Over the past few years, as the education sector was going through transformative change, EdTech startups rose to meet the demand of learners and help address some of the biggest challenges in education. At Google Cloud, we’re inspired by how EdTech startups continue to solve challenges with agility, innovative technology, and determination. We’re proud to help EdTechs make learning more personal, safe, and accessible, and we’re working to connect EdTech startups with the right people, products, and best practices that will help them grow

Announcing a new partnership with StartEd

Google Cloud is excited to announce a partnership to offer mentor-based programming for EdTechs with StartEd — an organization that accelerates education innovators addressing Early Childhood, K-12, HigherEd, Workforce, and Adult Learning. 

Founded by entrepreneurs nearly ten years ago, StartEd is on a mission to attract and develop a network of innovators working to ensure equitable, quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all. The company trains and connects thousands of diverse entrepreneurs, educators, and investors at for-profit and not-for-profit organizations each year, working alongside corporations, foundations, and higher education institutions across the United States. 

StartEd has helped grow more than 2,500 companies and built a mentor network of over 800 senior leaders with deep expertise in early-stage EdTech companies. The StartEd community now numbers more than 25,000 members. 

“I am thrilled to embark on this transformative partnership with Google Cloud,” said Ash Kaluarachchi, StartEd CEO and managing director. “This alliance not only amplifies our mission to empower and nurture the world’s education innovators at every point in their journey, but it also unlocks unprecedented potential for the entire EdTech ecosystem. Together, we’re poised to redefine the future of education and work and to create lasting, positive impact for generations to come.”

Mentoring and networking opportunities for EdTech startups

Through this partnership, U.S.-based EdTech startups can apply to a new program, StartEd sponsored by Google Cloud. The program offers startups access to personal coaching, hands-on training, business support, and a large network of industry experts to help them accelerate their growth and transform education. Beyond the benefits from StartEd, startups will gain access to cloud credits, technical support from Google Cloud, and coaching from Google’s education leadership.

Apply to StartEd, sponsored by Google Cloud, today.

Cloud engineers face a constant barrage of new cloud services, products, and innovations. By late 2021, Google Cloud alone had released thousands of new features across hundreds of services. Couple this with other technologies and service releases, and it quickly becomes a herculean task for engineers to navigate, consume, and stay current on the ever changing technology landscape. We have heard from engineers this often leads to anxiety and frustration as engineers struggle to keep up. They are faced with a plethora of training options but often lack the time and funding. 

Google Cloud has reinvigorated technical training to make it more informative and applicable to public sector customers and partners. We aim to maximize your training experience so you can get targeted training when you need it. The Google Cloud Public Sector Technical Learning Series addresses customer feedback and provides fun and practical training. Sessions are currently running every two weeks. 

“Short and sweet” technical topics geared to subjects you care about

Generic training doesn’t always resonate with public sector technologists. Our new curriculum targets specific public sector use cases, is delivered by customer engineers, and can be accomplished in less than two hours.  This means participants can apply the learnings directly to real-life challenges quickly. 

Easy to find, easy to enroll 

Training opportunities should always be at your fingertips. Our automated training platform will ensure that you only need to enroll once. The system will automatically notify you of upcoming sessions so you can plan in advance and at your convenience. Sessions will be offered on a recurring basis to meet the needs of your organization.

Fun and engaging

Typical training sessions often include a sea of glazed eyes, unresponsive to basic prompts, falling asleep at our desks, we have all been there. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Our goal is to infuse Google culture into our training through interactive exchanges and tangible rewards to keep participants inspired and engaged.

Traditional technology training doesn’t always help you navigate the nuts and bolts of how to effectively introduce a product into an organization. But we know that technology doesn’t operate in isolation; it supports and becomes part of a living organism, managed by humans and confined by other components of an organization’s structure (e.g. existing systems or decentralized business units). 

Part of a larger community of like-minded engineers

Learning with – and from – a community of peers is one way to overcome the challenges and complexities of applying new technology within a complex organization. We created the Public Sector Connect community for this very reason. It is one example of how we surface best practices for public sector innovators. During weekly “Coffee Hours” and working sessions, our community members share their journey and lessons learned with each other. We know that innovation evolves through iteration and diverse perspectives, and Public Sector Connect is committed to helping surface critical challenges and solutions, and connecting those who are solving similar problems. Join the community today.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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!

Getting started with your migration

One of the challenges with cloud migration is that you’re solving a puzzle with multiple pieces. In addition to a number of workloads you could migrate, you’re also solving for challenges you’re facing, the use cases driving you to migrate, and the benefits you’re looking to gain. Each organization’s puzzle will likely get solved in their own unique way, but thankfully there is plenty of guidance on how you can migrate common workloads in successful ways. 

In addition to working directly with our Rapid Assessment and Migration Program (RAMP), we also offer a plethora of self-service guides to help you succeed! Some of these guides, which we’ll cover below, are designed to help you identify the best ways to migrate, which include meeting common organizational goals like minimizing time and risk during your migration, identifying the most enterprise-grade infrastructure for your workloads, picking a cloud that aligns with your organization’s sustainability goals, and more: 

• Get started with this cloud migration guide and checklist
• Key considerations for building a migration factory to Google Cloud
• Understanding the cloud migration strategies at your disposal
• Understanding how to migrate key enterprise workloads to Google Cloud

Which workloads are you moving?

