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C2C is very excited to offer free tickets to Google Cloud Next '23 to five valued community members! These tickets will grant winners access to one of the most exclusive and sought-after experiences available to the Google Cloud ecosystem.Tell us what you’re looking forward to seeing at Next ‘23, and you’ll be entered into a raffle to receive one of five free tickets!Google Cloud will host Next ‘23 at the beautiful Moscone Center in San Francisco from August 29 to August 31, 2023. Get excited for an extraordinary conference that will empower you with knowledge, connect you with industry experts, and inspire your professional growth!We believe in providing you with a platform to learn, engage, and solve for the future of the cloud. To learn more about NEXT '23 and its agenda, speakers, and sessions, visit the official Next ‘23 website.Seize this incredible opportunity to be a part of NEXT '23 now. To enter the contest and be qualified to win, comment below to tell us why you’d like to attend NEXT ‘23.  Contest Information US-based entrants only Tickets are non-transferable Travel and lodging not included Contest opens: June 1, 2023 Contest closes: July 28, 2023 at 3:00 p.m. EST Winners: we will announce the 5 winners on July 31, 2023 at 5:00 p.m. EST   Contest Instructions Become a C2C member. Comment below this post and tell us what you’re looking forward to seeing at Google Cloud Next ’23. Please Note Please note that while the conference ticket is complimentary, it does not cover any hotel or airfare costs. We encourage you to make your own travel arrangements to ensure a seamless and enjoyable visit to San Francisco. *This promotion is exclusively available to US residents, no Visa (job, travel, student, etc.) will be provided. No purchase necessary. Must be 18 years or older to win. Tickets cannot be redeemed for cash. Travel and lodging not included. Drawings are at random. Terms and conditions may apply. 

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, cloud technology has become an indispensable tool for organizations seeking to streamline operations, scale efficiently, and drive innovation. Our recent study—the C2C Member Pulse—collected 461 responses in March 2023, from which we examined trends in the role of Google Cloud for our community members. Our analysis sheds light on the prevalent skill gaps within organizations and their priorities and challenges concerning cloud technology adoption.We also recognized the significance of the role of community in supporting and enriching the overall cloud experience. A vibrant and supportive community is pivotal for knowledge sharing, problem-solving, and collaboration. The perspectives we collected—from customer and partner members across various roles—will be instrumental to how C2C addresses member concerns, improves community programs, and empowers individuals.Whether you are an IT professional, a business leader, or simply curious about the future of cloud technology, the key takeaways in this article offer an excellent insight into what’s most relevant to a community full of Google Cloud users. By exploring what others are doing with Google Cloud, C2C members can gain a competitive edge, make informed decisions, and drive successful cloud initiatives within their organizations. Key Takeaways Based on the feedback and insights we gathered from community members like you, we have identified key areas where we can enhance your experience and foster a stronger sense of connection within the community.  One of the top priorities highlighted in the report is the need for more guidance on cloud management and integration support. For 2023, respondents identified their top area of focus as cloud management, including cloud costs, optimization, and governance. We also recognize that navigating cloud integration can be challenging, though we believe the community will benefit from more members sharing success stories that include integration best practices such as data consolidation and dealing with incompatibility between products.  Upskilling to meet digital transformation goals is crucial, and respondents rely heavily on Google Cloud training and certifications for this purpose. This is true for organizations filling skill gaps and for individuals seeking professional development. C2C has an opportunity to support members with more skills-based content, mainly because almost all respondents' organizations are relying on permanent staff learning Google Cloud skills on the job for projects. Key areas where skills are missing include cloud security and data protection, ML model training and deployment, and cloud architecture design and scalability.  ​​AI is on respondents' radar—it’s the top Google Cloud product area members are considering for future exploration. With generative AI making waves across the industry at all organizational levels, we can expect that members will continue to show interest in these topics. However, in-house development of AI tools is a low priority, and training ML models isn’t a skill every organization has. When it comes to AI, most organizations will benefit from preparing to begin the discovery phase.Identity and security, however, are at the top of the list of respondents' current needs as the most used solution area. Within Google Cloud, products for access management, security operations and automation, and monitoring will be more immediately important.  When it comes to events, we want to emphasize the invaluable opportunities we provide in all the areas members identified as reasons they attend: networking, training, and direct access to other customers, partners, and product managers. By participating in C2C events, you can connect with fellow community members and gain insights directly from the experts behind the solutions you use. Most members will be attending a mixture of both virtual and in-person events in 2023. Join us in making the most of these incredible experiences. Who Participated in the Survey We saw a fairly even split between respondents coming from customer and partner organizations located in key geographic regions for C2C: North America, EMEA, Latin America, and JAPAC. Historically, our largest active member bases have been in the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, corresponding with the representation of responses we saw in this survey. Job role was one of the most impactful factors in the choices respondents made to behavioral questions about community and events. Understanding our members’ job roles and each of their requirements is crucial to identifying the professional development opportunities and networking events that most align with their career goals. View image full-scale here. Get the Most of Community As members of our community, your voices shape our initiatives. While we learned a lot about you collectively in this survey, we also want to meet your needs as an individual. Take a moment to update your profile today, and ensure you're receiving the most relevant and valuable content tailored specifically for your interests.   Update Your Preferences 

Palo Alto Networks, AMD, High Radius, Automation Anywhere, Rackspace, Michaels Stores, Lytics, Ancestry INC, Workspot Cloud Adoption Summit Sunnyvale, CA April 27th 2023 For organizations far along in their cloud journey or just at the beginning, this full day summit offered insightful perspectives on all stages of interaction with the cloud. The Cloud Adoption Summit in Sunnyvale featured a variety of Google Cloud customers that shared their stories surrounding securing cloud adoption, cloud cost optimization, and how to leverage AI when migrating to the cloud. The program at this 2Gather also featured an interactive partner panel led by Jim Anderson, the Vice President of North America Partners at Google, focused breakout sessions that featured shared experiences and challenges from key leaders, and a panel led by Olga Lykova @OlgaLykovaMBA , Head of Go To Market at Workspot, featuring speakers from Intel, Salesforce, Google and LinkedIn. Dwyane Mann, CISO & VP Of AI, Fraud and Data at Michaels Stores shared a cloud journey story that focused on the different options an organization is presented with when migrating to the cloud. The session discussed the distinction between creating a new infrastructure and a conventional cloud migration. These differences include cost structure, design frameworks, and team dynamics. Key takeaways and lessons shared with the audience include:Conduct MVP’s, which is the method whereby only core features that solve specific issues are deployed. Identify core features and cost management strategies with leadership early in the process to reduce friction points in the future. Effectively label each stage within a cloud migration and its functionality. Involve more teams in the cost project to increase transparency.   

