improve consumer experience through chat bots or conversational commerce that solves problems for customers from anywhere. You can learn more about these offerings in our Conversational Commerce with Google breakout session, featuring Albertsons.

As the need for digital transformation continues to accelerate, Google Cloud is helping retailers stay ahead of the curve with solutions for digital and omnichannel growth, data-driven and customer-focused experiences, and operational improvement. For every era of cloud technologies, from the past into the future, Google Cloud is committed to providing solutions to retailers.

Read more about our solutions for retail, and check out additional sessions, including the CPG Industry Spotlight Session How To Grow Brands in Times of Rapid Change – Featuring L’Oréal at our Retail & Consumer Goods Summit.