The Google Cloud Next’23 Developer keynote was a delight to watch. It was informative, entertaining, and inspiring.
The keynote speaker, Forrest Brazeal, started by singing a song about legacy land. He said that legacy is just another word for something that makes money. Brazeal then told a story about how Google engineers had to roll their own load balancing software because the third-party hardware they were using was not reliable.
Brazeal's co-speaker, Richard Seroter, then told a story about how a Reddit user discovered an unintentional feature of Google Translate that caused the service to generate beatboxing sounds.
Brazeal and Seroter said that dealing with unexpected edge cases in legacy workloads is a big part of how Google engineers innovate.
They then introduced the Google Cloud Champion Innovators, who are experts in Google Cloud who help solve real-world problems. The Champion Innovators shared their thoughts on legacy and how Google Cloud can help organizations modernize their legacy workloads.
Alice Keeler, a Google Cloud Innovator and Workspace GDE, joins Forrest Brazeal on stage to discuss with demo the power of Duet AI and AppSheet.
- Duet AI is a generative AI capability that can help developers build applications faster and easier.
- AppSheet is a no-code development platform that makes it easy to build mobile and web applications.
- Together, Duet AI and AppSheet can be used to create powerful applications with minimal coding.
- In a live demo, Forrest and Alice build an incident reporting application using Duet AI and AppSheet.
- The application allows users to report incidents using a variety of methods, including text, audio, and images.
- The application also integrates with Google Chat, so users can be notified of new incidents in real time.
- Forrest and Alice conclude by discussing the future of no-code development and how Duet AI and AppSheet can help developers build even more powerful applications.
Lukas Karlsson is a Google Cloud Champion Innovator who is passionate about managing infrastructure for cloud workloads. He discussed how to improve the performance, scalability, and deployment of a dynamic Python app deployed to Cloud Run. He recommended using Cloud Run Jobs for background tasks, such as sending email reminders to customers with abandoned carts. He also suggested checking out the recent feature announcements for Cloud Run to see what capabilities are available.
Mark Johnson, a Google Cloud Champion Innovator, talked about software supply chain security (S3C) in cloud development. He mentioned that there are three main aspects of S3C: securing the developer environment, ensuring the integrity of the build process, and protecting the app once it's running in production.
To secure the developer environment, Johnson suggested using Cloud Workstations. This tool allows developers to create isolated workspaces where they can work on code without affecting other systems. He also recommended using least-privileged access, which means giving developers only the permissions they need to do their jobs.
To ensure the integrity of the build process, Johnson suggested using binary authorization. This policy allows organizations to control which container images can be deployed to production. He also recommended using Assured OSS, a repository of pre-vetted Python packages.
To protect the app once it's running in production, Johnson suggested using Cloud Run Security insights. This tool provides visibility into the security of your cloud deployments. He also recommended using GKE Enterprise's Fleet View, which provides a top-level view of your environment's security posture.
Johnson concluded by emphasizing the importance of continuous monitoring. He said that organizations should regularly scan their codebases and container images for vulnerabilities. They should also monitor their deployments for signs of compromise.
Here are some key takeaways from the keynote :
- Duet AI can help developers build applications faster and easier by generating code, designing user interfaces, and writing natural language descriptions.
- AppSheet is a no-code development platform that makes it easy to build mobile and web applications without writing any code.
- Together, Duet AI and AppSheet can be used to create powerful applications with minimal coding.
- Duet AI and AppSheet can be used to build a variety of applications, including incident reporting, customer relationship management, and employee onboarding applications.
- Duet AI and AppSheet are still under development, but they have the potential to revolutionize the way applications are built.
- S3C is an important part of cloud security.
- There are three main aspects of S3C: securing the developer environment, ensuring the integrity of the build process, and protecting the app once it's running in production.
- Cloud Workstations, binary authorization, Assured OSS, Cloud Run Security insights, and GKE Enterprise's Fleet View are all tools that can help organizations improve their S3C posture.
- Cloud Run is a serverless platform that makes it easy to deploy and scale stateless containers.
- Cloud Run Jobs is a new feature that allows you to run background tasks on Cloud Run.
- Cloud Deploy is a fully managed service that makes it easy to deploy your applications to multiple targets in a single stage.
- Continuous monitoring is essential for maintaining a secure cloud environment.