In April, C2C hosted its first 2Gather event in the Atlanta, Georgia area, a unique installment of the Let’s Talk Tech series, cohosted with Google Cloud and featuring Google Principal Developer Advocate Kelsey Hightower. Kelsey joined a roster of distinguished speakers including Alex Barnes, Head of Infrastructure at Calendly, Russ Ayres, Senior Vice President of Security Architecture and Engineering at Equifax, and Rae Williams, Director of Customer Engineering at Google, for a full program of conversations tackling some of the biggest issues facing the cloud technology space today. Read on below for a roundup of some of the terms, products, and themes the conversations covered.  Open source: Any software whose source code is freely available to all users for collaborative review. Russ and Alex are both sympathizers with open source philosophy, and Kelsey is a veteran of the open source community. In his words, “When you go out into the open-source world, you get to define technology for the world.”Serverless: A cloud computing model allowing customers to access resources allocated by providers on demand without having to interact with a server, which Kelsey called “The final chapter of a mature compute pattern.”Platform engineering: Streamlining infrastructure to make tools and services immediately available to teams for operation and use. According to Alex, platform engineering allows an organization to “present all capabilities as things you can consume programmatically to unlock velocity.”Configuration management: The process for ensuring that products and systems maintain the same design and perform the same way. Russ contrasted configuration management from policy with the mantra, “If it was appropriately written it would be following the policy.”   KubernetesGoogle’s open-source containerization solution for software deployment and scaling has been setting standards and unlocking potential in the cloud space for nearly a decade. Kelsey’s history with Kubernetes is well known, and Rae made sure to capitalize on the opportunity to press him for his comments in front of a live audience. For context, Kelsey compared Kubernetes to contemporary projects in DevOps, insisting that DevOps engineers too often miss the forest for the trees. “What Kubernetes represents is a ten-year-old pattern for assigning software to servers,” he said. “It’s the system you would build if you had the big picture.” CalendlyCalendly is a business communication platform offering unique scheduling solutions for organizations looking to maximize efficiency. Head of Infrastructure Alex Barnes joined Aiven Vice President of Product Marketing Amy Krishnamohan (@amy.km) for a fireside chat about the company’s journey on Google Cloud. Calendly was initially built on Ruby on Rails, but later wanted to invest in Kubernetes. Google was an obvious choice for a hosting solution, especially since calendar management is so essential to the company’s offerings. “Google Calendar is a massive part of what we interact with,” Alex explained. “How better to build on that relationship than to build on their platform?”Alex expanded on these comments via email after event. “The partnership with Aiven and Google Cloud has allowed us to build a robust cloud data infrastructure that can handle the demands of our users,” he told C2C. “And it has given us the flexibility to scale up quickly, without having to worry about managing the underlying infrastructure.”  AIPredictably, many members of the audience were excited to ask questions about recent developments in AI. Kelsey was quick to dispel any notions that AI is going to make tech professionals irrelevant or push them out of the market. Instead, he said, AI is providing a new baseline for innovation. When looking at generative AI solutions like ChatGPT, Kelsey said, users and developers should ask, “What is the dataset, and where is that dataset created?” Tech practitioners can still develop new solutions beyond the limits of the datasets used to train these products. “If ChatGPT can generate the code,” Kelsey told the audience, “It means we need a different interface.” SecuritySecurity was the main focus of Russ’s comments during the customer panel with Alex and Kelsey. As Senior Vice President of Security Architecture and Engineering at Equifax, Russ is responsible for securing highly sensitive personal data at one of the leading financial services organizations. However, Russ originally came to security as a developer. Coming from that background, Russ believes that “Good security is good engineering,” and vice versa. “Most security solutions try to be everything to everyone,” he added. From his point of view, though, teams should aim to build with purpose on the front end so that solutions are designed to run efficiently and at scale with minimal risk. Hear from more industry leaders on these topics and join the conversation in person at our upcoming 2Gather event in Los Angeles: 2Gather Los Angeles: The Future is Now, Security and AI

C2C’s first event for developers took place on April 26th, 2023 in Sunnyvale, CA. The event focused on data analytics and how organization can optimize their data. Below are some data buzzwords and their definitions, an overview of Dataplex, a product that was demonstrated at the event, and a summary of the key topics discussed.  Data warehouse: A system that is used for reporting and data analysis. A data warehouse is a large storage of data that has been accumulated from a range of sources and helps businesses with decision-making processes.Data lake: A centralized infrastructure that is designed to store and process large amounts of data. A data lake can store data in its original form and process it in any variety. Data lakes are scalable platforms that allow organizations to ingest data from any source at multiple speeds. Data Lakehouse: A modern data platform that is a combination of a data warehouse and a data lake. BigQuery: Serverless architecture built as a data warehouse that works across clouds while scaling with your data. BigQuery allows users to pick the right feature set for workload demands and can match these needs in real time. It can also analyze data across multiple clouds and securely exchange data sets internally or across businesses, making it a platform with scalable analytics. BigLake: A storage engine that unifies data warehouses and lakes through BigQuery to gain access to data.   DataplexDataplex is a lake administration and data governance tool. It enables organizations to discover, manage and evaluate their data across data lakes and data warehouses. Dataplex also has a variety of features that allow organizations to choose specific items to easily manage data. For example, the tag management feature ensures that specific users have access to the right data by setting policy templates and tags with different sets of data. Dataplex also has automated data quality management features. For example, if a report quotes incorrect numbers, the data can be corrected with automated data tools rather than manually.   Data and and Real Time Analytics A major point raised at the developer’s event was that data is rooted in an event-driven architecture. For instance, customers who work in finance get highly interested in data in real time during specific periods. This interest is event-based, as it usually occurs when the industry reaches a quarter close. Moving data around can be a difficult task; however, there are certain cloud features that can solve this issue, such as Dataplex. The main concern surrounding organizing data is access control and governance. Customers want to know that steps have been taken to ensure that unauthorized users do not gain access to private data. Visibility and transparency are also core tenets when discussing access to data and its governance tools.

