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Tag: Google Cloud

  • GitLab Allies With Google to Improve Developer Productivity

    GitLab Allies With Google to Improve Developer Productivity

    GitLab Inc., in collaboration with Google, today launched an open source Cloud Seed tool that makes it simpler for DevOps teams to consume Google Cloud Platform (GCP) resources.

    The Cloud Seed tool, announced at the virtual Google Cloud Next ’22 conference, is integrated within the GitLab web UI to make it simpler for developers to consume Google cloud resources—such as Cloud Run for building and deploying containerized applications—and the managed Cloud SQL database service.

    Nima Badiey, global vice president of alliances for GitLab, said the goal is to reduce friction that would otherwise be created by requiring developers to write code to consume these services using a set of lower-level application programming interfaces (APIs).

    That self-service approach not only improves productivity but provides the added benefit of reducing the odds those services might be misconfigured in a way that creates a cybersecurity vulnerability, he added.

    As it seeks to gain ground on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft, Google has a vested interest in working with providers of DevOps platforms to make it simpler for developers to consume cloud resources. The challenge is that developers often make mistakes when they programmatically invoke cloud services. Those resulting misconfigurations are all too often not discovered and remediated until after there has been some type of cybersecurity incident.

    In the wake of a series of high-profile breaches of software supply chains, there is a lot more focus on security. The challenge, of course, is finding a way to ensure application development platforms are as secure as possible without slowing down the rate at which software is developed and deployed. Achieving that goal requires the right mix of policies, training and systems, said Badiey.

    Most organizations are trying to strike a balance between the need for greater security and their need to attract and retain developer talent. In theory, the rise of DevSecOps best practices is pushing more responsibility for security further left toward developers. However, most developers have little to no cybersecurity expertise, so it’s clear more guardrails need to be built into DevOps tools and platforms to prevent cybersecurity mistakes from being made.

    It’s not clear how much improved developer productivity and greater security will drive organizations toward one cloud platform versus another, but in an age where many more organizations now routinely employ two or more cloud platforms, it could make a significant difference. Developers don’t especially enjoy remediating applications after they are deployed in a production environment because they have generally already moved on to other projects. IT operations and cybersecurity professionals are also likely to nudge developers toward platforms that create the least amount of operational overhead for them.

    Regardless, one thing that is certain is compliance requirements are about to become stricter for all concerned as scrutiny of software supply chains intensifies in the months ahead. The issue now is how to proactively address those requirements before they become a much larger issue.

  • Linux 6.0 is Faster, Cooler | Debian Goes Proprietary | Google Africa Region

    Linux 6.0 is Faster, Cooler | Debian Goes Proprietary | Google Africa Region

    Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

    This week: Linux 6.0 promoted to Stable, Debian 12 will include closed-source binaries, and Google Cloud opens its first Africa region. (more…)

  • Red Hat CEO: Out | Blind Users: Revolt | ARM: Google Joins Party

    Red Hat CEO: Out | Blind Users: Revolt | ARM: Google Joins Party

    Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

    This week: Matt Hicks is the new Red Hat CEO, visual accessibility is in focus, and Google Cloud rolls out ARM instances. (more…)

  • CyberGRX and Google Cloud Collaborate to Enhance Cloud Customers’ Third-Party Risk Management and Accelerate Digitization

    Google Cloud to satisfy risk and procurement needs across wide customer base and deliver a more efficient onboarding process

    Denver, CO, June 07, 2022 – CyberGRX, provider of the world’s first and largest global cyber risk exchange, today announced a joint collaboration with Google Cloud to enable Google Cloud customers’ and prospects’ risk management and regulatory compliance needs. Google Cloud customers can leverage CyberGRX’s third-party validated cyber risk assessment to gain in-depth access to Google Cloud’s risk profile, which details compliance with industry standards and security protocols built into its infrastructure.

    As more organizations undergo digital transformation initiatives and migrate to the cloud, business critical workloads are entrusted to cloud service providers such as Google Cloud. In an effort to help customers and prospects better understand and manage the risks associated with outsourcing business critical workloads, Google Cloud is collaborating with CyberGRX to provide transparency into its security posture and support customers on their third-party cyber risk management journeys. As a result, current or prospective customers of Google Cloud can easily request and immediately access validated risk profiles of Google Cloud on the CyberGRX Exchange. This will be the fourth consecutive year of CyberGRX performing independent validation of Google Cloud Services.

    “Our collaboration with CyberGRX is yet another way Google Cloud demonstrates its commitment to be the industry’s most trusted cloud provider,” said Rani Urbas, Global Head of Enterprise Trust at Google Cloud.  “CyberGRX’s platform provides an effective and flexible solution for helping organizations meet their due diligence, risk management, and regulatory compliance needs.”