In addition to the guides above which help you through your end-to-end migration, it’s also important to understand the specific workloads you’ve got on-premises (or in other clouds). Each workload has their own unique nuances — what works for one might not work perfectly for another. This is where leveraging the expertise of our RAMP team is crucial, and why we have lots of migration guides for specific workloads and end-states. For each workload, we’re highlighting a few guides that we think could be most helpful, but you can also click each topic to learn more or find more guides. 

Microsoft

• Modernization path for .NET applications on Google Cloud
• Managed Service for Microsoft Active Directory is GA
• Migrating Microsoft workloads to Google Cloud yields results

VMware

• Migrate, scale, and innovate at speed
• Boost Retail Intelligence and Agility in the Cloud
• Retire your tech debt: Move vSphere 5.5+ to Google Cloud VMware Engine
• Financial Services Spotlight:  Elevating agility and security in the cloud

Oracle

• Curious about Google Cloud Bare Metal Solution? Start here
• Getting Started with Google Cloud’s Bare Metal Solution
• Guide – Bring new life to your databases with an Oracle migration

SAP

• SAP on Google Cloud: Migration strategies
• Run your SAP workloads on Google Cloud Bare Metal Solution
• eBook – Google Cloud for SAP: The enterprise cloud for business agility, insights, and innovation

Storage

• How to transfer your data to Google Cloud
• An Overview of the Transfer Appliance
• Migration to Google Cloud: Transferring your large datasets
• Transferring data from Amazon S3 to Cloud Storage using VPC Service Controls and Storage Transfer Service

Databases

• Overview of Database Migration Service
• Database migration: Concepts and principles (Part 1)
• Database migration: Concepts and principles (Part 2)
• Database cloud migrations made easy for PostgreSQL, MySQL

Data Warehouses

• Migrating data warehouses to BigQuery: Introduction and overview
• Oracle to BigQuery migration
• Amazon Redshift to BigQuery migration guide
• IBM Netezza to BigQuery migration guide
• Teradata to BigQuery migration guide

Take the next step

When it comes to migration, we’re committed to meet every organization where they are. We fully understand the nuances and challenges of cloud migration, and at Google Cloud we have one singular goal: to help you realize true business value through your cloud migrations. 

Visit our Migration Architecture Center to find even more guides to use during your migration, or if you’re looking to dive a little deeper into planning, sign up for a free discovery and assessment of your existing IT landscape.

Gone are the days when technology was relegated to the sidelines of a business, only considered essential for industries and professionals directly dealing with it. Today, it is not just a value-add, but an integral part of every enterprise’s operations and ultimately, its success. This has wrought many changes in the way we work, the most noteworthy of which is creating the necessity for every executive – not just the CIO & CTO – to familiarise themselves with the technologies of the future.

Among these is cloud computing, which is essential to doing business in the 21^st century. As the IT infrastructure needs of enterprises grow, and we inch closer to true mobility, it’s no surprise that cloud adoption is increasing by leaps and bounds. Unfortunately, too many C-suite executives dismiss cloud computing as being outside of their area of expertise. And while ignoring the technology aspect may have been possible for CEOs and CFOs in the past, it has now infiltrated every aspect of work, and arguably life itself. This makes it essential for executives across different functions and departments to familiarise themselves with at least the very basics of up-and-coming innovations.

One myth that has followed cloud computing is that it is a one-size-fits-all solution that businesses can merely install and use for storage. And while cookie-cutter solutions do exist, they end up doing more harm than good in the long term. To avoid this pitfall, it’s important for enterprises to understand the range of offerings at their disposal, and pick the one that most closely aligns with their needs.

Most people associate cloud deployment with subscribing to a third-party cloud service provider, which owns and manages all the resources that a firm might require. Known as the public cloud, this is the most popular option, especially for small and medium businesses that cannot bear the cost of IT infrastructure. Cost-effectiveness isn’t the only upside of this technology, though, since public clouds offer the added benefits of increased security, greater scalability, maximum uptime and ease of setting up.

Though the public cloud is the most widely used, it’s far from the only option that a business has. Enterprises seeking an added degree of customisation might find private cloud solutions to their liking. These offer an added layer of privacy, which may be mandated by the industry or jurisdiction that they operate in. Moreover, private clouds can allow access even in cases where geography or connectivity is unreliable. One of the factors that has held people back from switching to the private cloud has been the fact that they might need to buy and maintain the requisite infrastructure. In such cases, the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) lets businesses tap into resources stored on a public cloud, within an isolated environment, with more granular control over virtual networks.

A fourth solution, known as the hybrid cloud, also offers the best of two worlds by utilising resources that are on-prem as well as on the public cloud. It is ideal for companies that already have money invested in IT infrastructure, but still want to make the most of the emerging technology. It can also serve as a stepping stone for ventures that are looking to make the switch, but have their reservations about the public cloud.

Each of these offerings comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. The key lies in evaluating your needs against the options at your disposal, and making sure that the two align. Only then will you be able to reap all the rewards of cloud implementation.