True to its goal of democratizing technology, Google once again held the most important cloud technology event of the year from August 29-31 in San Francisco, California. Google Next’ 2023, an event that brought together more than 20,000 attendees from around the world to showcase, learn and share about the latest developments in Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Analytics, among other innovations.
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The Amarello team was invited and took part in this very special edition, the first to return to the in-person format after the event was adapted to meet the health guidelines required during the pandemic season.
The Google Next’ story
Google Next’ is an event focused on cloud technology held annually and based in San Francisco, California, a city with a great impact on the history of technology for several reasons:
First of all, it is home to Silicon Valley, a region that houses some of the most important and representative technology companies in the world, such as: Apple, Facebook, Tesla, X (Twitter), and of course Google, whose headquarters are located in Mountain View, California. These companies have revolutionized the way we live, forever changing the way we work, relate to others and even how we have fun.
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Second, San Francisco is a center of innovation and entrepreneurship. The city has a high concentration of universities, start-ups and venture capital, which creates a perfect environment for innovation.
Finally, San Francisco is an attractive place to travel, live and work, the city boasts a temperate climate, a vibrant culture, and a unique lifestyle, as well as attractive sites such as the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island and more. This attracts thousands of tourists from around the world, producing a diverse and inclusive environment.
As a result of these reasons, San Francisco was chosen as the ideal venue to host Google Cloud Next, which aims to democratize access to cloud technology and break down barriers to innovation by sharing knowledge, innovations and the latest Google cloud technologies.
The first edition of the event was held in 2016, so we can refer to it as a relatively new and young event, in addition to having 3 years of interruption in the face-to-face format, adapting to the virtual modality, given the health requirements derived from the pandemic, despite which it has managed to become the most important cloud technology event.
An event for everyone
This success can be attributed to its conception and focus, since it seeks to democratize cloud technology, the event is designed to appeal to everyone involved, from developers and companies to end users, offering a unique opportunity to learn about the latest developments in the cloud and how to take advantage of them, in addition to providing a space for networking and other amenities.
This year’s conference served as a great showcase to introduce new products and services, such as the new version of Google Cloud Platform, which offers a wider range of features and capabilities, as well as to offer sessions and workshops on hot topics, such as AI, ML, and Cybersecurity.
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In addition to taking advantage of the space to recognize the contributions of Google’s partners in driving the development of its customers on their path to digital transformation and cloud adoption, through the Partners Awards.
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Throughout the event important announcements were made about the future of the cloud and the innovations that we will soon be able to enjoy in the Google Cloud environment, here we leave you a summary with the highlights and as a small spoiler AI was the main star.
AI-optimized infrastructure
Infrastructure plays a crucial role, currently more than 70% of AI “unicorns” are Google Cloud customers. Aware of this, during Google Cloud Next’ 23 key advances in infrastructure and tools for generative AI were presented, which were designed to help customers train and put into production larger, more complex and efficient generative AI models, at a faster pace and with better performance, among them stand out:
- Cloud TPU v5e, a next-generation AI accelerator that delivers up to 180 pétaFLOPS performance, enabling large-scale AI training.
- A3 VMs with NVIDIA H100 GPUs, delivering up to 800 teraFLOPS of generative AI performance, designed for today’s most demanding generative AI innovations and LLM language models.
- GKE Enterprise, which enables horizontal multicluster scaling for more demanding AI/ML workloads, as well as for performing critical operations.
- Cross-Cloud Network, a global network platform that helps customers connect applications across clouds and secure them.
- Google Distributed Cloud, Google’s distributed cloud, designed to enable organizations to run generative AI workloads at the edge of the network or in their data centers.
Vertex AI: the AI platform that helps you create cutting-edge models and applications
Vertex AI is a comprehensive artificial intelligence model development and deployment platform that helps companies build, deploy and scale machine learning models quickly and easily.
Offering a wide range of functions and tools to help customers generate customized models, as well as applications, search and customized conversations with proprietary data. It also allows the integration of extensions to obtain real-time information from organizations.
These are the updates announced during the Google Next’ 23 conference:
- PaLM 2 upgrades to 32K contextual windows, so that companies can process long documents more easily.
- A new visual aspect for Imagen.
- Expansion of the number of programming languages supported by Codey.
- New models, including Llama 2, Code Llama from Meta, Falcon LLM from Technology Innovative Institute and Claude 2 from Anthropic.
- The introduction of fine-tuning functions for PaLM 2 and Codey, which help to improve LLM performance with only 100 examples.
- Grounding: will provide more accurate answers.
- A new method of image fine tuning, called Style Tuning.
- Digital watermark: Google DeepMind SynthID will take care of putting it into pixel image, so it will be visible to the human eye and easy to manipulate. Thus, AI-aided visual media generation will be easier to identify and more accountable.
- Colab Enterprise: designs AI workflows with Vertex AI and BigQuery capabilities, as well as allowing collaborators to generate programming code.
These updates make Vertex AI even more powerful and easier to use, enabling companies to harness the power of AI to solve increasingly complex challenges.