    The CyberGRX platform produces standardized and actionable data that goes well beyond the results of traditional security assessments. CyberGRX takes into account inherent risk, industry-specific threat intelligence, real-world attack scenarios. This gives Google Cloud customers an ability to validate Google’s posture with outside-in evidence in order to generate results that are focused on risk, as opposed to simple compliance.  Both customers and third parties, such as cloud providers, benefit from the CyberGRX Exchange model. CyberGRX eases the assessment burden placed on third parties, as well as provides comprehensive cyber risk data to both customers and their third parties.

    “Historically, organizations have approached third-party risk management with outdated methods that include static spreadsheets and bespoke assessments. While waiting for assessments that may never be returned, companies are still vulnerable. And, even when these assessments are collected, the data is not standardized, meaning that little can be done with it from an analysis perspective,” said Fred Kneip, CEO, CyberGRX. “Through our collaboration with Google Cloud, we are able to propel organizations away from risk assessment chasing to gaining immediate insight into diverse analytics and cyber risk data that can be mapped against common and customized frameworks.”

    To learn more about CyberGRX, please visit https://www.cybergrx.com/

    About Google Cloud

    Google Cloud accelerates every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

    About CyberGRX

    CyberGRX standardizes vendor risk management, making it possible to achieve insights, prioritize risks and make smarter decisions across your third-party ecosystem. Driven by sophisticated data analytics and automation, real-world attack scenarios, and real-time threat intelligence, CyberGRX provides customers complete and ongoing analysis of their vendor portfolio. Third parties can understand and regain control of their cyber risk by proactively utilizing the CyberGRX Exchange to complete and share a single assessment with multiple upstream partners. Based in Denver, CO, CyberGRX was designed with partners including Aetna, Blackstone and MassMutual. For more information: https://www.cybergrx.com/

  • Citrix® and Google Cloud Simplify Shift to Flexible Work

    New Citrix DaaS solutions available on Google Cloud Marketplace deliver cost and time-savings in making transition from procurement to deployment.

    Fort Lauderdale, FL, May 4, 2022 — Last year, Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS) and Google Cloud announced their commitment to helping customers accelerate and embrace hybrid work models through Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solutions. And they’re delivering on it. The companies today announced that two new Citrix DaaS solutions are available for purchase in the Google Cloud Marketplace, making it easier than ever for organizations with Citrix VDI solutions to transition to Citrix DaaS on Google Cloud.

    And the timing couldn’t be better.

    “Organizations are rapidly moving to adopt hybrid work, and IT needs a way to get there that’s efficient, cost-effective, secure, and flexible,” said Carisa Stringer, Vice President of Product Marketing, Citrix.

    Simplifying Procurement

    Google Cloud Marketplace makes it easy for companies to quickly purchase and deploy market-leading digital workspace solutions designed to enable secure remote work, including Citrix DaaS solutions purpose-built for Google Cloud:

    • Citrix DaaS Standard for Google Cloud – Designed for organizations or departments that are newer to DaaS or VDI and need an affordable, yet comprehensive hybrid work solution to deliver virtual apps and desktops quickly, easily and securely.
    • Citrix DaaS Premium for Google Cloud – Ideal for organizations with existing VDI investments that need to modernize their deployments, Premium edition provides IT admins with rapid migration and provisioning tools, streamlined management of Google Cloud and/or on-premises resources, advanced security capabilities and exceptional monitoring and cloud optimizations.

    Citrix DaaS spend purchased through Google Cloud Marketplace counts towards a customer’s Google Cloud commitment and is included in their Google Cloud invoice, simplifying the transaction to just one bill.

    Enabling the Future of Work

    Citrix Systems Integrator and Google Cloud partner Wipro is looking forward to using the solutions to help advance the future of work.

    “Wipro is very excited and keen to position the DaaS solution from Citrix and Google Cloud by deploying a true hybrid cloud solution for hybrid work,” said Seshu Venkata, General Manager and Global Head of Wipro VirtuaDesk, Cloud and Infrastructures services.

    Speeding to the Cloud

    In addition to these new offerings and simplified transaction process, Citrix and Google Cloud are continuing to develop tools and resources to make it easier than ever for customers to transition from on-premises VDI deployments to DaaS with Google Cloud, including:

    • Image Portability Service for Google Cloud – Automates the deployment of a master image from an existing on-premises PVS/MCS-provisioned Citrix environment, targeting a Citrix DaaS resource location hosted within Google Cloud to reduce re-work when moving to the cloud, as well as burst-to-cloud capabilities for capacity management, improved disaster recovery and business continuity plans, and streamlined image management.

    “Transitioning to the cloud is a top priority for IT, and it takes a lot of careful planning and considerations,” Stringer said. “Together with Google, we are committed to providing solutions and resources that simplify and speed the process and deliver results.”

