Modern applications need to process large-scale data at millisecond latency to provide experiences like instant gaming leaderboards, fast analysis of streaming data from millions of IoT sensors, or real-time threat detection of malicious websites. In-memory datastores are a critical component to deliver the scale, performance, and availability required by these modern applications. 

Memorystore makes it easy for developers building applications on Google Cloud to leverage the speed and powerful capabilities of the most loved in-memory store: Redis. Memorystore for Redis standard tier instances are a popular choice for applications requiring a highly available Redis instance. Standard tier provides a failover replica across zones for redundancy and provides fast failover with a 99.9% SLA. However, in some cases, your applications will require more read throughput from a standard tier instance. One of the common patterns customers use to scale read queries in Redis is leveraging read replicas.

Introducing Memorystore for Redis Read Replicas

Today we are excited to announce the public preview of Memorystore for Redis Read Replicas, which allows you to seamlessly scale your application’s read requests by 6X with the click of a button.

With read replicas, you can easily add up to five replicas and leverage the read endpoint to automatically load balance read queries across all the available replicas, increasing read performance linearly with each replica added. Additionally, Memorystore’s support for Redis 6 introduced multi-thread I/O, increasing performance significantly for M3 and higher configurations. Combined, you can achieve read requests of more than a million requests per second. 

You will benefit from this new functionality in several ways. You will be able to scale on demand with up to five read replicas and use read endpoint with any redis client to easily load balance read queries across multiple replicas. This new functionality will also improve availability with automatic distribution of replicas across multiple zones. With read replicas, you will also be able to minimize application downtime with fast failover to the replica with the least replication lag. In the future, Memorystore will also easily enable read replicas on existing standard tier instances to increase read throughput. 

You can learn more about how to configure and use read replicas in the Read Replicas Overview. 

Improving performance with Read Replicas and Redis 6

With the launch of read replicas, you can easily increase the read throughput of a Memorystore instance. You can further enhance the read performance by leveraging Redis version 6 along with read replicas.

To understand why combining read replicas and Redis 6 can significantly improve your application’s read performance, let’s look at the various Memorystore configurations that you can use with your applications today. Memorystore Basic and Standard offerings  provide different capacity tiers. The capacity tier determines the single node performance of a basic and standard tier instance. 

The table below outlines the configuration of the various capacity tiers:

Up until version 5, Redis processed commands using a single thread. The processing involved reading the request, parsing the request, processing the request, and writing the response back to the socket. This approach means that all of the processing, which includes writing the response, was sequentially processed by a single vCPU regardless of the number of vCPUs available in the instance.

Redis 6 introduced I\O threading which allows writing the response using parallel threads. This functionality enables Redis 6 to more effectively leverage available vCPUs, thereby increasing the overall throughput compared to lower versions. Memorystore for Redis version 6 leverages I\O threading and automatically configures the optimal number of I\O threads to achieve the best possible performance for the various capacity tiers. We have also improved the overall network throughput for all redis versions by leveraging improvements in the Google Cloud infrastructure. Together these improvements deliver significant performance improvements and come at no additional cost to you. 

So what can you expect from using Redis 6? As outlined in the table, Redis version 5 and lower uses a single thread to process the write requests for all tiers while Redis 6 uses a larger number of I\O threads at higher capacity tiers which provides substantially incremental throughput for higher capacity tiers.

For example, using a Redis 6 standard tier instance with a capacity of 101 GB (M5), we have observed up to a 200% improvement in read/write performance compared to version 5, though the actual value you’ll see is dependent on your workload. You can get the benefits of Redis 6 by upgrading an existing instance or by deploying a new instance.

By enabling read replicas on an instance using Redis 6, you can further improve the read performance. Read throughput scales linearly with the number of replicas so you can increase your read queries on an instance by up to 500% using five read replicas. By combining Redis 6 and read replicas, you can see a 10X increase in read performance compared to a version 5 standard tier instance with no read replicas.

We are excited about the launch of read replicas but this is just one step in our journey to deliver the scale you need at the best price-performance. You can learn more about read replicas pricing on our Memorystore pricing page and get started using the Read Replicas Overview.