Cloud computing has provided organizations in the tech industry with many benefits. Whether by helping to create a remote work environment or saving companies substantial costs, the cloud has transformed the ways businesses operate in the modern world. One of the major benefits of cloud computing technology is how it contributes to sustainability. The cloud reduces onsite activity associated with hardware and computing power consumption. Companies on the cloud do not need to maintain physical hardware or worry about disposing or recycling it. Cloud computing also eliminates the need to house and power an infrastructure. Not investing in physical IT equipment and consuming it as a service has environmental benefits because it helps to reduce the carbon footprint of major corporations. Below are some of the ways the cloud has helped contribute to sustainability efforts.  Reduces Energy Consumption The National Renewable Laboratory confirmed that data centers consume 1.8% of the overall energy consumption in the US each year because onsite servers need to be powered by large amounts of electricity. Data centers require significant upkeep and maintenance and power supplies and cooling fans are also needed, which use a lot of electricity. Not only does the electricity provide power for servers, but it is also used for cooling fans when servers overheat. Research funded by Google and conducted at the Berkeley lab found that cloud computing software can provide up to an 87% decrease in electricity usage. The energy savedx is so great that it could be used to power Los Angeles for an entire year, and can help businesses save 60-85% in energy costs.  Decreases Greenhouse Gas Emissions Sustainable computing decreases the amount of GHG emitted from data centers. GHG are created in data centers through the life cycling that occurs. This includes: producing materials for the equipment, assembling it, using it within the data center, and then disposing of it once the life cycle is complete. A survey conducted by Accenture revealed that cloud computing has a large environmental impact on carbon emissions. By using green computing approaches, large companies can decrease their carbon footprint from up to 30% and smaller organizations can decrease it to 90%. A CDP report also came to the conclusion that offsite services can reduce annual carbon emissions by 85.7 million metric tons. Dematerialization Dematerialization refers to the replacement of physical products that create greenhouse gas emissions to a virtual equivalent or replacement. Cloud services reduce energy consumption as well as e-waste, and encourage organizations to conduct their businesses virtually. Examples include video conferencing and sharing documents rather than printing multiple copies to distribute to a large number of employees. Using green computing architectures results in fewer physical machines and hardware, which means having a lower environmental impact. The cloud allows businesses to focus on their daily tasks without having to worry about IT and maintaining infrastructure that they would have onsite. By reducing physical products, such as equipment and hardware, cloud computing reduces the amount of e-waste that occurs when disposing of these products. As mentioned, it also helps organizations to go paperless with cloud storage options, such as Google Drive. Utilization RatesOn-prem companies use their own private data centers, which means the equipment is purchased and then set up to deal with high usage spikes, which results in lower utilization rates. When the hardware isn’t being used, energy is still being used which negatively impacts the environment. The cloud decreases the amount of machine use that an organization would require, translating to higher utilization. Since cloud servers do not require physical equipment, they tend to be 2 to 4 times more efficient because of a strong infrastructure.  Hardware SpeedData center hardware is used for long amounts of time before an upgrade or a replacement due to high costs. Because of their higher utilization rates, public cloud servers have a smaller lifecycle, which creates a quicker refresh time. It is more cost efficient for public cloud servers to upgrade on a regular basis, because new technology has higher efficiency rates. The more efficient hardware is, the less energy it will use in the long run. In conclusion, cloud computing services operate with higher resource (or energy) efficiency compared to traditional data centers. Sustainable computing is rooted in the concept of sharing services and hence maximizing the effectiveness of resources.  Creates a Shift to Renewable Energy SourcesCloud data centers have also shifted to renewable sources of energy to power their operations, reducing their carbon footprint. By using solar, hydropower, and wind, companies are attempting to  generate more eco-friendly electricity. Cloud providers are currently working towards creating more renewable energy options.  Helps with Remote WorkingEmployees of an organization no longer need to be in an office, they can work from anywhere, at any time, at any place.The cloud allows employees to share and distribute documentation through its server. Working collaboratively is now possible because of cloud computing as employees can now share company information in a secure and safe environment. Secure data storage and management allows for a smooth work environment for both employees and the business. Workers no longer need to go on long commutes, decreasing the amount of pollution and e-waste that is occurring within the environment.  Rackspace Technology and Green Computing Rackspace Technology is a cloud computing services pioneer with multi cloud solutions across apps, data, and security. The platform recognizes that it is time for enterprises to prioritize sustainability, and IT leaders must take the lead in driving sustainability efforts.  Rackspace’s Chief Architect, Nirmal Ranganathan, states that “Cloud computing, green computing architectures, design principles, and understanding the data around energy consumption are all critical components to modernize an IT industrial complex skills, infrastructure, and applications. For a more sustainable IT future, the key to sustainability efforts is in the data. Differing perspectives about business pledges versus their actual performance is ongoing and constant. Often, the former is more ambitious than the latter. Data will play a vital role in the drive toward net zero to verify claims made by business partners and to accurately measure a business’ own carbon footprint.” Rackspace focuses on empowering companies to grow using technology. Through the delivery of cloud services, building efficient serverless architectures and embodying design principles focused on driving long term value creation, Rackspace Technology is contributing to an overall reduction of energy consumption and building Sustainable IT. Migrating and modernizing companies to Cloud environments helps to reduce the number of over-provisioned, energy-hungry data centers across an enterprise.

Companies use AI and machine learning (ML) to drive innovation and create a competitive advantage in their respective marketplaces. Excitement about AI is everywhere right now, so we wanted to bring together some of the top startups disrupting the AI space and bringing valuable solutions to enterprise customers. During this virtual event, four fast-growing startups shared their experiences using AI and ML.The promise of AI for business is immense. AI can help businesses automate tasks, improve efficiency, and make better decisions. However, AI is still a relatively new technology. This event covered topics such as: Increasing affordability and accessibility of AI, which is driving AI adoption in the enterprise space Use of AI to automate a wide range of tasks, from customer service to fraud detection Use of AI to improve efficiency and decision-making in a variety of industries At the end of this webinar, participants had a better understanding of AI and its potential applications. They discussed best practices, success stories, and practical lessons about what to keep in mind if this technology is something you are considering implementing as part of your business's strategic roadmap for the future.Watch the full recording here:  

Please introduce yourself.My name is Olga Lykova. Actually, it’s Olga Ivanou. I’m newly married and getting used to using the new last name.I currently go by three titles. I work at Workspot and I have recently been promoted to run all of the go-to-market. I’m responsible for cloud partnerships with companies like Google, AWS, Microsoft, Intel, and NetApp. I also run our business development team and partner marketing, so a lot of the initiatives with C2C are under my realm.I’m also a founder of Women in Industries, which is a 10-year-old network. The network is known for their annual panels featuring executive women leaders who share their experiences in an open forum to help professionals discover how to build their dream career, overcome obstacles, build their support bench, find mentorship and sponsorship, and navigate specialization change in pursuit of a "dream job." It is rare that we can have open discussions about what an ideal career looks like. In the last 10 years we had multiple C-level executives from Google, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Adobe, and even the NBA join our panels, sharing their diverse experience with our network.My third title is Thought Leader for Forbes Business Council, I write articles on business trends and leadership insights.  What is your secret to managing a team of people?I think this is a twofold concept. First is managing the partners, and second is managing the team. Managing partners is about determining what drives them and what their key motivators are, which has helped me a lot. Working with C2C, I view you as a partner, and it’s about bringing the right customers that will share an exciting story or thought-provoking content. I think about what a partner needs and then build a go-to-market strategy surrounding that. For companies who have a great product that fills a gap for a well-known brand, the best way to generate revenue is to attach themselves to the partner. It is a very different way of marketing because you have to become an extension of a different sales team, speak their language, and ensure ongoing transparency with customers and partners. When it comes to building my team, I don’t usually state a salary range when interviewing. My favorite question to ask is, “what would make you happy?” We define ourselves in a title role as well as the monetary component, and I don’t want to limit people to a certain number. I want to figure out what makes them happy in that role. That’s been my winning formula to get the right people who also feel appreciated by the company. I also always want to recognize the work of people who go above and beyond. When people get creative and push for new ideas, I try to recognize them in front of the executives on a weekly basis.  How has your journey been becoming an official member of the Forbes Business Development Council?Every time I went to events, I would bring my notepad. At my first company, Apttus, I suggested the idea of turning my notes into a blog post about post-event content. When I joined Copper and was working with their marketing team, I thought we could elevate content further by discussing the journeys of start-ups, since we were working with many of them at the time. One of the CMOs suggested that I should write for Forbes, since I was already writing about webinars and doing a lot of content output. I applied, did the interview process and now I’ve been writing for them for 4 years.It’s all about different topics, and I love how it’s open. It’s similar to what C2C advocates for about sharing insights and best practices and staying away from a sales pitch. It’s easy to start making content look like a sales pitch, so I have to take a step back and remember to talk about what customers are asking for. My favorite article was writing about top tips I’ve heard over the years from leaders. A tip that has still stuck with me is anytime you have an issue, don’t hide behind an email. Pick up the phone and talk to the other person, no matter how uncomfortable it is. Works every time! What is the best advice you have ever received? One of my biggest motivators is Corinne Sklar, Vice President of Marketing at IBM Consulting. We worked together on multiple panels, and she has really inspired me. She once said, “do you have that crazy feeling of being excited and nervous in your stomach when you are doing something?” I said, always. She goes “keep that feeling, because that’s your motivator, and that’s how you know that you’re learning”. When I feel nervous about not knowing how to do something, I realize I'm actually in the process of learning and figuring it out.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years? I think the industry that Workspot is in is at a pivotal point. The industry is on a peak of change, and I never worked for a company that had a product that was so ahead of the game until I worked at Workspot. I think the biggest opportunity for us is to amplify that message. The challenge I want to figure out is, while the industry is changing, I want to see how customers react to it and how we tackle industry changes. On a personal level, I’ve always wanted to create a one-stop shop where people can come and thrive. I started writing a book called “Rules to Thrive.” I was looking at the definition of thrive, and the word itself means “to grow vigorously, flourish, gain wealth or possession, and prosper”. I think that definition incorporates learning, growing and achieving success. I don’t believe it’s an end destination, because we’re always trying to grow. Once you achieve one dream, you start dreaming again. I want to unite young professionals and small businesses together to become that one-stop shop for successful career growth. The end goal after 5 years is to be that one place where people can network about a variety of subjects and topics through referrals as well as advocating for things that work.  What is your favorite aspect of being a keynote speaker at our events? In that room, you have people who want to be there. It’s a gathering of people who are curious and want to do better for their company. You are in a place where the mindset is amazing, because they are not required to be there, they want to be there. My favorite part is not only do we get to talk about the lessons we have learned, but we also get to share things to avoid. We get a chance to be transparent about what’s possible and what’s not possible. I always encourage our customers to share what didn’t work and what could have been done differently. In the audience, I’d say one out of 5 people may have been considering a similar project, and as speakers we are giving them the tools to learn. I think when you share what didn’t work, they walk away with something tangible, where they can re-evaluate how to tackle something. Also, it’s just really fun! You feel like you’re a part of a community, not just an event.  How does Workspot empower female employees? I think it’s about who wants to step in and help. I don’t think we differentiate who it is and who wants to do it. We know what the issues and gaps are within the company, and it’s about people who raise their hands to get stuff done. I think there’s room to grow, but for many people, it has to do with the ability to ask for it. I think many of us think, if I don’t fill two out of five requirements for a job, I’m not going to apply for it.Just recently, my mother was applying for a job and then didn't want to apply because she didn’t fit all the requirements. I told her that you can learn on the job and the company can teach you. This is the mindset that needs to change, because you don’t have to fit all the requirements for the job description, you just have to have the willingness to learn and to be able to ask questions. Workspot enables employees to do that, you just have to ask for the opportunity.  What inspired you to become a founder of the Women in Industries Network? Apttus, now Conga, was the first tech company I ever worked for, and I didn’t really understand how to evolve in my role. Partnerships and go-to-market was a new concept for me, and these are newer roles in the industry all together. For me, I wanted to learn from my partners and start creating a community. We started doing events, and the first one was at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, with around 50 people in attendance. After the event was done, I felt super motivated and received the insights that I wanted. A few months later, people were asking if we were going to do this again. It then evolved into more sessions, and just last year we hosted a female panel that talked about making six figures. Another topic that was covered was how we can help people to land their dream interview and prep them on how to stand out. It started from my own natural curiosity and then turned into a few thousand members10 years later.  Check out our other Women in Cloud articles here:Women in Cloud: Meet Shobana ShankarWomen in Cloud: Meet Clair Hur 

At this virtual event, speakers from Google, Intel, and Workspot presented practical tips for corporate and individual sustainability. Corporate culture is essential to the success of any organization. Leaders should strive to embed sustainability practices in their organization’s core culture by continuously incentivizing and educating employees about the importance of sustainability. At this 2Chat event, panelists shared insights about how their respective organizations are adopting sustainable practices to reduce their carbon footprint, conserve resources, and promote social responsibility. They also addressed the challenges and opportunities that come with implementing sustainable strategies and the benefits these strategies offer the environment and the corporate bottom line.Our speakers focused on the changes they have made to reach these outcomes. Attendees learned more about each organization’s efforts, such as: How every single product operated on Google Cloud is carbon neutral, from at-home Google Search to a large business running on Google Cloud Intel’s success in lowering its carbon footprint by 80% Workspot’s advanced power management on Google Cloud, which increases carbon reduction for compute resources by up to 72% compared to legacy VDI on-premise data centers running 24/7  Watch the full recording here:  

This week, Bruno invites a special guest to discuss the latest in AI, break down Gartner's latest "Spaghetti graphic" as well as discuss what can make Artificial Intelligence scale. Gartner shows Amazon as the #1 vendor this year and Google as the fastest mover of the top 4. Check out the details here.This CarCast covers:What’s the deal with Gartner’s latest "Spaghetti graphic": the latest database management vendors' positions have been released by Gartner.  Why should people care?! “How Can You Scale A.I”? Bruno explains the 3 attributes of a scalable Artificial Intelligence strategy.  In summary, how can your team make the "I" in AI bigger than the "A". A survey to get to the "Truth in AI": do the latest developments in A.I make you more hopeful or more worried?  See what others say and vote here.Have a great week!  ​​​​​​ 

Google Cloud certifications will allow you and your teams to strengthen your knowledge of Google Cloud products and help to transform your business. Certifications help employees grow into leadership positions in the workplace and offer other professional development opportunities that relate to the cloud. Both single classes and full learning paths that enhance your cloud skills are available, and there are specific Google Cloud certifications depending on the level of knowledge you wish to obtain. These classes and courses will cover the infrastructure of the cloud, and will also equip you with the skill set for a desired position. This article will cover the different certifications, certification levels, and possible positions and titles that you can work toward upon receiving your certification.  Foundational CertificationThe foundational certification does not require a technological background and provides you with a foundation for understanding Google cloud products, services, tools, and benefits. Recommended roles involve high collaboration with other team members who have a highly technical background. Cloud Digital Leader This certification provides you with the ability to articulate the main functionalities of Google products and services as well as how they fit into an organization. Overall, the Cloud Digital Leader role is rooted in explaining how Google can help to support the goals of a business and covers cloud computing basics. This certification tackles digital transformation with Google Cloud, infrastructure and application modernization, innovating with data, and Google Cloud security.  Associate CertificationAssociate certifications will provide you with the skill set to manage Google Cloud projects. This certification is ideal for a candidate who has prior experience with managing cloud enterprise solutions and monitoring cloud operations.Associate Cloud EngineersAssociate Cloud Engineers monitor and deploy applications. The Google Cloud Console is used to perform common tasks that are associated with managing enterprise solutions. Projects within the role leverage Google-managed or self-managed services within the cloud. This certification will help you prepare to set up a cloud environment, deploy a cloud solution, and configure security plans that are effective for cloud solutions.  Professional Cloud CertificationThis level of certification strengthens technical skills related to the design and implementation of the Cloud. Prior experience in deploying cloud solutions and setting up cloud environments is critical for the Professional Cloud Certification.Cloud Architect Professional Cloud Architects assist with organizations applying core Google Cloud products and services. Cloud architects design and implement cloud solutions that help a business to fulfill their goals and reach their objectives. Many of their responsibilities are rooted in designing and managing the cloud infrastructure. Other cloud skills you may obtain include optimizing technical business processes as well as configuring access and security.Cloud Database Engineer The Cloud Database Engineer manages Google Cloud solutions used by organizations to both retrieve and store data. The core responsibility of this role entails translating business objectives into scalable solutions that enhance a database. Other responsibilities a Cloud Database Engineer include migrating data solutions and deploying databases within the cloud. Cloud DeveloperA Cloud Developer creates applications using Google-recommended tools and approaches. The candidate for this role has prior experience with developer tools, managing services, and cloud-native applications. The applications are highly scalable and flexible. This certificate will enhance your understanding of managing deployed applications as well as building and testing applications to ensure their effectiveness. Data Engineer This role enables decision-making that is related to data. Data Engineers build and monitor data systems while also focusing on the security and compliance aspect of them. They also ensure that data systems are scalable to meet the needs of a business. Data Engineers also deploy and work with pre-existing machine learning models to strengthen solution quality. Building and designing data systems is the primary responsibility of this role. Cloud DevOps Engineer Cloud DevOps Engineers implement processes within the systems development life cycle using tools and methods that are recommended by Google. They build software delivery pipelines and maintain production systems while also balancing service reliability. Building pipelines for services, creating service monitoring strategies and optimizing service performance are also involved when being a Cloud DevOps Engineer.Cloud Security EngineerA Cloud Security Engineer designs secure workloads within the cloud. By examining best practices and using Google Cloud Technology, a Cloud Security Engineer develops a scalable as well as flexible infrastructure. The candidate for this certification should be knowledgeable in all aspects regarding cloud security, including organizational policies, access management, data protection, network security defenses, collecting Google Cloud logs, and dealing with incident responses. Managing cloud operations and ensuring security within the cloud environment is the primary responsibility of this role. Cloud Network Engineer A Cloud Network Engineer manages network architectures within the cloud. They may also work closely with architects who design the cloud infrastructure. Cloud Network Engineers use the Google Cloud Console to leverage experiences with network services, application neworks, and hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity. They also manage the security for the network architecture in order for successful cloud implementations to occur.Google Workspace Administrator This role transforms business objectives to policies and best practices that are accessed by users within the Cloud. By thoroughly understanding the infrastructure, the Google Workspace Administrator creates a collaborative environment where team members are working together and are able to efficiently access the data that they need. Through the use of programming languages and APIs, they develop workflows to ensure smooth communication within the cloud. Educating users, managing Workspace operations, and implementing Google Workspace access are daily tasks associated with the role. Other roles that are related to this certification include Cloud Solutions Engineer, IT System Administrator, and Collaboration Engineer. Machine Learning EngineerA Machine Learning Engineer builds machine learning models to solve business challenges using Google Cloud Technologies. An ML Engineer works with AI throughout the AI and ML development process and should be knowledgeable in the fields of data pipeline interaction, metrics interpretation, and model architecture. The candidate for this certification should also be familiar with other foundational concepts, including application development, data engineering, and infrastructure management. A Machine Learning Engineer creates scalable solutions that optimize performance by developing ML models, designing processing systems, and operating ML pipelines.

This week, Bruno shares lessons in entrepreneurship from Netflix, insights from the latest Gartner research and brings a special guest to talk about the Data Mesh.This CarCast covers:Why Netflix story is an example for culture and success of entrepreneurship.  The lessons of different thinking and perseverance. Gartner's latest research shows that budgets are up and the latest Gartner data trends point to 3 themes: 1) "from platforms to ecosystems”, “don’t forget the humans” and “think like a business” Finally, if you'd like to connect with Bruno live, you can meet him this Wednesday at the Commonwealth Club at the Everyday AI event.  For more, check out Bruno's blog here.Have a great week!    

Mark Templeton spent more than twenty years at Citrix Systems before leaving in 2015. Since then, he has served as an executive and board member at numerous companies in tech and beyond. In 2020, he joined C2C partner Workspot as Chairman and Director, which soon brought him into the C2C community as a guest at in-person events hosted in collaboration with Workspot. Mark’s years of experience and expertise as a leader in the IT space make his presence in our community a singular benefit to our members. To make that experience and expertise available to the rest of the C2C membership, we sat down with Mark for a wide-ranging conversation about the current enterprise software market and what software CIOs can do to help their businesses scale for long-term success. What's the most important trend currently defining the enterprise software/services market? We’re looking at a world now, if you're a CIO, where you have to have an opinion about the things you can control and the things you can’t, and how each of those contributes to the platform on which your business is built. That means you have to build systems that have the agility and flexibility and resilience to things that are out of your control, whether it’s a hurricane, a flood, any of these sort of geophysical things. Having a community of like-minded individuals to rely on is also important. Groups like C2C bring together technology and cloud users from across the globe to identify the latest trends on a daily basis. One ongoing discussion is about how the acceleration of enterprise SaaS across every segment in enterprise computing has become the reality. I think most enterprise CIOs have embraced it at some level, but it’s actually accelerating and picking up speed. What’s behind this acceleration of SaaS in recent years is of course the pandemic, and evolving work styles. Another huge element is the maturing of hyperscale clouds. It’s been amazing what’s happened in just the last five years in terms of the number of new services and what’s possible. The C2C community and team has facilitated discussions on this issue and will continue to do so as this issue gains steam. What makes this trend so significant? Consumerization of software is at the heart of driving and changing IT mindsets from meeting the minimum to actually going beyond and providing a consumer-like experience when it comes to enterprise computing. By adopting this “consume it yourself approach” it allows ITs energy, budget, etc. to be directed at business solutions to drive growth, reduce costs, increase velocity, protect IP, engage, retain talent, and more. Which vendors are leading this field? The one Google Cloud customer that’s a standout to me is Equifax. I served on the board of directors of Equifax for about ten years, including through the breach, and we had all of our own data centers and infrastructure, and we really were underestimating two things: our ability to stay ahead of the hackers and the bad guys and the role of hyperscale clouds when it came to security - which still holds true for lots of IT organizations. We came to understand that our less than ten global data centers were a fraction of the footprint and attack vector size of Google Cloud. Every day Google Cloud is attacked a thousand times more than our data centers, and as a result, as we all know, seeing attacks, detecting attacks, understanding attacks is what allows you to get ahead.We realized at Equifax we were never going to replicate that kind of a security model and competency, so we decided to go all in on Google Cloud, and not only has it created an amazing security consciousness and capability, it’s also allowed the company to create new business models. Equifax has been able to build a very sizable incremental business on Google Cloud as well as really accelerate the security profile of all of the existing business, so they’re definitely a leader.Some other examples are Intel and AMD, both of whom are C2C Global partners, because compute is a core part of any hyperscale cloud. Because of the AI and ML and the need to pipeline process tremendous amounts of data collaboratively across CPUs and GPUs, all of a sudden now, the network has become the new backplane for the worldwide computer.There are a lot of winners in the areas of enterprise SaaS and systems of record like ERP, HR, CRM, Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, etc. One that’s near and dear to my heart is the whole idea of the enterprise PC becoming a SaaS offering. That’s called a Cloud PC, and there leaders in Microsoft, Amazon, and Workspot, where all of a sudden with a PC computing utility you can use appliance-like devices for access, do it anywhere, and get a PC and workstation-like experience on them. There are new leaders being minted every single day that are too numerous to list. How should a CIO approach this trend? I think the first big approach the CIO has to take is to drive a mindset of change and growth, and do that by rejecting the inexorable power of inertia. Inertia is the number one thing that keeps organizations from embracing change. if you don’t have a CIO that’s got that tone at the top, everything else becomes difficult.CIOs must also embrace enterprise SaaS and dig in with the SaaS provider to understand how it’s built, because it does matter. You have to insist on cloud-native, because so many legacy ISVs have moved to the cloud with a lift-and-shift model, and the lift-and-shift model lacks a whole bunch of the native capabilities that clouds offer, like elasticity, like being very resilient to failure, and more.The third thing is not to adopt hybrid as a permanent state. The reason not to buy it is––I use this example: a plug-in hybrid. It has electric engines and it has gasoline engines. All of a sudden you took an automobile that has a hundred thousand parts and now you have a hundred and twenty-five thousand parts. That’s not the way to increase availability and reliability and lower costs. It’s about eliminating moving parts, so that’s why hybrid is a transitional tool in my opinion.The fourth thing in terms of approach is you’ve got to exist on multicloud support. You have to deeply inspect the cyber characteristics, and the readiness of the offering around cyber. And then I would sort of wrap up with something I think is close to the top of the list, and that is insist on full observability and transparency. That means you’ve got to really look at the telemetry that the SaaS offering has so that it can feed systems and allow you to answer the kind of business questions you need to answer when you’re at the C-suite table. Service levels around costs, around what systems are in greater use and what systems are in lesser use. There are just a lot of these business questions that I think today are pretty difficult for IT CIOs to answer which is why we rely on communities like C2C to connect and find answers. Extra Credit:  