    Citrix and Google Cloud have been helping organizations make work more accessible, flexible and secure for more than a decade. Click here to learn more about their partnership and the value they can deliver for your organization.

    About Citrix

    Citrix (NASDAQ: CTXS) builds the secure, unified digital workspace technology that helps organizations unlock human potential and deliver a consistent workspace experience wherever work needs to get done. With Citrix, users get a seamless work experience and IT has a unified platform to secure, manage, and monitor diverse technologies in complex cloud environments.

    For Citrix Investors:

    This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with the impact of the global economy and uncertainty in the IT spending environment, revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products and services, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company’s key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein. The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and is subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.

    © 2022 Citrix Systems, Inc. Citrix, the Citrix logo, and other marks appearing herein are the property of Citrix Systems, Inc. and may be registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

  • Nvidia/ARM Wavering | Google Outage Outrage | Backblaze IPO on Fire

    Nvidia/ARM Wavering | Google Outage Outrage | Backblaze IPO on Fire

    Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

    Nvidia Can’t be Allowed to Buy Arm

    First up this week: Nvidia’s faltering attempt to buy Arm: Regulators around the world are alarmed by the idea. And now the UK—the legal home of the company—has taken the next step, which could nix the deal.

    Analysis: RISCy home for ARM

    This matters because ownership of the ARM ISA and the core designs would be a huge strategic stick to beat Nvidia’s competition with. Arm doesn’t make chips—it licenses technology to Nvidia and many of its competitors—AMD, Apple, Broadcom, Samsung and Qualcomm, to name but five. So this deal really shouldn’t go through, regardless of Nvidia’s fluffy PR reassurances.

    ARM chips aren’t just found in 99% of smartphones, but are an increasing fixture in the datacenter—especially where “performance per Watt” is important. They’re even found in exascale iron, including the Riken Fugaku, the world’s fastest supercomputer.

    Helen Thomas: Nvidia faces tough Arm wrestle

    It is one thing for a regulator to give your deal a thorough going-over. It is another for it to imply publicly that your assurances [aren’t] credible. … Nvidia got both from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority. … The CMA’s full phase 1 report doesn’t make for easy reading.
    …
    The transaction, which was announced in September 2020, is bogged down in regulatory reviews around the world: … Arm’s “neutral” business model has always made it a difficult acquisition. … Arm licenses its designs to other chipmakers, providing scope to restrict rivals’ access.
    …
    Arm was a political talking point in 2016, when its sale to SoftBank … was waved through with embarrassing ease. There is now a much more muscular political take on UK national security concerns with a particular focus on tech.


    But if it’s owned by a Japanese company, why is the UK getting involved? Glad you asked—Aighearach answers:

    What did they buy? Shares of a UK company. … Then it is a UK company! … Buying shares is buying ownership, but it doesn’t move the company to another jurisdiction.
    …
    This blathering about “sold to a Japanese firm” is getting old.


    Nvidia claims, “The transaction will … boost competition and innovation.” Falmari finds that hilarious:

    Did Nvidia’s spokesperson previously work as a stand-up comedian? Because as jokes go, “boost competition” is a whopper. [Do you think] that’s what a company like Nvidia wants—to boost the competition?

    Google Cloud Outage has Ripple Effect

    Google’s load balancers all went offline for two hours on Tuesday. Aside from the knock-on Google Cloud failures, DevOps tools such as BigCommerce, Datadog, Deno, Discord, Egnyte, Evernote, Linear, Netlify and Toggl were reported to be affected. But perhaps the worst impact was felt by the poor, unfortunate users of Pokémon GO.

    Analysis: Paralysis

    In theory, putting all your eggs in one basket is okay—so long as that basket can reliably stop your eggs smashing on the pavement. But this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Google Cloud issues such as this; I can’t imagine it’s the last.

    Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Google glitch triggers major internet outage

    The result? Many of us have seen 404 errors when trying to get to some of our favorite web pages. … There appears to be more major sites having problems than not.
    …
    The specific problem seems to be with the GCP load balancers. These, working with Google’s Cloud Delivery Network (CDN) [are] designed to stop website failures and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks by putting your website behind a single anycast IP.


    Are you feeling a touch of déjà vu? jeffbee, too:

    This is a sort of repetitive outage for Google. They’ve wiped out the GSLB configs before.

    A year ago there was also that big outage where they blanked out the whole Gmail delivery config and started rejecting all mail. … Config safety is not their strong suit.


    The #3 IaaS provider won’t get to #2 if it keeps this up. Here’s u/totopapa:

    I’m trying to convince my company to switch from AWS to GCP but an outage like this one is definitely a showstopper.

