Key Google Cloud Next ’17 announcements

The Google Cloud Next ’17 conference is wrapping up and it’s clear that it was a success. With over 10,000 people in attendance, which included a variety of customers, developers and engineers, many people in San Francisco were excited to see what Google has achieved.

For those of you who don’t know what Google Cloud is, it’s a Google’s cloud computing service that allows users to build software using Google’s core infrastructure, data analytics and machine learning.

Over 3 days of the Google Cloud Conference, there were more than 200 sessions and 4 invitation only summits. Not bad for their first show with Google Cloud with CGP, G Suite, Google Chrome, Google Maps and Education. These are the highlights.

There were plenty of announcements for Google Cloud, from company acquisitions down to Google Cloud security and pricing. Although Google Cloud can be accessed by software developers, cloud administrators and other IT professionals, many businesses are trying their hands at it, especially when it comes to the mobile apps.

Those who were worried about Google Cloud security needn’t be anymore, as there were a variety of announcements around the security of the cloud based platform. The introduction of the Key Management Service for the Google Cloud platform allows users to generate and destroy symmetric encryption keys for use in the cloud.

Google have also designed a security chip called Titan, which they use to establish hardware root of trust. That means that users of Google Cloud can securely identify and authenticate legitimate access at the hardware level. Titan also includes a hardware random number generation and has a dedicated on chip secure processor. Basically, it means that your hardware and software development will be safe because Titan is on it.

There are also new Google Cloud platform data analytics and services whose key aim is to help organisations solve business problems with data instead of spending time and resources on building, integrating and managing the underlying infrastructure. BigQuery Data Transfer Service sounds like it’ll be a game changer, with it making it easier than ever for users to get value from all of their Google-managed advertising datasets. It’ll import data from Google Adwords, Youtube Content and Channel owner reports as well as DoubleClick Campaign Manager.

Another database service that Google have announced for their cloud platform is Cloud Spanner which, despite coming out a month ago, definitely needs its own notable mention. Cloud Spanner is the first and only database service that is horizontally scalable. That means that it can scan to hundreds or thousands of servers so it can handle really high transactional workloads. Brilliant.

The machine learning services that the cloud platform additionally offer are impressive. There’s Cloud Video Intelligence API, which is the first of its kind. It lets developers easily search and discover video content by providing information about entities (such as nouns and verbs) inside video content.

There’s also another machine learning service called Cloud Jobs API, which is a powerful aid to job search and discovery. It has new features such as Commute Search, which will return relevant jobs to the person looking based on desired commute time and preferred mode of transport.

If you’re interested in looking at the whole list, you can find it here. There’s a lot of important features that Google have announced, but these ones are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Google and their capabilities as a cloud based development company.