Before Bryan Phillips, Senior Manager of Product Marketing at Telus International, arrived at the executive dinner for speakers at the 2023 C2C Global Cloud Adoption Summit in Toronto, Canada, he had hit a wall trying to enlist Google’s support in resolving challenges related to GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). At dinner, he was seated alongside SADA Associate CTO of Security Mike Laramie. When Bryan shared some of the technology he’s working on at Telus and the roadblocks he’s encountered, Mike surprised him. “You know what, Bry,” he said, “I think we can have a conversation and further this along, but I may have a solution for you.”“This is something we’ve been trying to track down for a while, and not having the support that we were hoping to get from Google. No slight to Google on this one, but it just wasn’t far enough up the apple tree to get the awareness that we needed. Now I’m able to talk to a community member and get experiences in what they do, and how they’ve overcome things,” Bryan says. “After the dinner the following day we pretty much hung out together and continued the conversation.”Keynote session with Kelsey HightowerAt the event itself, Bryan and Mike took part in a daylong interactive program featuring a diverse roster of C2C partners and some of Google Cloud’s biggest customers in Canada, where cloud itself is Google’s number one product area. The full program included a robust partner panel exploring industry perspectives on cloud security and unique customer solutions, a discussion about organizational change in a time of industry correction with Deloitte, and a customer panel and keynote interview with Google Principal Developer Advocate Kelsey Hightower.“Kelsey’s keynote and his engagement into this event was really worth its weight in gold. His insights, his experience, the way that he approaches things, it was fundamental,” says Bryan. “We tend to overthink, and we end up either pricing ourselves out of the equation or we make things way more complicated than they need to be, so listening to his methodology and his approach to how he looks at problems was really, really enlightening.” “The sense of the word community is something I experienced firsthand at this C2C event.” Bryan joined the event to participate in a session on RPA (Robotic Process Automation) technology with C2C partner Automation Anywhere. Networking afterward, Bryan was able to share some ideas with Islay Wright, Director of BI Product Management at Lightspeed. “They’re a small company compared to the massive amount of geography and customers they support, and so automation is really in their wheelhouse,” Bryan explains. “We talk a lot around the managed service opportunities that we can bring to the table, and being in North America, we could even put a team onsite for them if they wanted us to. With all the technology in the cloud, we could easily manage them from anywhere.”Automation Anywhere breakoutsession with Telus InternationalAs usual for a C2C event, this new connection was just one of many for the guests onsite. Bryan’s sales team started promising conversations with several new customer contacts. For other attendees who showed up just to hear Kelsey speak, new business opportunities were an unexpected benefit. Stefan Kolesnikowicz, Principal Site Reliability Engineer at Achievers, was pleased to meet current clients Bell and ScotiaBank, and to get firsthand feedback from customers who use his tool.“At this event, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I felt like I could reach out to the community members that were there and share the experiences that we have, whether they’re positive, negative, and literally get feedback,” Bryan says. “There was no NDA signed. We could speak freely knowing that we’re not there to steal each other’s business or take our customers away from each other. The sense of the word community and being in a safe environment is something I experienced firsthand at this C2C event.” Extra Credit:  

On March 23, 2023, C2C hosted its second Cloud Adoption Summit in Toronto, Canada. The event, one of C2C’s most well-attended to date, featured a full day of interactive live sessions, including breakouts hosted by C2C partners, a customer panel on lessons learned from the cloud adoption process, and a keynote address from Google Principle Developer Advocate Kelsey Hightower. Feedback from attendees has been unanimous: this was a standout event hosted by a one-of-a-kind community in the cloud space, where guests are free to discuss challenges openly and the opportunities to make authentic, meaningful connections are unmatched. The only way to take full advantage of the Cloud Adoption Summit experience is to attend on site, but for those who couldn’t, or want to relive it, we’ve collected video recordings of the live sessions below: Welcome from C2C and Google Cloud  Opening Keynote Session with Kelsey Hightower  Partner Panel: Industry Insights  Deloitte Keynote  Breakout Session: Automation Anywhere  Breakout Session: Pythian  Breakout Session: Palo Alto Networks  Customer Panel  Extra Credit:  

This week, Bruno shares best practices on leadership, key metrics on scaling startups and a few examples of organizations who have succeeded in data!This CarCast covers:Good Leadership vs Bad Leadership: Effective leaders map their decisions to principles. Effective leaders coach.  Effective leaders shine a light on fears and worries. What do startup CEOs do? How long does it take to go IPO?!  Did you know that the median equity raised through Series F is about $569M at a median post-money valuation of $2.9B?  Did you know that It takes about 9 years to get to Series F, with a new round every 15–19 months. Stories of great leaders: From PayPal to SquareSpace, leaders share their best practices in data here.Finally, if you'd like to connect with Bruno live, you can meet him at the EVERYDAY AI event on April 19, 2023 at the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco!Have a great week!  For more, check out Bruno's blog here. BestBruno

A company becomes the victim of ransomware every 11 seconds. Despite billions of dollars spent to thwart ransomware attacks, an astonishing 66% of companies fell victim to these attacks in 2021, according to Sophos's State of Ransomware 2022 report. Organizations must take precautions to stop attacks before they happen, because recovering from ransomware takes a minimum of 30 days.Ransomware numbers are rising everywhere—by attack volume, ransom demands, and average ransom payments. And as threat sophistication increases, virtually every industry is experiencing growing incident rates. No organization is immune. Although attacks may seem inevitable, defensive measures should always be in place, and they're most effective when paired with a strong ransomware recovery plan.Google, NetApp, and Workspot are working together to help customers create a ransomware recovery plan. By using a proven storage platform, innovative clean cloud, and global cloud PCs, they're able to restore productivity for thousands of users around the globe within minutes. At a recent 2Chat event, speakers from these companies discussed the impact of ransomware on organizations and how you can improve your storage options by: Creating an isolated project  Preparing regions for capacity  Provisioning cloud PCs globally  Connecting to NetApp CVS for secure access to files and data Watch a full recording of the conversation here:  

In a recent AMA with C2C, Google Cloud, and Zazmic, members of the Startups community brought questions, solutions, or roadblocks that they wanted to work through and discuss with the leaders of Zazmic. This AMA (Ask Me Anything) welcomed startups who are currently enrolled in the Google for Startups Cloud Program and have questions or need assistance using Google Cloud tools.At this 2Chat, our speakers covered:Assistance using Google Cloud tools An overview of the Google for Startups Cloud Program Tips on how to scale your companyWatch the full recording here:  Not enrolled in the Google for Startups Cloud Program? You could be eligible for access to startup leaders, Cloud cost coverage (up to $100,000 for each of the first two years), technical training, business support, and Google-wide offers. To receive benefits, you must have an active Google Cloud account.Apply here.Browse our previous Google Cloud Startups content and join the C2C Startups Community to continue the conversation.

This week, Bruno breaks down Data Quality, shares the latest in tech spending and highlights the success of key data leaders you should know and follow.This CarCast covers:Data Quality attributes: Only about 1/3 of data and analytics organizations get value from their data.  Why?  Data quality.  Bruno gives you a set of questions you can ask to assess the quality of your data...questions are about Data itself, People...and the Actions taken on the data...the best acronym he came up with was DPA for DQ.  Do you have a better one?! Cloud Software Spending, March 2023: 3 key insights you can afford to miss (budget split between people and tech, priority hiring and priority investments) Stories of great leaders: From Orange France to Richemont, to Cartier to Geotab, learn about the stories of data leaders in your field.Finally, this coming week, you'll have two ways to connect with Bruno, in person at Data Cloud Live Summit in Toronto and online where he'll discuss Harvard Business Review's latest stats on Data, AI and Analytics.   Have a great week!  For more, check out Bruno's blog here.  

Fun fact: Google Cloud announced its first product, App Engine, on April 7, 2008, making Google Cloud as a whole the pioneering, go-getter zodiac sign that is Aries. To honor C2C’s roots with Google Cloud, we're launching a new series of weekly horoscopes during Aries season, the first sign in the zodiac calendar. As the customer community, we want to enable connections between members, and sometimes that works best when we get to know ourselves first.But learning about the practice of astrology can be intimidating, so we’re here to put it in simple terms that anyone can understand—Google Cloud products!You can find your sun sign according to your birth date. From there, read on and let us know if you resonate with your Google Cloud product match. AriesMarch 21 to April 19 The Aries in your life is the one who is never at rest. An Aries is always at work on a project, absorbed in a game, or battling it out in an argument. Activity is an Aries’ comfort zone, and preparation and delay are their kryptonite. With Google Kubernetes Engine, your containers and clusters can automatically run and scale with no time lost on management or operations. Just like the Aries in your life, GKE is like a fire that burns until the fuel (or your per-pod billing budget) runs out.  TaurusApril 20 to May 20 If there is one thing a Taurus cares about, it’s comfort. A Taurus likes to make a firm plan and follow through without any interruptions or last-minute changes. You can count on a Taurus to be there for you when they say they will, but whatever you do, don’t flake on them. A Taurus is basically a human Security Command Center. With a Taurus, everything is always compliant, nothing is ever too vulnerable, and all threats are identified and eliminated immediately. That way, all your Taurus ever has to do is kick back and chill.  GeminiMay 21 to June 20 Like most air signs, that Gemini friend or family member will want to talk your ear off as they have a passion for intellectual conversations. They are rooted in the exchange of ideas, and the need to express themselves is not a trait they shy away from. This sign is just as interested in collecting information as they share it, which is why there is no surprise that a Gemini would be closely associated with Google’s Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech products that convert natural-sounding speech to text and vice versa. Geminis—as symbolized by twins—and these two Google products have a strong sense of duality and are associated with effective communication.   CancerJune 21 to July 22 The sensitive and emotional ones of the water signs, Cancers enjoy comfort and a sense of familiarity around them. They prefer to blend with their environments, making a hybrid or multicloud management platform like Anthos perfect for a Cancer’s complexity. Often thinking about nostalgic moments in life, Cancers are often caught up in reminisce, and likely appreciate the ability to bring their existing apps onto Anthos to scale and modernize their roots. Cancers and Anthos operate through consistency and routined patterns to achieve their goals.    LeoJuly 23 to August 22 Leos are people with ambitious goals and idealistic beliefs. They honor their commitments and work long and hard to see them through. When it comes to initiatives like sustainability, Leo is the sign you want in charge. That’s why Google Cloud’s Carbon Footprint is the product that suits Leo most. As Carbon Footprint reduces workload emissions and tracks footprint data, Leo is free to focus on the hard work of saving the planet, which will bring us that much closer to what Leos love most: a long, luxurious rest.  VirgoAugust 23 to September 22 For Virgos, knowledge is power. A Virgo needs to be in the know, up to date, and without a doubt at all times; otherwise, they’ll feel too out of touch to focus on what they need. That’s why a product like Cloud Monitoring feels like such a natural complement to the Virgo in your life. The last thing any Virgo wants is stress. With the uptime monitoring and metrics Cloud Monitoring offers for your applications’ performance, availability, and health, Virgos have all the insight they need to be their best selves.  LibraSeptember 23 to October 22 One weekend they’re reading their favorite novel and cooking a home-cooked meal, the next they may be off in Las Vegas with their closest friends partying up a storm. We’re talking about the social butterfly, Libra. Represented by the scales, Libras are all about balance and doing a little bit of everything, so they’re always ready for the unexpected. Libras and Cloud Load Balancing platform can juggle a large amount of tasks and activities at once. Whether it’s HTTP or TCP balancing, this tool ensures seamless deployment of deliverables. Similarly, the Libra in your life is multi-dimensional and may have a diverse set of interests or hobbies.    ScorpioOctober 23 to November 21 If you want a burst of fiery energy, just talk to any Scoripo. Though they are a water sign, Scorpios are known for their intensity and have no problem throwing themselves into unfamiliar situations. With their confidence and ability to handle confrontation, they are intrigued by the darker side of life. Scorpios aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and can harness their own power even when operating behind the scenes, like Google Cloud’s Firewall. This Google product delivers granular control and ensures protection through networking fabric that is implemented throughout each workload. Scorpios and Firewall aren’t afraid to tackle threats head-on while still keeping their composure.   SagittariusNovember 22 to December 21 Sagittarius is the second most impulsive zodiac sign. Sagittarians are outgoing, unafraid to take risks, and quick both to anger and to forgive. If a Sagittarius was an app, therefore, it would almost certainly be no-code. A Sagittarius is not one to put painstaking thought into design and planning; a Sagittarius simply acts. Luckily, when a Sagittarius takes a shot, it usually hits the mark, making the Sagittarius in your life as reliable as the no-code development platforms available from AppSheet.  CapricornDecember 22 to January 19 A Capricorn is a sign with a strong awareness of its place in the world. Like all Earth signs, Capricorns are grounded, but more so even than other Earth signs, Capricorns want to remain rooted in their surroundings and respond to them accordingly. Consequently, a Capricorn—the most resourceful of the signs—would likely feel very comfortable with a product like Cloud Run, which allows you to run code in any language on a fully-managed platform and access resources in any of your network projects. That Cloud Run is pay-per-use also makes it a practical option any Earth sign would appreciate.  AquariusJanuary 20 to February 18 Looking forward to growth and personal progress comes naturally to an Aquarius. If you engage with an Aquarius, you’ll be quick to notice their wit and intellectuality. With advancement constantly on their minds, Aquarians are always searching for ways to self-improve and to share their knowledge with others. This makes an Aquarius like Looker, which organizes the world’s information and makes it accessible to all users. Don’t be surprised if you see them researching the latest fitness trends, online shopping to improve their aesthetic, or delivering insights to make the best business decisions. Aquarians and Looker are always striving to find out new pieces of information and determine new methods to get the job done!  PiscesFebruary 19 to March 20 Being receptive, spiritual, and impressionable, Pisces has an open mind and an open heart. Represented by two fish swimming in opposite directions, a Pisces will often feel as though they are being pulled by changes in their environment. However, this is what also makes them great at adapting, much like Vertex AI, which is able to scale machine learning models faster with fully managed tools. Both Vertex AI and Pisces are fluid and are able to operate quickly with new information or, perhaps, new ML model training and APIs. 