Duet AI: increase productivity of Workspace and Google Cloud
Announced at the Google I/O 2023 event, as a user assistance tool to increase productivity and efficiency, with useful new features such as: code and chat assistance, it also made its presence felt during Google Cloud Next’ 23 announcing specific improvements:
In Workspace, Duet AI offers a number of features to enhance written content, presentations, spreadsheets and video calls. For example, Duet AI can help users to:
- Correct spelling and grammar errors in Gmail and Docs.
- Create more attractive presentations with design suggestions.
- Convert data into numbers with Google Sheets.
At Meet, Duet AI can help you with:
- Meet video call summaries.
- Subtitle translation in 18 languages.
- Improvements to the appearance, lighting and sound of the studio.
In Google Cloud, Duet AI offers a number of features to help professionals code, troubleshoot and improve cybersecurity. Helping with tasks such as:
- Encode with greater speed and efficiency.
- Troubleshoot application and infrastructure problems more easily.
- Identify and correct security vulnerabilities.
- Information analysis.
- Advanced assistance throughout the entire software development cycle.
- Code refactoring assistance
- Queries using natural language.
- Acceleration and modernization of databases.
Analysis and unification of data through AI
A function that relies on the innovation of different capabilities and programs in the cloud, including:
- BigQuery Studio: Interface that enables teams to perform data engineering and predictive analytics tasks.
- AlloyDB AI: Being part of AlloyDB, which is compatible with PostgreSQL, makes it easy for developers to create GenAI apps, in addition to providing compatibility with AWS, Azure, Google Distributed Cloud platforms and of course Google Cloud.
- New Data Cloud partners: Confluent, DataRobot, Dataiku, Datastax, Elastic, MongoDB, Neo4j, Redis, SingleStore, Starburst, Acxiom, Bloomberg, TransUnion, ZoomInfo and many others.
AI the ultimate guardian
Cybersecurity is a fundamental pillar in cloud innovations, and among the new products and integrations to improve cloud cybersecurity announced during Google Cloud Next’23, the bet on AI is reinforced highlighting:
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Security AI Workbench, an industry-first software that uses next-generation LLM and Sec-PaLM 2 to deliver exceptional cybersecurity results. Security AI Workbench enables security teams to automate tasks, identify emerging threats and respond to incidents faster.
Chronicle CyberShield, this solution helps governments increase their level of national protection and offers a number of optimizations, such as Mandiant Hunt for Chronicle, a service that integrates Mandiant’s state-of-the-art knowledge of cybercriminal behavior with Chronicle Security Operations’ ability to rapidly search and analyze security data.
Other cybersecurity improvements
In addition to these announcements, Google Cloud also introduced a number of enhancements to its existing cybersecurity products. These enhancements include:
- Agentless vulnerability scanning: Security Command Center will detect vulnerabilities on client computers without the need to install additional software.
- Advances in network security: Cloud Firewall Plus offers additional protection against various threats and NGFW capabilities courtesy of Palo Alto Networks. Network Service Integration Manager facilitates the integration of trusted third-party NGFW virtual appliances.
- Workloads secured in Japan’s regions: the eastern country will enjoy controlled environments and options for local administration of encryption keys and transparency of administrative access.
Demonstrating with these announcements the level of commitment to data and customer cybersecurity, providing a more secure and friendly environment thanks to the strategic integration of AI.
Beyond the known, the ecosystem expands!
Generative AI is a booming technology that has the potential to revolutionize the way businesses work and continues to experience accelerated growth.
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At Google Cloud Nex’ 23, a number of partnerships and launches were unveiled that will expand the generative AI ecosystem and help enterprises harness its power.
Key partnerships
Google Cloud announced partnerships with several leading technology companies, including Box, Canva, Salesforce and UKG. These partnerships will enable companies to use generative AI for a broader range of use cases, such as creative content creation, task automation and improving customer experience.
Key launches
Google Cloud also announced several key generative AI releases, including:
- DocuSign Workspace AI, which uses generative AI to simplify, summarize and explain complex document information.
- SAP + Google Cloud AI for Industry, which combines SAP data with Google Cloud’s generative AI to help companies solve complex problems.
- Workday AI for Financials and HR, which uses generative AI to create high-quality job descriptions and improve the employee experience.
Customer training
Google Cloud also announced a training initiative to help customers leverage Generative AI, with the help of international consulting firms of the caliber of Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte and Wipro plans to train more than 150,000 Google Cloud Generative AI experts.
Amarello at Google Cloud Next’ 23
In the midst of all these new and exciting launches, Amarello was recognized at the Partners Awards, obtaining the distinction 2023 Google Cloud Services Partner of the Year, doubly recognized for the region of Mexico and Colombia.
And right now you may be asking yourself, what does this mean, and why is this important to my company? As mentioned above, the Partners Awards recognize the significant impact and success we drive for our customers. In Amarello’s particular case, it recognizes exceptional commitment to providing unparalleled service that exceeds expectations.
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Which in simple terms translates into expert support through experienced and trained partners so you can explore the Google Cloud ecosystem to the fullest, efficiently implementing the essential tools for your business or organization. We have over 15 years of experience, our success is the success of our customers.
We are here to provide you with the advice and support necessary for your company to take full advantage of cloud technologies, and reach its full potential in a fast, efficient and friendly way, our experts are part of the most important cloud technology events and your company can also be part of them, so now you know, if you are looking for a strategic ally to make the most of cloud technology, contact us!
