Google Cloud unveils innovations at Next’ 22

Yesterday, Google Cloud announced a number of innovations, including new solutions and enhancements to Google’s data cloud, its open infrastructure cloud, and major additions to Google Workspace.

Here are the new capabilities announced at Google Cloud Next 2022:

Google’s Open Data cloud 

1. 1. Support for unstructured data in Big Query – Data teams can now manage, secure, and analyze structured and unstructured data in BigQuery, with access to many of Google Cloud’s capabilities in ML (machine learning), speech recognition, computer vision, translation, and text processing, using BigQuery’s SQL (Structured Query Language) interface.
   2. Translation Hub – a new enterprise-scale translation AI Agent for self-serve document translation, which lets organizations localize content in more than 135 languages.
   3. Support for new data formats to help organizations gain the full value from their data faster – Google’s storage engine, Big Lake adds support for Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake and soon for Apache Hudi.
   4. Integration in in BigQuery for Apache Spark – data practitioners can create procedures in BigQuery, using Apache Spark (open-source analytics engine for large-scale data processing), that integrate with their SQL pipelines.
   5. Datastream for BigQuery – organizations can replicate data in real-time, from sources including AlloyDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL and third-party databases like Oracle — directly into BigQuery.
   6. Updates to Dataplex – Organizations can automate common processes associated with data quality, such as understanding data lineage and data transformation.
   7. Integration of Looker and Google Studio – Data studio is now Looker Studio, which seeks to help organizations infuse workflows and applications with the intelligence needed to make data-driven decisions.
   8. Enhancements for Looker and BigQuery with Microsoft Power BI – Tableau and Microsoft customers can analyze trusted data from Looker and connect with BigQuery.
   9. Vertex AI Vision – a new service that seeks to make computer vision and image recognition AI more accessible to data practitioners while reducing the time to create computer vision applications.
   10. Expanded integrations with enterprise data platforms, including Collibra, Elastic, MongoDB, Palantir Foundry, and ServiceNow, aimed at preventing data lock-in.

Open infrastructure cloud

1. New cloud regions coming to five countries-Google is adding cloud regions to Austria, Greece, Norway, South Africa and Sweden, to accelerate and bring innovation closer to customers, create jobs and boost the local economy. Google said the five new cloud regions announced at Google Next, and another four announced earlier this year, will contribute a cumulative US$40.2 billion to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) by 2030 and support the creation of more than 314,400 jobs in that year.
2. C3 machine series – C3 machine instances use offload hardware, designed for more predictable and efficient compute, high-performance storage, and a programmable packet processing capability for low latency and accelerated, secure networking. Now available in private preview, it is the first VM (Virtual Machine) in the public cloud with the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor and with Google’s custom Intel IPU.
3. Hyperdisk – Google says its new block storage seeks to deliver 80 per cent higher IOPS ( Input/output operations per second) per vCPU (virtual centralized processing unit) than other leading hyperscale cloud providers.
4. Enhancements to application management platform Anthos – including improvements to the user interface, to the fleet management experience, and the general availability of virtual machine support on Anthos clusters for retail edge environments.
5. Dual Run – A mainframe modernization solution, announced today, to help remove the most common roadblocks from migrating 20+ year old mainframes into the cloud.
6. Migration Center – designed to bring assessment, planning, migration, and modernization tooling together in one location
7. Open XLA project – Google will collaborate with industry leaders such as AMD, Arm, Intel, Meta, NVIDIA, and more to create a community-led and open-source ecosystem of ML (machine learning) compiler and infrastructure projects.

Google Workspace

1. Google Meet will add several features, aimed at establishing an immersive and collaborative remote work experience and bridging the gap between people working in different locations. These new features include Speaker’s spotlight, AI-powered cameras with Huddly and Logitech, Meeting room check-in, automatic video framing, meeting transcriptions, and many more.
2. Google Chat will add custom emojis and inline threaded conversations to allow workers to express themselves more authentically. New features added to Google Chat also include broadcast-only spaces which aim to make it easier for leaders to make broad announcements and maintain connections across their organizations. 
3. Smart canvas enhancements enable companies to build their own templates that can be accessed by all users, and include smart chips for third-party applications, including AODocs, Atlassian, Asana, Figma, Miro, Tableau, and ZenDesk, so people can view and engage with rich third-party data without switching tabs or context.
4. New APIs (application programming interface) for Meet and Chat will give developers programmatic access to common functions like creating and starting meetings or initiating messages directly from a third-party app. Asana and LumApps will be the first partners to leverage these in their apps. Furthermore, the Meet add-on SDK will enable developers to embed their app directly into the Meet experience. Figma is one of our first add-on partners enabling teams to collaborate on Figma design and FigJam digital whiteboards directly in Google Meet. Finally, AppSheet and Google Chat integration enable people to create and interact with custom AppSheet apps right within Chat to give people with no coding experience the capabilities to build web and mobile applications.

Other notable announcements

Project Starline, which creates a 3D model of a person, making it feel like they are sitting in the same room, will enter its next phase of testing with an early access program with Google’s enterprise partners.

Project Starline is currently available in a few of Google’s offices and will be deployed in select partner offices for regular testing.

The company also announced that it made Google Cloud Carbon Footprint generally available, at no cost for every customer, in the cloud console. In addition, eco-friendly routing will launch soon in the Google Maps Platform for developers, to help ridesharing and delivery companies embed eco-friendly routes into their driver applications.