This week, Bruno demystifies the definition of innovation.  What is it and how should you evaluate it?  He quotes the great Clayton Christensen and points to his book, the Innovator's Dilemma.This CarCast covers:Highlights of the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit 2023: did you know that only 34% of D&A organizations are consistently able to produce clear business value?! The Top 10 Data, AI and Analytics Trends: from the Modern Data Stack under pressure to the new political economy of AI. The “Lift and Shift Shot Clock”: The longer you hold onto legacy practices in the new game of cloud computing, the less likely you’ll win.For more resources, links and photos, check out Bruno's blog here. 

FinOps—or cloud financial operations—is the practice of embedding financial accountability, management, and cost optimization within engineering teams. FinOps is growing in importance and relevance among financial and engineering teams alike.A recent Forrester report predicts that over 90% of organizations are overspending on cloud costs due to several factors, including lack of skills and over-provisioned resources. CIOs, business leaders, and the media are all talking about FinOps in 2023. Interest in FinOps is growing at an unprecedented rate, especially given recent economic fluctuations.C2C had the opportunity to host Sasha Kipervarg and Ken Cheney to bring their perspective about FinOps to the C2C community. Sasha is the co-founder and CEO of Ternary, the world's first native FinOps cloud cost optimization tool built for Google Cloud on Google Cloud. Ken Cheney is a business leader and advisor to SaaS and cloud vendors, large enterprise, and the government. During this informal chat, you will learn about the importance of: Accountability and enablement of cloud optimization Implementing this optimization via policies and useful resources (such as Ternary) that can help you:  tag resources (every workload, every cluster)  track untagged resources  track the biggest spenders and stay on top of the fluctuations in these costs  Reporting (the earlier the better) for aggregating spend and arriving at a total cost for various teams Setting reporting to make planning and forecasting easier.Watch the full recording here:  

This week, Bruno breaks down what matters and what doesn't matter in the world of Data (he's brought a special guest to help him out too!). This week, Bruno was featured in Harvard Business Review and he points to some of the latest research from that piece: for instance, did you know that 81% of organizations have increased their data and analytics investment over the past two years?!This CarCast covers:What To Pay Attention To & What To Ignore. Gartner's 2023 Emerging Tech and Trends Impact Radar is out!  The graphic and research behind it contains a lot of trends. One tip: look for the biggest bubble, closest to the center.  What To Expect at the 2023 Gartner Data & Analytics Summit.  Data Fabric, Data Products & Data Engineering are some of the trends to watch out for this week. Read Philip Russom's post to find out more here. Data Leaders You Can't Afford Not To Know or Follow.  Bruno points to the incredible journeys of Data Leaders at Carrefour, L'Oreal, Yves Saint Laurent, Groupe Rocher, Kerin, Swarovski & Servier and ways to connect with them here, here and here!And finally, if you are planning on attending the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit at the end of the month, don't hesitate to connect with Bruno and let him know if you'd like to meet in person, at sessions or the various Data, AI and analytics gatherings throughout the week!Analytically yours,Bruno

After hearing the NEXT’22 presentation about validating an organization’s security posture, I was intrigued to find out more, specifically about the trends contributing to the growing complexity and real-world examples of solutions to these challenges. This C2C 2Chat grew out of this interest to find out more about this growing complexity, especially in multicloud environments, and to uncover how Anthos has helped in real-life instances.Google Cloud Innovator Champions and Fellows Jason Quek and Vincent Ledan joined from Sweden and France respectively to elaborate on this topic. Both are Anthos Fellows and as such are passionate about evangelizing about Google Cloud and Anthos and how the latter can help with security problems, including cloud-native security and platform engineering.    This event was a master class in Anthos and security, exploring factors adding complexity to the security landscape and to the very real concerns of organizations worldwide, including:How do I keep my applications running in a highly available manner and protect them against attacks?  How do I secure environments that span multiple clouds and also live on prem?  How can I most effectively secure clusters at scale? It’s easy to secure one or two clusters, but with so many options available for configuration, how do I do so most effectively?Together with my colleague Dimitris connecting from Greece, and our members from Asia Pacific, we were privileged to hear about real-life examples and solutions from our expert panelists from Scandinavia and Central Europe.  I am thrilled to have hosted this chat from my home in Sydney Australia and am in awe of the power of a truly global community like C2C, to bring members together to learn, but also to drive change that ultimately benefits customers (refer to the example and commentary on the final question).0:00 - 06:45 | Welcome and Introductions 07:30 - 12:30 | Challenges modern organizations face contributing to security landscape complexity: Organizations are looking to prevent malicious software supply chains, e.g. rogue containers running in a cluster; ensuring that all development teams use the same level of security; how to create network segregation given a cluster and network policy. We discussed Google’s controls (e.g. binary utilization) that allow management of containers in clusters, without creating bottlenecks in development teams. Platform Engineering teams are focussed on security at scale across multiple clouds,  beyond DevSecOps or even DevOps.  12.45 - 14:45 | How is the Anthos ecosystem responding to the challenges: Defense in Depth - creating multiple layers of defense; Critical functionality that exists within the Anthos ecosystem, like the Anthos Policy Controller based on the OPA Open Policy Agent ensuring that clusters are always pulling the latest security policies available via a controlled, auditable, and central repository that’s always up to date. On the Application side, there’s Anthos Service Mesh, ensuring the right microservices are talking to each other across multi-tenant workspaces. In this sense, a Defense-in-Depth approach with Anthos spans multiple layers of defense, including binary authorization, OPA gateways, and across Service Mesh.  14:45 - 17:45 | Common mistakes: Without these security mechanisms, organizations create opportunities for exposure, configuration mistakes, and developer mistakes in a cluster that might lead to leakage of private data, or the ability to retrieve logs of common shared nodes. It becomes important for developers and not just Kuberneters administrators to understand eviction logic, scheduling logic, and mitigation strategies. 18:00 -  30:00 | Actionable Tips and Examples, Validate security posture: When dealing with a multicloud mesh of clusters, a proven tip is to incorporate, as part of the cluster creation step, pulling out the security policies from a GIT repository.  Create landing zones for each of the environments to provide coverage for the intricacies of each cloud. Once these landing zones are set up, Anthos does the rest, resulting in a Kubernetes compliant cluster.  Use Anthos service mesh. Engage support and problem-solving. Support paths for Google-supported products. Consider the implications of an incubating fast-moving open-source software product like Istio for support and the ability to respond quickly. Reduce complexity and leverage the tools available, e.g. IAM security.  Consider security early on. In this particular example, implementing network security after a few deployments proved very difficult (and costly) Greater investment and focus are needed to effectively stress test and pen test clusters. 31:00 - 33:00 | Examples of container-aware load balancing and traffic encryption between services. 33:00 - 35:00 | Wrap up by Erika 35:00 - 44:00 | Q&A  Question from Ben from Brisbane Australia regarding Gatekeeper policies and book: Answer made reference to a book titled Google Anthos in Action, including a very practical chapter on Security and Policies and real-world use cases. Google Anthos in Action was written by a team of twenty-three Googlers involved with Anthos development and Anthos fellows assisting customers in the field, including our very own speaker Jason Quek, and also Scott Surovich, Google Cloud Fellow and Global Container Engineering Lead at HSBC. Here is the link to look inside the book. Discussion regarding much-needed standardization across public cloud providers: Answer made reference to https://www.pulumi.com/ as an example. Thoughts on how to kick off standardization conversations: we need large customers to band together and push for constructive dialogue across the cloud providers seeking a unified interface. There is a real-world precedent that this approach works. For example, in Germany, a number of banks banded together and negotiated with Google to deliver something specific that involved exposing specific processes that wouldn’t have been possible on a 1:1 negotiation.   43:00 - 44:30 | Closing and thank you Watch a full recording of the event here:  

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