The financial services industry is changing—an estimated $68 trillion in wealth transferring from baby boomers to millennials.¹ This means financial service providers will have to deliver the speed, ease-of-use, technological sophistication, and tailored services that millennials have come to expect. In fact, half of all millennials are willing to switch to a competing institution if it offers a better digital experience.² This and many other trends are driving unprecedented growth for mobile Fintech experiences in banking, digital payments, financial management and insurance.³

Google Maps Platform financial services solutions

To help you respond to customer’s changing demands, we’re launching financial services solutions that can help you improve your customer experience, security and operations. We’ve outlined the technical guidance and APIs you need to build out three financial services solutions: Enriched Transactions, Quick and Verified Sign-up, and Branch and ATM Locator Plus. We’ve also highlighted two use cases that customers are using our APIs to solve: Contextual Experiences and Fraud Detection. 

Clarify financial statements with Enriched Transactions solution

Transaction statements are often hard for customers to understand, using abbreviations like “ACMEHCORP” instead of customer-facing names like “Acme Houseware”. Our Enriched Transactions solution clarifies these transactions and makes them instantly recognizable by adding the merchant name and business category, a photo of the storefront, its location on a map, and full contact info. Making transactions easier to recognize not only boosts consumer confidence, with reported increases in NPS of 15% or higher, but decreases costly support calls by approximately 67%.⁴

In addition, you can help customers easily visualize a series of transactions by adding the merchant name to the transaction amount and date, and displaying their transactions on a Google map. This enables you to give customers insights about where and how they spend money. See the guide to implement Enriched Transactions today.

Enable faster sign-up with Quick and Verified Sign-up solution

Manually entered addresses can lead to lowered conversions, erroneous customer data, and costly delivery mistakes. Our Quick and Verified Sign-up solution makes sign-up faster, suggesting nearby addresses with just a few thumb taps—cutting sign-up time by up to 64% and increasing conversion rates by up to 15%.⁵  

The solution also provides one additional level of address verification that helps reduce the risk of fraudulent account sign-ups—and companies have decreased fraudulent account setups by approximately 30% through using geospatial data to verify customer identities.⁴  See the Quick and Verified Sign-up solution guide to get started today.

• Faster sign-ups 1An application form requires an address
• Faster sign-ups 2Autocomplete quickly suggests addresses
• Faster sign-ups 3Select the address with visual confirmation
• Faster sign-ups 4Address verification options are presented
• Faster sign-ups 5Location permission is granted by the user
• Faster sign-ups 6The address is verified

Help customers visit you with Branch and ATM Locator Plus solution

74% of customers now search for specific details prior to their visit, which makes detailed, accurate profiles for each location a must.⁵ Our Branch and ATM Locator Plus solution enhances your own websites and apps with the same information shown about your branches and ATMs on Google Maps. Include hours of operation, available services, user reviews, photos of the location, driving directions and more.

Financial services companies using geospatial data to provide additional information (e.g. opening hours, available services, etc.) on branch and ATM services have seen a 14% increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS), and a 7% decrease in customer support calls.⁴  Implement Branch and ATM Locator Plus today using the guide or build it in minutes with Quick Builder.

• ATM locator 1Customers can enable location permissions, or enter their address
• ATM locator 2Quickly enter the address with Autocomplete
• ATM locator 3Nearby location listings, ranked by distance and ETA
• ATM locator 4Map view and directions

Enable offers and rewards with Contextual Experiences                    

Real-time, geo-targeted offers can power deals, rewards, and cash-back programs—all visualized with rich Google Maps. By combining the insights of purchase histories with customer opt-in to location-based features, companies can implement the Contextual Experiences use case to enable personalized offers and rewards programs that drive engagement with brands while putting money in customers’ pockets at the same time.This is a win for banks and their customers, validated by encouraging metrics like NPS rating boosts of 8% or higher, and an increase of 8% or more time spent in-app.⁴  Learn how Current uses Google Maps Platform to create innovative customer rewards programs with location intelligence.

Detect suspicious transactions with Fraud Detection

With the Fraud Detection use case, companies can use customer opted-in mobile device location to flag suspicious activity based on geographic distance, such as an ATM withdrawal that is far from the customer’s phone. Our APIs can also help companies recognize suspicious transaction patterns such as a purchase made at a location that is physically distant from a recent transaction. 

