Google Cloud Next ’21: 10 Sessions You Won’t Want to Miss
The countdown for Google Cloud Next '21 has well and truly begun and I can’t believe it has almost been a year since the last mega event.
However, most of us don't have time in our day to watch 3 days of google announcements, so with that in mind I’ve spent some time looking to see what might be of interest beyond the keynotes. These topics have been chosen to save you time browsing the ever dazzling array of content.
Rather than selecting a wide range of topics I have decided to focus on four key areas: Security, AI, Databases and of course Kubernetes, so you can jump right into those.
In this blog, you’ll find a handy list of sections with links for you to watch all these sessions. Hope you enjoy and see you at Google Cloud Next ‘21!
What Will I Get Out Of Google Cloud Next ‘21?
A lot. It allows you to get an insight to what area of IT I need to focus on and enables you to plan out your Google Cloud learning journey for 2022. It also uncovers some hidden gems like managed service for Prometheus which I was unaware of until I started this blog!
What Is The Hot Topic Of Google Cloud Next ‘21
Without a shadow of a doubt everything points to Vertex AI and it will be for some years to come. Every organisation wants to do more with their data and Google has just made this much easier for startups to large enterprises to achieve this in a super scalable product.
What Not to Miss at Google Cloud Next ‘21
TLDR Here is my Playlist - you can jump right in and enjoy my hand-picked Session list. (10 sessions)
Security
1. Live Q&A: Security
This is a great opportunity to ask Google security experts questions and listen to your peers have their questions answered. These sessions are a fantastic place to see what other organisations are doing and get an insight into other industries' security requirements. I love a good Q&A session and the expert panel lined up will not disappoint. Sri Subramanian, the group product manager, will be one of the panelists. This talk is definitely worth a watch!
2. Ransomware and cyber resilience
Ransomware and cyber resilience has been a hot topic with CTO and security experts over the last few years. It will be very interesting to see Google's take on how they are going to manage ransomware currently and in the future. With speakers Vicente Diaz–Security Engineer Google Cloud and Jerome McFarland–Solutions Manager Google Cloud, this is literally number 2 on my list.
Kubernetes
3. Kubernetes, hybrid, and multi cloud learning path
Connecting your onprem infrastructure to Google and other cloud vendors is a challenge on the best of days. This session will give you an insight from core infrastructure, architecting with Google Kubernetes Engine, securing workloads and architecting hybrid cloud infrastructure with Anthos. In turn, this will give freedom to run your workload anywhere, onprem and in any public cloud.
4. Applying Kubernetes app development best practices
It is always good to see how the inventors of Kubernetes apply app development best practices. Learning better ways to deploy applications will probably make your app more secure and just might save you some money, which is always a plus!
Observability (AKA Managed Prometheus)
5. Introducing our new managed service for Prometheus
I didn’t realise now that Google has already released a managed service for Prometheus and I was very happy to hear this, as our customers are implementing Prometheus into their environments to increase their observability. This will be a great opportunity to see Google’s take on how this can be used within GCP and onprem, as well as the other exporters that they support and their roadmap. This would most certainly reduce TOIL for DevOps Teams.
Vertex AI
Google Vertex AI products are game-changing in my opinion. The entry point for organisations into AI used to be quite high, but Google has made it easier and more efficient to start on your AI / MLOPS journey, put a framework in place and simplify the process. Google has simply smashed it out of the park with Vertex AI. I can't wait to see what announcements they make and what they are planning to do in the future. If you are new to the AI world, Google is definitely the place to kick start this journey as they are the masters of this domain.
I'm excited to see what's new in the machine learning and AI learning path as well as build an AutoML forecasting model with Vertex AI. Here are the sessions all about Vertex AI that I'm most looking forward to! These sessions should cover pretty much everything there is to know when it comes to this awesome product:
6. Machine learning and AI learning path
7. Build an AutoML forecasting model with Vertex AI
8. Data Science with Vertex AI
9. Build an interactive machine learning application with Looker and Vertex AI
BigQuery
10. What's new with BigQuery?
This is a great chance to learn about the latest innovations with BigQuery, including capabilities for built-in machine learning, log, administration, migration, and scalability.
You can also learn about the latest product road map enhancements to support your organisation’s data platform strategy and understand why customers choose BigQuery over market alternatives.
Conclusion
If you know me, - you’d know I love a good conference and it would be great to head off to Las Vegas or California for a week in the sun, but due to Covid that is not possible (at least for me at the moment).
Google has many events during the year such as Google IO and other regional meetups, but Google Cloud Next is more than just new product announcements. Google Cloud Next ‘21 is a learning journey that you can customise to suit your needs and wants, allowing you to nerd up on the tech that you love and uncover what you will be working on in 2022 and beyond!
If you have any questions or comments please contact Contino or myself over on Linkedin:
