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End user computing devices account for 1% of greenhouse gas emissions. This may not sound like a lot, but it’s far too much if we want to change the course of our planet’s future. Fortunately, sustainability is a top-ranking trend across the business landscape, and Michael Wyatt, Head of Google’s Chrome Enterprise in EMEA, was happy to join C2C Global’s Clean Clouds Happy Earth event to tell our members about using Chrome OS to practice Sustainable IT.Chrome has committed to more sustainable manufacturing, consumption, and downstream practices for managing its products, integrating sustainability into the entire device lifecycle. Chrome’s manufacturing partners are producing more sustainable devices, including the first made entirely from ocean-bound plastics. Chromebooks also use up to 46% less energy than competitors. If other vendors adopt these practices, and customers make it a priority to invest in these resources, the goal of a sustainable future will be that much easier to achieve.After reviewing Chrome’s commitments, Wyatt introduced two case studies submitted by Chrome customers. Kingston & Sutton Council partnered with Citrix, Chrome, and Acer to update its systems and reduce their energy consumption by one third. Nordic Choice Hotels converted 2,000 windows PCs to chrome using OS Flex in one weekend after suffering a ransomware attack to adopt more secure software without investing in any new machines. The company distributed one-pagers to all of its hotels and each location’s staff migrated their machines onsite. As these stories demonstrate, sustainability is achievable for any organization willing to work proactively with Chrome.Watch a full video of Wyatt’s presentation below:  Extra Credit:  

What does it take to build resiliency into your supply chain in a world full of potential crises? With the complexities of world health, geopolitics, and the labor market, no one person can expect to predict every obstacle; however, we can broaden the scope of our data to make better-informed decisions.Louisa Loran is the Director for Supply Chain and Logistics in Industry Solutions at Google Cloud and brings in Google’s technology and thinking to transform and solve for businesses’ supply chains. Loran explains that using Google Cloud accelerators, companies can open new forms of collaboration by breaking down data silos to access geospatial information, media sentiment, and assessments for raw material risks.Watch Louisa’s presentation from C2C Global’s Clean Clouds, Happy Earth event below:  Extra Credit: 

Certifications are a Google Cloud user’s keys to success. Google Cloud’s many certifications provide the training and expertise practitioners need to identify and excel in their career paths, and certifications help employers and industry decision-makers find the talent that sets their teams apart from the competition.This C2C Connect was hosted by Devoteam, a foundational platinum partner of C2C and Google Cloud Premier Partner. Devoteam has an ambition to encourage consultants to become fully certified on Google Cloud, being well versed in multiple disciplines, and has four consultants who have done it, with two of them being Anthos fellows. The presenters shared reasons for why they think this is important and their methodology and support system they have built to roll this out to 400 consultants world wide.The recording from this session includes the topics listed below, plus nearly twenty minutes of open Q&A from community members present at the live event:(0:00) Introduction to the session from @Alfons, C2C (1:50) Introduction on Devoteam and our presenters, Jason Quek, Global CTO of Devoteam G Cloud, and Niels Buekers, CTO of Devoteam G Cloud Benelux & UKI (5:10) Session overview on the why, what, and how: continuous learning, business value, and leading by example by building the best talent on Google Cloud to serve customers (9:00) Why continuous learning is necessary for building trust (11:35) Testing your theoretical knowledge and preparing for certification exams (18:25) How Devoteam uses gamification (leaderboards) to award exam vouchers and why they celebrate newly certified exam-takers (27:40) Gaining hands-on experience and qualifying for cloud jobs (30:15) Mentorship programs and study sessions (32:15) Leading by example and the goal of becoming fully certified (33:45) Final thoughts and community Q&AWatch the full recording of the conversation below: 

In 2019, Emily Ma, Head of Google Cloud’s Food for Good program, began her journey as a Googler conducting waste audits. Every day, Ma and her team members would collect every trash bag in their Google facility, cordon it off in a designated outdoor space, and sort through all of it piece by piece. The goal of this process was to categorize the waste to understand what the Googlers in the building threw away every day. One particular insight emerged very quickly: office workers, like people everywhere, waste a lot of food.When Ma was working on supply chain hardware, she says, waste yields of less than 95% were considered “unconscionable.” By comparison, she adds with emphasis, “The food system has a 60% yield.” Ma started multiple teams at Google to enhance transparency for supply chains within the company and beyond. They used tens of thousands of video recordings of people throwing away food to build computer vision algorithms that recognize trends in food waste disposal. These trends align with what we already know: “Our food system is designed to overproduce.”Since 2014, Google Food has successfully saved 10 Million pounds of food waste, which is equivalent to over 25,000 pounds of carbon and 1.25 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all Google office spaces with water for 5 years. “There is a genius in setting out bold goals,” says Ma. By 2025, Google plans to reduce food waste per Googler by 50%, and divert all of that food waste away from landfill, where it would otherwise emit methane gas. To do so, Ma’s teams plans to focus their efforts in five areas: sourcing and procurement, operations optimization, user behavior change, physical infrastructure, and food recovery.In 2019, Google made a commitment to “circularity” to maximize reuse of finite resources in Google’s operations and empower others to do the same. Google is also the anchor funder for a $10 million catalytic grant through ReFED, the premiere food waste research organization in the United States. To learn more about these and the other efforts Ma has taken on with Google Food, watch the presentation she gave at C2C Global’s Clean Clouds, Happy Earth event below:  Extra Credit:  

On April 12, 2022, C2C France Team Leads Antoine Castex (@antoine.castex) and Guillaume Blaquiere (@guillaume blaquiere) were excited to welcome Policy Intelligence Product Manager Vandhana Ramadurai to join a powerful session for the Google Cloud space in France and beyond. These sessions intend to bring together a community of cloud experts and customers to connect, learn, and shape the future of cloud. The following points summarize the key takeaways from Ramadurai’s presentation: Policy Intelligence is a suite of 4 major tools which simplify security and IAM (identity and access management) at the project, folder, and organization levels. IAM Recommender analyses, understands, and proposes new roles after an observation period of 90 days. The feature uses AI to increase recommendation accuracy. The least privilege principle is important, but can be complex to enforce at project, folder, and organization level. IAM Recommender helps in that respect, and users can easily enforce or roll back the recommendation with a simple click (or API call). IAM Simulator is a solution for users or organizations who may not trust AI to enforce recommendations. Users can manage IAM policy changes and simulate their potential impact.  User accounts or service accounts may not have the permissions required to execute certain actions. IAM Troubleshooter understands mission roles and permissions and grants those required, without breaking the least privilege principle. IAM Analyser, the final tool in the Policy Intelligence suite, lists the permissions granted a user to access a certain resource, the account assigned a specific permission or role, or a combination of both. This tool is particularly useful for auditing granted permissions. The Policy Intelligence tools continue to evolve to include all the developing features in the IAM space (denied policy, for example). In the future, the flagship product, IAM recommender, will include more ability to customize the duration of the observation period. Despite its 60-minute time limit, this conversation didn’t stop. Policy Intelligence is a hot topic, and it certainly kept everyone’s attention. The group spent time discussing asset inventory, AI and ML modeling, and various topics in IAM including security, least privilege, and trust. Ramadurai also fielded questions from attendees, including Damien Morellet (@dmorellet) of SFEIR, who wanted to know if Policy Intelligence includes a dry run feature (it does!). Watch the full video of the event below to learn more about this suite of tools and the many features and use cases of each one:  Preview What's Next These upcoming C2C events will cover other major topics of interest that didn’t make it to the discussion floor this time around:  Extra Credit Looking for more Google Cloud products, news, and resources? We got you. The following links were shared with attendees and are now available to you!  https://youtu.be/IAhJs3-0RoY IAM Recommander IAM Simulator IAM Troubleshooter IAM Analyser

The centerpiece of C2C’s virtual Earth Day conference, Clean Clouds, Happy Earth, was a panel discussion on sustainability in EMEA featuring C2C and Google Cloud partners HCL and AMD and cosmetics superpower L’Oreal. Moderated by Ian Pattison, EMEA Head of Sustainability Practice at Google Cloud, the conversation lasted the better part of an hour and explored a range of strategies for enabling organizations to build and run sustainable technology on Google Cloud.According to Sanjay Singh, Executive VP of the Google Cloud Ecosystem Unit at HCL technologies, when advising customers across the value chain evaluating cloud services, Google Cloud becomes a natural choice because of its focus on sustainable goals. Connecting customers to Google Cloud is a key part of HCL’s broader program for maintaining sustainable business practices at every organizational level. “What you cannot measure, you cannot improve” says Singh, which is why HCL has created systems to measure every point of emission under their purview for carbon footprint impact. In alignment with Google Cloud’s commitment to run a carbon-free cloud platform by 2030, HCL plans to make its processes carbon neutral in the same timeframe.Suresh Andani, Senior Director of Cloud Vertical Marketing at AMD, serves on a task force focused on defining the company’s sustainability goals as an enterprise and as a vendor. As a vendor, AMD prioritizes helping customers migrate to the cloud itself as well as making its compute products (CPUS and GPUS) more energy efficient, which they plan to do by a factor of 30 by 2025. On the enterprise side, Andani says, AMD relies on partners and vendors, so making sure AMD as an organization is sustainable expands to its ecosystem of suppliers. One of the biggest challenges, he says, is to measure partners’ operations. This challenge falls to AMD’s corporate responsibility team.Health and beauty giant L’Oreal recently partnered with Google Cloud to run its beauty tech data engine. In the words of architect Antoine Castex, a C2C Team Lead in France, sustainability at L’Oreal is all about finding “the right solution for the right use case.” For Castex, this means prioritizing Software as a Service (SaaS) over Platform as a Service (PaaS), and only in the remotest cases using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). He is also emphatic about the importance of using serverless architecture and products like AppEngine, which only run when in use, rather than running and consuming energy 24/7.For Hervé Dumas, L’Oreal’s Sustainability IT Director, these solutions are part of what he calls “a strategic ambition,” which must be common across IT staff. Having IT staff dedicated to sustainability, he says, creates additional knowledge and enables necessary transformation of the way the company works. As Castex puts it, this transformation will come about when companies like L’Oreal are able to “change the brain of the people.”As Castex told C2C in a follow-up conversation after the event, the most encouraging takeaway from the panel for L’Oreal was the confirmation that other companies and tech players have “the same dream and ambition as us.” Watch a full recording of the conversation below, and check back to the C2C website over the next two weeks for more content produced exclusively for this community event.  Also, if you’re based in EMEA and want to connect with other Google Cloud customers and partners in the C2C community, join us at one of our upcoming face-to-face events:  Extra Credit:  

On April 21, 2022, C2C hosted a live virtual Earth Day conference dedicated to all things sustainability in the cloud. Built around a live panel of C2C and Google Cloud customers and partners, the Clean Clouds, Happy Earth program also included a series of sessions featuring Google representatives, exploring different use cases and topics of high priority for all collaborators on the shared mission to bring about a clean and happy future for the cloud and the Earth. Over the next three weeks, we’ll be publishing these sessions on our website for you to view, share, and discuss with the rest of the C2C community. The video below is a presentation from Jenny Fernandez, Google Cloud’s Human Truths Lead in EMEA, about using data on human consumption patterns to inform more sustainable business and technical solutions:  Check back to this page in the coming days for more of the content produced for this event, and please feel free to share your own thoughts here or directly to our community. Extra Credit:  

The Google Cloud certifications program offers career-enhancing training and testing for professionals in all areas of cloud technology. Data, infrastructure, and security are often topics of particular interest for those investigating these options, but developers make up one of the biggest and most vibrant communities in the world of Google Cloud. Sebastian Moreno is a Google partner engineer and the author of the Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Developer Exam Guide. In this C2C Connect event, Sebastian joins us to share his insights and field questions directly from C2C members interested in taking this exam. Questions answered and topics explored include: (0:00) Introducing Sebastian and the Professional Cloud Developer exam (4:45) Who is the target of the Professional Cloud Developer certification? (7:30) Does the Professional Cloud Developer exam include case studies? (9:30) The Professional Cloud Developer exam, DevOps, and related certifications (19:30) Preparing for the Professional Cloud Developer exam with Pluralsight and other labs (24:00) How difficult is the Professional Cloud Developer exam? (28:00) What tools does a data professional need to take the Professional Cloud Developer exam? (31:40) Retaining knowledge gained while studying for the Professional Cloud Developer exam (37:30) The Professional Cloud Developer exam and career advancement Watch the full recording of the conversation below:  

Druva Reddy, a Solutions Architect specializing in ML at Google Cloud, discussed Vertex AI, which brings all of Google Cloud’s ML services together under one unified UI and API. In Vertex AI, you can now easily train and compare models using AutoML or custom code training and store all of your models in one central model repository. In this overview session, Druva covered some major components of the Vertex AI platform, from training to prediction to MLOps services. This recording also includes a demo of an end-to-end example that shows these services in action.Review all parts of the presentation, including:(00:00) Introduction to Google Cloud Startups team (05:05) Introduction to functional solutions with AI (10:15) ML on GCP with Vertex AI What’s included in Vertex AI Choosing the right tools or pre-trained models Low/No code (25:55) Operationalizing ML MLOps, life cycle, and framework Using Vertex AI with MLOps (32:55) Vertex AI demo (44:05) Open community questions  Extra credit: Google Cloud Vertex AI Docs Get started in Cloud Console Best practices for implementing machine learning on Google Cloud To connect with Druva, reach out to him directly in the Google Cloud Startups community and tag @Druva Reddy 

On March 17, 2022, the C2C Connect: UK and I group, led by Charlotte Moore (@charlotte.moore), Andy Yates (@andy.yates), Fintan Murphy (@fintan.murphy), Paul Lees (@paul.less), Sathy Sannasi (sathyaram_s.), and Yasin Quareshy (YasinQuareshy), invited Google Cloud Developer Advocate Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine to join them for an hour-long session on Site Reliability Engineering. The group’s monthly sessions bring together a local community of cloud experts and customers to connect, learn, and shape the future of cloud.  60 Minutes Summed Up in 60 Seconds  Pouchkine started the session by citing a number of publications and books on SRE, and then introduced the focus of the session: the Service Management aspect of SRE, and how it is applied at Google. Next, Pouchkine introduced DevOps Research Assessment (DORA), which helps measure how an organization compares to the best organizations in its delivery of its services, and how close the organization is to becoming an elite performer. Pouchkine shared key metrics DORA uses to measure a team's software delivery performance and explained how to set up an environment using FourKeys (available on GitHub) to implement workload measurement methods. To demonstrate practical implementation, Pouchkine introduced Pic-A-Daily App as a SRE use case. Pic-A Daily App is a photo recognition app that tags an image into a searchable category and an event driven microservice app with several delivery components. Next, Pouchkine gave his definition of SRE, making reference to the billions of users of Google's services and the 2,500 SREs responsible for the reliability of these services. He also discussed balancing reliability with agility. Pouchkine discussed tools, infrastructure observability, and culture in detail, citing the following key metrics used to measure impacts on a customer:  Service Level Indicator (SLI), which captures metrics that impact a customer, e.g. availability, latency. Service Level Objective (SLO), or the quality of service promised, e.g. error budget. Service Level Agreement (SLA), a business driven metric not used by the SRE. Pouchkine also discussed some recommended SRE best practices to follow: Versioning your software. Having multiple versions of software deployed and ready to serve requests if needed.   Canary Blue/Green deployments to provide flexibility and confidence in rolling back releases (if required) and A/B testing your software. Google Cloud Tools discussed that help diagnose and remediate faults. Having a centralized view of things rather than using multiple locations to identify issues. The climax of the session was a demo of Pic-A Daily App demonstrating how the tooling and SLO metrics can be used to identify and diagnose a fault. Tools that support the SRE include monitoring, error reporting, debugger, logging, traces, and profiler The session closed with a Q&A and some available resources on the topic.  Watch the full recording of this event below:  Despite its 60-minute time limit, this conversation didn’t stop. What are your thoughts on SRE, Service Management, DORA, or any of the other topics discussed above? Reply in the comments below or start a new topic on our group page.Be sure to sign up for C2C and join our C2C Connect: UK and Ireland group to connect with Google Cloud customers and experts based in the UK & Ireland and beyond Extra Credit  SRE Resources  DORA at C2C