    Backblaze IPO Burns Brightly

    Backblaze is now NAS:BLZE. In its first week, the stock jumped 60%.

    Backblaze is well known for its tiny-margin consumer backup product and its open-source “storage pod” hardware—but is less well known for its DevOps-focused “B2” cloud storage service.

    Analysis: Can it Avoid Death-by-Packrats?

    Backblaze is trying to grow this newer DevOps business, without losing its classic consumer chops. But many of its former competitors have essentially dumped their “unlimited” offerings—it’s the old tragedy-of-the-commons problem.

    Jordan Novet: Backblaze [goes] public on small valuation and minimal funding

    In an era of blockbuster market debuts preceded by astronomical private financing rounds, Backblaze … a cloud service for backing up data … is a throwback to a time when sub-billion-dollar companies routinely went public to raise capital and build their profile … to win the trust of customers.
    …
    Backblaze shares climbed 24% in their debut on Thursday and another 12% on Friday, lifting the price to $22.31 and giving the company a market cap of around $650 million. … By the standards of its peers, Backblaze is a micro-cap.
    …
    One of Backblaze’s competitors is Amazon, the world’s fourth most valuable U.S. company. … Backblaze currently stores two exabytes of data — that’s 2 million terabytes — and has a half-million paying customers.


    Donovan Jones: Backblaze Targets $100 Million IPO

    The firm provides cloud-based storage services to small businesses and individuals worldwide. BLZE has grown revenue and gross profit impressively through the 2020 pandemic period and the IPO appears fairly valued, so is worth a close look.
    …
    The firm’s financials show strong revenue and gross profit growth. … The firm’s dollar-based net revenue retention rate for 2020 was 114%—a solid result. … The market opportunity for providing cloud-based storage services to small businesses and individuals is large and expected to grow at a material rate. … As for valuation, compared to partial competitor Dropbox, management is seeking the same Enterprise Value/Revenue multiple. [However] the combined revenue growth rate and EBITDA percentage rate … was 3% as of June 30, 2021, so the firm needs improvement in this regard.


    But there’s a long way to go, opines John Kozubik (aka rsync):

    Of the ~500,000 customers, 70,000 are B2 customers and 430,000 are “backup” customers—which are flat-rate “unlimited” users. … Roughly 85% of the user-base are paying $7/mo for “unlimited backup.”
    …
    These flat-rate users are very fickle and price-sensitive. … Roughly 85% of the user-base are paying $7/mo for “unlimited backup.” … It’s a fools errand to pursue this market and I assume the pivot to B2 was to build something more sustainable with a much higher price and usage ceiling.

    The Moral of the Story: Success is a journey, not a destination


    You have been reading The Long View by Richi Jennings. You can contact him at @RiCHi or tlv@richi.uk.

    Image: Kristin Wilson (via Unsplash)

  • Broadcom and Google Cloud Collaborate to Accelerate Digital Transformation for the Enterprise

    SAN JOSE and SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 13, 2021 – Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) and Google Cloud today announced a strategic collaboration to accelerate innovation and strengthen cloud services integration within the core software franchises of Broadcom. Under this partnership, Broadcom will deliver its suite of security and enterprise operations software on Google Cloud, enabling businesses to deploy Broadcom solutions in security, DevOps and more on Google Cloud’s trusted, global infrastructure.

    Google Cloud has been a key partner in accelerating Broadcom’s growth strategy. Broadcom has successfully migrated Symantec Web Security Service (WSS) and Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) onto Google Cloud, and will soon complete the migration of its other cloud cyber security solutions. Broadcom has also modernized the security stack and standardized service delivery processes and offerings on Google Cloud infrastructure, which enables Broadcom to scale and operate more efficiently to better serve enterprise customers.

    Other benefits of migrating Broadcom software onto Google Cloud include:

    • ●  Accelerated development of new, transformational cloud-native services
    • ●  Reduced latency for service-to-service communications
    • ●  Increased scale and improved resiliency
    • ●  Strengthened infrastructure compliance certifications
    • ●  Reduced reliance on congested public internet routes

    Additionally, Google’s data cloud will support Broadcom’s business-wide data and analytics strategy, helping transform the way the company uses data to make better business decisions and support its customers. Broadcom will deploy multiple services internally onto Google’s data cloud, including Dataproc, Cloud SQL, and Bigtable, helping modernize its infrastructure and analytics capabilities to deliver a more secure, reliable and scalable data platform in support of its customers.

    “Leveraging Google Cloud enables Broadcom Software to scale and innovate faster to meet the growing needs of digital businesses globally,” said Tom Krause, President, Broadcom Software Group. “This collaboration is fundamental to delivering secure access to cloud applications and providing enterprises with increased performance, continuous compliance, and enhanced security that empowers an organization’s cloud adoption journey.”

    “Companies around the world turn to software and services from Broadcom to run their businesses securely and to power their digital transformations,” said Rob Enslin, President at Google Cloud. “We are proud to be Broadcom’s cloud partner as it expands the global availability of these critical security and operations services and to support Broadcom’s own digital transformation.”

    About Broadcom

    Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) is a global technology leader that designs, develops and supplies a broad range of semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions. Broadcom’s category-leading product portfolio serves critical markets including data center, networking, enterprise software, broadband, wireless, storage and industrial. Our solutions include data center networking and storage, enterprise, mainframe and cyber security software focused on automation, monitoring and security, smartphone components, telecoms and factory automation. For more information, go to www.broadcom.com.

    About Google Cloud

    Google Cloud provides organizations with leading infrastructure, platform capabilities and industry solutions. We deliver enterprise-grade cloud solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology to help companies operate more efficiently and adapt to changing needs, giving customers a foundation for the future. Customers in more than 150 countries turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to solve their most critical business problems.

    Broadcom, the pulse logo, and Connecting everything are among the trademarks of Broadcom. The term “Broadcom” refers to Broadcom Inc., and/or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

  • Cloud Migration Monitoring: A Practical Guide

    Cloud Migration Monitoring: A Practical Guide

    Almost every organization has transitioned some operational systems to the cloud. DevOps professionals are an essential part of migration projects, facilitating the migration itself, and making sure applications work as expected and provide satisfactory performance after the migration.

    To make your next cloud migration a success, you must get monitoring right. Applications must be monitored at every stage of the migration—when the application is still running on-premises, during migration and once the new workload is running in the cloud.

    In this article, we will explain key metrics to track during your migration, monitoring considerations at every stage of the migration cycle, and free tools offered by the major cloud providers that can help you monitor your migration.

    What to Monitor During a Cloud Migration

    There are many components involved in a cloud migration process. There are several approaches to cloud migration—each migration is unique, and might necessitate setting up different metrics. However, there are several aspects that can be considered mandatory when monitoring your cloud migration process:

    • Tracking application traffic. Tracking application traffic can help you validate that application configurations are properly defined and validate the availability of the entire application. You should ensure that all requests arrive to the new server, and keep an eye on the error rate. Additionally, watch for response times to ensure your application is not exceeding the planned thresholds.
    • Tracking your costs. Tracking costs can help you ensure that you are not incurring unexpected losses. The majority of organizations migrate to the cloud to reduce their costs. However, incorrect implementation of cloud resources may lead to losses. You can gain visibility into your costs by leveraging first-party cloud tools, like AWS Billing, which natively integrate into the pipeline, monitor costs, and show visualized data in customized dashboards. You can also use these tools to set up alerts.
    • Monitoring application security. Application security monitoring can help you identify security vulnerabilities and incidents during and after the migration process. You should monitor infrastructure configurations, such as internal traffic, host open ports and instance processes that are actively accessing different services. Additionally, keep watch for API hits per second, which might indicate a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

    Monitoring Aspects of the Migration Life Cycle

    Cloud service providers typically identify three main phases of the migration process, which are referred to as the plan, migrate and run phases.

    Plan Phase

    The plan phase helps you assess the performance levels of your applications before migrating. The goal is to achieve an in-depth understanding of how workloads are functioning pre-migration, as well as the current state of user experience. This data can then be used to establish performance benchmarks and baselines.

    Performance baselines, like error rates, page load times and slow transactions, can help you set up configuration alerts that keep track of outages across the cloud migration process. You can then quickly diagnose the situation and apply fixes that ensure application health during and after the migration.

    Here are several questions that can help you during the plan phase:

    1. What is the application baseline?
    2. How will the migration process affect user experience?
    3. What are the potential technical challenges expected during the migration process?
    4. Can the corporate network support additional bandwidth needs?
    5. What are the steps needed to start the migration process?

    Migrate Phase

    The migrate phase involves all processes required to securely move components from one location to another. During this process, you should continuously monitor performance to ensure user experience remains within the pre-established baseline. However, migrating to the cloud means you no longer have control over all configurations.

    To ensure application performance and stability during the migration process, you need to identify potential roadblocks and issues, and continuously monitor and validate the process. You should test critical aspects like application response time and call counts, and troubleshoot issues quickly.

    Run Phase

    The run phase starts right after the migration process is complete. During the post-migration phase, you need to establish proactive monitoring processes. The goal is to ensure your application performs well in the cloud; using the expected resources and without incurring overhead.

    When monitoring your application, keep track of service level agreements (SLAs) to ensure the cloud vendor meets the requirements agreed upon. You should also monitor for changes and review individual variables that might cause issues.

    Additionally, you should make sure all connections between applications are maintained after the migration.

    Free Cloud Migration Monitoring Tools

    The three major cloud providers—Amazon, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud—provide tools that help automate migration to their clouds, and also assist with the crucial aspects of monitoring. These tools are offered free, because it is in the best interest of the cloud providers to allow easy, frictionless migration.

    The following table summarizes migration monitoring capabilities available from each cloud provider.

    Cloud Provider Tool

    What it Helps Monitor

    AWS Migration Services

    Helps automate migration of applications that rely on databases.
    • Continually monitors source and target databases
    • Able to restart failed migrations
    • Oversees continuous data replication
    • Integrates with first-party AWS monitoring tools

    Azure Migration Tools

    Provides a migration hub that lets organizations manage large migration projects.
    • Tracks migration process and current status for server and database migrations
    • Allows external tools to integrate and track migrations
    • Reports on compliance aspects of migrations

    Migrate for Google Compute Engine

    Formerly known as Velostrata, this tool automates migration of on-premises systems, with automated roll back in case of errors.
    • Validation of workloads for migration compatibility
    • Ongoing oversight of streaming data transfers
    • Ability to roll back migration to on-premises systems in case of error

    Monitoring is critical for a successful cloud migration, and it’s important to use monitoring at every stage of a cloud migration:

    • During the plan phase, establish a baseline of application performance before it is migrated to the cloud.
    • During the migration phase, carefully monitor application behavior and troubleshoot issues.
    • During the run phase, validate that the application performs as expected and is meeting SLAs.

    I hope this will be useful as you plan and execute your next cloud migration project.

  • Databricks Partners with Google Cloud to Deliver its Platform to Global Businesses

    Databricks launches on Google Cloud with integrations to Google BigQuery and AI Platform that unify data engineering, data science, machine learning, and analytics across both companies’ services

    Sunnyvale and San Francisco, Calif., February 17, 2021 – Today, Google Cloud and Databricks announced a new partnership to deliver Databricks at global scale on Google Cloud. Under the partnership, organizations can now use Databricks to create a lakehouse capable of data engineering, data science, machine learning, and analytics on Google Cloud’s global, scalable, and elastic network. Databricks on Google Cloud will deeply integrate with Google BigQuery’s open platform and will leverage Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), enabling customers to deploy Databricks in a fully containerized cloud environment for the first time. With this integrated solution, organizations can unlock AI-driven insights, enable intelligent decision-making, and ultimately accelerate their digital transformations through data-driven applications.

    “Businesses with a strong foundation of data and analytics are well-positioned to grow and thrive in the next decade,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO at Google Cloud. “We’re delighted to deliver Databricks’ lakehouse for AI and ML-driven analytics on Google Cloud. By combining Databricks’ capabilities in data engineering and analytics with Google Cloud’s global, secure network—and our expertise in analytics and delivering containerized applications—we can help companies transform their businesses through the power of data.”

    “This is a pivotal milestone that underscores our commitment to enable customer flexibility and choice with a seamless experience across cloud platforms,” said Ali Ghodsi, CEO and co-founder of Databricks. “We are thrilled to partner with Google Cloud and deliver on our shared vision of a simplified, open, and unified data platform that supports all analytics and AI use-cases that will empower our customers to innovate even faster.”

    “For Condé Nast, finding valuable insights from massive amounts of data is essential for creating world class content experiences that delight our global customers. Databricks on Google Cloud provides a lakehouse for our data engineers, data scientists and analysts to consolidate, collaborate, analyze, and use all of our global data to experiment and innovate quickly. We’re excited to see leaders like Google Cloud and Databricks come together to streamline and simplify getting value from data,” said Nana Essuman, Director of Data Engineering at Condé Nast.

    Deploying Databricks rapidly and securely at global scale

    Global businesses need the ability to quickly deploy applications at any scale, and the elasticity to scale them up or down depending on their needs. Delivering Databricks on Google Cloud enables customers to rapidly provision Databricks on Google Cloud’s global network, with advanced security and data protection controls required for highly-regulated industries, and with the flexibility to quickly adjust usage based on the needs of the business.

    Additionally, customers will soon be able to deploy Databricks from the Google Cloud Marketplace, enabling simplified procurement and user provisioning, Single Sign-On, and unified billing.

    Advancing analytics with Databricks, BigQuery, and Google Cloud AI Platform

    Databricks on Google Cloud is tightly integrated with Google BigQuery, giving customers the freedom of choice and access to their choice of data analytics services. With this integration, businesses can extend their existing Databricks lakehouse capabilities, now running on Google Cloud, and can cross-leverage Google BigQuery for analytics, ultimately simplifying their data investments, increasing usage, and creating new, data-driven business models and opportunities.