Financial services companies that use geospatial data to verify customers’ identities have reduced fraudulent transactions by approximately 70%, and false positives in fraud detection by 45%, on average.⁴  Learn how Starling Bank uses Google Maps Platform to enable real-time notification of transactions and their locations, and enhance data-driven decision-making.

Start elevating customer experiences, reducing risk and increasing efficiency today with our financial services offerings. Visit our financial services solutions page to learn more about how to start implementing these solutions.

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website.

In a perfect cloud world, you would host all your applications in containers running on Kubernetes and Istio, benefitting from the portability and improved resource utilization of containers, plus a robust orchestration platform with advanced application management, networking, and security functionality. This is easy to do if you’re developing a new application, but it can be hard for existing applications to take advantage of those capabilities.

Many of the applications that you may want to move to the cloud have been around a long time, and you may not have the application-specific knowledge that would be required to rewrite them to be more cloud-native—or it would be incredibly time-consuming to do so.

Another option is to lift-and-shift to a virtual machine (VM) hosting platform like Compute Engine, but that means you still need to maintain the VMs. Even if you’re not able to fully modernize an existing app, it would still be great to get some of the benefits of containers and Kubernetes.

What is Migrate for Anthos?

Enter Migrate for Anthos, a fast and easy way to modernize your existing applications with a service that encapsulates them in a container. Moving your physical servers or existing VMs into Kubernetes containers gives you crucial portability and resource utilization benefits without having to rewrite the underlying application.

Since Migrate for Anthos is built for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), you also automatically capture the scaling and flexibility benefits of a managed Kubernetes environment in the cloud. Migrate for Anthos recently became generally available.

Converting an application with Migrate for Anthos happens in two phases. First, it creates a generic container wrapper around your application that makes it seem like it is still running in a full VM environment. Then, you launch Migrate for Anthos software on your Kubernetes cluster that runs the containerized application.

You can find more details about this in the documentation and in our blog post: Migrating from Compute Engine to Kubernetes Engine with Migrate for Anthos.

As the name suggests, Migrate for Anthos works with Anthos GKE. However, you can also use Migrate for Anthos with only GKE—all it requires is your application and a GKE cluster running the Migrate for Anthos software. 

Getting started with Migrate for Anthos

Migrate for Anthos works with a variety of workloads, but not all. It’s particularly adept at migrating legacy applications, stand-alone applications, and monolithic applications. As you start the modernization process, here are some questions to ask to determine whether to use Migrate for Anthos with your applications:

1. Should this app be in the cloud?
By its nature, the cloud may not be able to support some characteristics of your on-prem environment, such as geography and legal compliance. The best way to find out whether the cloud will work for each of your applications is to plan out a full migration. That will allow you to identify groups of applications that can benefit from cloud offerings such as a global network and ease of resizing resources. After that, try out a proof of concept by testing the apps in the cloud to see if it fits your business needs.

2. Should this app be in Kubernetes?
Containerizing an application simplifies workload administration, improves scalability (both up and down), and increases host utilization. Kubernetes orchestrates the containers and GKE handles node upgrades, while add-ons like Istio let you manage network and security policies independently of your application.

With those advantages, it’s easy to think that containers are always the right way to go, but there are some cases where it may make sense to stick with VMs. Strict hardware requirements, specialized kernel modules, and license constraints may be harder to run with containers, negating their advantages.

3. Should this app migration use Migrate for Anthos?
Migrating your apps or workloads to the cloud isn’t just about shifting where the compute resources run; it’s also an opportunity to modernize them with containers. Using Migrate for Anthos (or Migrate for Compute Engine) gives you the ability to get your workloads in the cloud quickly, with minimal upfront downtime that’s easy to plan for. 

However, even if you use the Migrate for Anthos wrapper, your application is still the same application. The benefits of the modern platform may not outweigh a legacy application and a rewrite may be the only way to meet your business needs. There are also some specific services from your VM that may not work with Migrate for Anthos, for example licensing requirements.

Migrate for Anthos can also be the first step in a larger migration effort. Once you’ve migrated the application to GKE, you can gradually break up a monolithic app into microservices by manually rewriting parts. Spreading out the migration effort gets you in the cloud sooner, giving you more time to modernize.

Next steps

A successful modernization starts with creating a full migration plan, testing the workloads, and monitoring them. You can experience the benefits of modernization with Migrate for Anthos by picking a small workload and trying it out for yourself!