5 Key Takeaways from Google Cloud Next '17 Keynote Session

Technology helps in diminishing physical boundaries and watching Google Cloud Next 2017 keynote session on my TV through YouTube was a great example to prove this theory.

Cloud has been at the top of CxO's priority list and technology events such as AWS's re:Invent and Microsoft's Build 2016 re-emphasized Cloud's perseverance. Google's Cloud Next 2017 continues the trend and here are key takeaways from Google Cloud Next's Keynote on Day 1:

#1 - G-Suite adoption by key industry players in quick time
Google highlighted the adoption of G-Suite (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar) by business powerhouses such as Colgate-Palmolive and Verizon and very excited to point that with good planning, it can be achieved in the timeframe of 3-6 months. 

"Google challenges old notions and showcases that it is possible to move large-scale infrastructure in months as against multi-year approaches."

A quick Google Search reveals that Colgate & Verizon has migrated 28K users & 150K users respectively in months. Read more by clicking here.

G-Suite Solution

#2 - Cloud is an incredible & cool place where everybody wants to go

Google highlighted their Cloud capabilities with examples such as Customer Planet Labs, which takes picture of Earth every 3 hours and stores in Google Cloud.

With increased security, 99.999% up-time, scalability, faster time-to-market, competitive pricing and flexibility, Google Cloud is a promising future and will be putting itself in elite category very soon.

#3 - Future is Fast Data, Analytics, AI, Deep & Machine Learning

EBay ShopBot, which uses AI, deep learning (beyond machine learning), computer vision and natural language understanding to create a great technical differentiator.

Fei-Fei Li (Chief Scientist at Google Cloud AI) talked about many such experiences (such as the scale of thousands of people having their own self-driving cars, using AI to improve the quality of human life). 

Demo of Cloud Vision API was awesome, which extends capabilities from image to video analysis using video intelligence API. 

#4 - Key industry players put faith in Google Cloud
Google invited their esteemed clients to talk about their experience with Google and their passion was contagious.

• EBay - R.J. Pitman talked about Google Home example (along with live demo) as integration with EBay product catalog to find information about products using voice-commands. 
• HSBC - Darryl W (Global CIO) shared their Cloud & Cloud-scale data analytics (over 100 PB of data with large computing needs to do simulations) and their plan to movement towards GCP.
• Disney - Mike W. (CTO) talked about their Cloud-first approach with 500 projects in Cloud involving Image Recognition, Personalization, etc,
• SAP - Talked about SAP HANA (in-memory product), which is now available on GCP. SAP Cloud Platform (uses Cloud Foundry) chose GCP over other vendors considering scalability support & containerization.
• Verizon - Alan D. (VP) talked about G-Suite usage for the 150K workforce.
• Colgate-Palmolive - Mike C. (CIO) talked about using G-Suite for collaboration & workspace productivity.
• Home Depot - Paul G (SVP) talked about moving from on-premises to Cloud along particularly data analytics environment.

#5 - Better uses of money...Eric Schmidt
And, finally Eric S. pointed out that Google put $30B in infrastructure and we should not try to replicate the same and use the money to better use. In his own words:

"We put thirty billion dollars - and I know because I approved it. So it's real, right, into this platform. Please do not attempt to duplicate it.You have better uses of your money. - Eric S."

To conclude, an exciting time ahead in Cloud marketplace with Google launching differentiating GCP capabilities in competition with Amazon's AWS and Microsoft's Azure. Google's cloud roadmap looks very promising and its brand in terms of scalability, reliability, and availability makes Google Cloud Platform a very compelling option. Personally, I believe Google's offering in Big Data, Machine Learning, and AI-related services seems to be their core competence in a highly competitive Cloud marketplace.