    Unique integrations between Databricks and Google Cloud include:

    • Tight integration of Databricks with Google Cloud’s analytics solutions, giving customers the ability to easily extend AI-driven insights across data lakes, data warehouses, and multiple business intelligence tools.
    • Pre-built connectors to seamlessly and quickly integrate Databricks with BigQuery, Google Cloud Storage, Looker and Pub/Sub.
    • Fast and scalable model training with AI Platform using the data workflows created in Databricks, and simplified deployment of models built in Databricks using AI Platform Prediction.

    Delivering containerized Databricks deployments for the first time

    Databricks on Google Cloud represents the first container-based deployments of Databricks, on any cloud.

    Increasingly, Kubernetes and containers are the de facto orchestration system for enterprise workloads and applications running in the cloud. Databricks on Google Cloud is built on GKE, Google Cloud’s secure, managed Kubernetes service, to support containerized deployments of Databricks in the cloud. By adopting GKE as an operating environment, Databricks is able to leverage managed services for security, network policy, and compute and as a result, provide customers with increasing business value through Databricks analytics, AI, and ML capabilities. Additionally, with GKE, Databricks increases its agility and the ability to accelerate the release of new features, quickly, at scale, and at lower cost.

    Supporting open source innovation and partner collaboration

    Databricks and Google Cloud share a commitment to open innovation and open source software. Under this new partnership, the two companies will continue to support the open source community, encourage open innovation and collaboration, making it easier for joint customers to build on open-source technologies.

    Additionally,  members of our joint ecosystem of partners have committed to ensure seamless integrations with Databricks on Google Cloud, including Accenture, Cognizant, Collibra, Confluent, Deloitte, Fishtown Analytics, Fivetran, Immuta, Informatica, Infoworks, Insight, MongoDB, Privacera, Qlik, SADA, SoftServe, Slalom, Tableau, TCS and Trifacta among others.

    On April 6, join Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi, and Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian as they share more about the partnership and vision of an open, unified data analytics platform during a discussion hosted by TechCrunch; visit the event page for more information.

    To learn more about Databricks on Google Cloud, visit: https://databricks.com/product/google-cloud.

    About Google Cloud

    Google Cloud provides organizations with leading infrastructure, platform capabilities and industry solutions. We deliver enterprise-grade cloud solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology to help companies operate more efficiently and adapt to changing needs, giving customers a foundation for the future. Customers in more than 150 countries turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to solve their most critical business problems.

    About Databricks

    Databricks is the data and AI company. Thousands of organizations worldwide — including Comcast, Condé Nast, Nationwide, and H&M — rely on Databricks’ open and unified platform for data engineering, data science, machine learning, and analytics. Databricks is venture-backed and headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe. Founded by the original creators of Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, and MLflow, Databricks is on a mission to help data teams solve the world’s toughest problems. To learn more, follow Databricks on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

  • How To Build Out a Successful Multi-Cloud Strategy

    How To Build Out a Successful Multi-Cloud Strategy

    Navigating even just a single cloud environment can be complicated enough for any startup. Between understanding the range of features on offer, planning for expenditure and ensuring you have the right expertise to leverage the tool to its full potential, the thought of managing multiple clouds can seem daunting.

    However, whether your company is just starting out or has been around for years, the rewards to be reaped from a multi-cloud approach make it a worthy investment. Adopting a multi-cloud strategy offers a whole host of benefits and can allow you to optimize costs when implemented correctly. In fact, a recent Gartner survey of public cloud users found that 81% of respondents are working with two or more providers. In addition, the amount of business applications, services and workloads is set to double over the next two years.

    Here’s what companies of all sizes can gain from going multi-cloud, and how they can do so.

    Why Opt for Multicloud?

    For startups, adopting a multi-cloud strategy can be rewarding from day one. If you’re building your proof-of-concept or are in the design stage of building your infrastructure, leveraging multiple environments at once can help you develop faster and with more advanced tools.

    With access to multiple clouds, you can play around with the strengths of each provider and combine them to get the “best of all worlds,” increasing agility and eliminating vendor lock-in. Having immediate access to more than one cloud also means being able to take advantage of these features as and when you need them, without having to fully migrate to another cloud, which can be a costly and lengthy process. In fact, Gartner analyst Michael Warrilow stated that “most organizations adopt a multi-cloud strategy out of a desire to avoid vendor lock-in or to take advantage of best-of-breed solutions.”

    Opting for a multi-cloud environment also boosts security and disaster recovery and ensures easier migration for some data and applications. Cybersecurity is heightened as spreading applications across different providers means an attack is less likely to bring your entire infrastructure down at once. Furthermore, sticking with one provider inevitably runs the risk of losing control of a mission-critical application during an outage. All of this adds to the overall resiliency of your system’s infrastructure.

    So, how exactly can you get started with your multi-cloud journey?

    Making the Right Cloud Choices

    While a multi-cloud approach can deliver serious value in terms of resiliency, flexibility and cost savings, making sure you’re choosing the right providers requires a comprehensive assessment.

    Luckily, all main cloud vendors offer free trial services so you can establish which ones best fit your needs and see how they work with each other. It will pay to conduct proofs-of-concept using the free trials and run your data and code on each provider. You also need to make sure that you’re able to move your data and code around easily during the trials.

    It’s also important to remember that each cloud provider has different strengths—one company’s best option is not necessarily the best choice for you. For example, if your startup is heavily reliant on running artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications, you might opt for Google Cloud’s AI open source platform.

    Or perhaps you require an international network of data centers, minimal latency and data privacy compliance for certain geographies for your globally used app. Here’s where AWS could step in. On the other hand, you might need your cloud applications to seamlessly integrate with the various Microsoft tools that you already use. This would make the case for Microsoft Azure.

    There are multiple factors at play that you have to carefully consider to ensure ROI of your multi-cloud investment. According to a 2019 Spiceworks study, AWS comes out top for maximum uptime, Azure wins on compatibility and Google Cloud proves to be the best for manageability.

    However, it’s also crucial to remember that there are far more cloud providers than the “big three.” For example, Aliyun is Chinese conglomerate Alibaba’s cloud computing offering, while Oracle and IBM also have their own services. Many startups turn to more niche vendors that can better suit their individual needs, so it could pay to explore alternative options, too.

    Ultimately, you need to understand not only what your current needs are but also how your business goals align with the capabilities of your cloud strategy. Consider what you might need in the future that your current cloud provider doesn’t provide.

    Avoiding vendor lock-in—being able to dip into different features as and when you please—is one of the key benefits of multi-cloud adoption. However, it requires careful planning and assessment of your short- and long-term business goals and how these relate to your cloud infrastructure needs.

    Managing Multiple Cloud Environments Requires Expertise

    There’s no doubt that leveraging a single cloud environment requires team members with experience and know-how of that particular cloud vendor. So, moving to a multi-cloud approach means there’s an even higher demand with regards to the expertise you need at your disposal.

    If your team only has engineers who are experienced with working with Azure, it wouldn’t be a wise move to immediately adopt AWS without recruiting more talent. This is especially true as AWS is the most complex and mature of all of the main cloud providers and requires the relevant knowledge to be able to take full advantage of the tools and applications available. Hence, you need to consult your team at every step of the way on what kind of cloud environment is within their capabilities when crafting your multi-cloud strategy.

    Another vital aspect of multi-cloud adoption is managing the integration of the databases from each cloud provider. This means aligning your data management strategy across each cloud environment, otherwise you risk creating data silos and databases that don’t communicate with each other. Fortunately, many cloud providers include features that let you create clusters and manage and deploy databases. A team that understands the need for this is essential.

    Finally, a DevOps culture is crucial for any successful multicloud strategy. The purpose of multicloud adoption is not only to build out your infrastructure, but also to power continuous delivery and integration when it comes to product development. To ensure you select the best features and determine the right capacity according to your needs and expertise, you need to get the input of your entire DevOps team, including cloud experts, software developers and QA engineers, too. In fact, going one step further, many companies are even building out Cloud Centers of Excellence (CCoE), aa team of cloud experts who drive cloud-based digital transformation across an organization.

    The Balance of Controlling Multi-Cloud Costs

    Controlling and managing your expenditure while adopting a multi-cloud environment is no easy task, especially as your personalized use of the tool, which scales up and down, will result in fluctuating costs. In fact, controlling these expenses can be so difficult that cloud cost management vendor ParkMyCloud predicted that companies spent more than $14 billion on unnecessary cloud infrastructure costs in 2019.

    From a cost-saving perspective, Google Cloud is the best option as it offers more flexible contracts, lower starting costs and clearer visibility into expenditures compared to the other big providers. However, the decision should be taken against the potential ROI of the multicloud strategy you adopt, so calculating the financial optimization that will come from accessing multiple cloud environments can help guide you.

    If possible, it’s a good idea to consult with an expert partner on the ways in which you can best manage costs and maximize ROI. If this isn’t an option, you can use different tools that allow you to create estimates around expenditures.

    As the growing numbers around multi-cloud adoption suggest, it’s a trend that’s delivering value and is here to stay. With a multi-cloud environment, startups and enterprises alike can have flexibility around the features they need, optimize costs, increase security and protect themselves against outages. However, embarking on a multi-cloud strategy is no straightforward task: It requires research, planning and consultation with your technical team. By aligning your business goals with your cloud requirements and democratizing your decision process, you can ensure you get the most out of your multi-cloud investment.