On Thursday, March 10, C2C DACH Community Manager Dimitris Petrakis (@Dimitris Petrakis) hosted a powerful event with Patrizia 'Pati' Jurek  (DevRel Regional Lead DACH, WTM Europe Lead, Google) focusing on the different Google Developer Communities. 60 Minutes in 60 seconds (3:05) Who We AreJurek began her presentation by explaining what the DevRel (Developer Relations) team really is: an on-the-ground network of developers overlooking engineering programs and community managers who drive various global programs that follow the “1:few:many” model. (4:20) What We DoThe main goal of DevRel is to nurture influencers and their communities everywhere to boost Google technology advocacy, adoption, quality, and perception. (5:21) How do Google Developers support communities?Google Developers support communities through learning, mentoring, and business building. The community is very diverse, with people coming from a huge variety of different backgrounds, such as enterprises, startups, and etc. They partner with communities, Women in Tech leads, Google technology experts, startups, and more to provide them with the resources and guidance they need to be successful in building on Google. (7:43) Video Presentation: "Google Developers: Community Connect 2021After her initial overview, Jurek shared a short video to give attendees a better understanding of what it means to be a part of this bigger community. (11:46) Google Developers: Developer Ecosystem TeamThe DevRel team spans 30 countries and connects with developers in over 140. Jurek presented analysis on these numbers, as well as the benefits gained by further developing communities worldwide and by engaging with top startups in strategic and up-and-coming markets. (14:00) Community ProgramsJurek introduced the different Google Community programs––GDG (Google Developer Groups), GDSC (Google Developer Student Clubs), GDE (Google Developer Experts), and WTM (Women Techmakers)––and then explained in detail their statistics and numbers (countries, groups, events annually, developers reached, content reads, public speaking events and workshops, ambassadors, women in tech reached) as well as the events they host, where they are organised, when, by whom, and what they contain. (22:08) Why does Google have Developer Groups?Three words: Connect, Learn, Grow! Developer community is about meeting other local developers and those interested in developer technologies, learning about a wide range of technical topics and new skills, and applying new learnings and connections to build great products and advance your skills, career, and network. (28:43) Google Developers ExpertsGoogle Developer Experts are a global network of highly experienced technology influencers who actively support developers, companies and communities. GDEs are independent volunteers who do not work for Google in any capacity. (47:34) Google Developer Student ClubsGDSCs are university based community groups for students interested in Google's developer technology. (52:25) Women TechmakersWTM engages over 100,000 women in tech across 190 countries each year. WTM provides visibility, community and resources for women in technology across all career levels to drive innovation and participation in the industry. (56:44) Become a Google Cloud Developer HeroGoogle Developer Heroes showcase and celebrate the innovation and career development of their teams, meet and exchange ideas with Google execs, cloud solution experts and product teams, and join Google tech communities or become Experts to grow skills, mentor fellow developers, and partake in exclusive Google projects. Watch the full recording of the event below: Extra Credit   

Scott Wilson, Co-Founder of QA Wolf and former Senior Director of Product Marketing for Wyze Labs, presented during a tactical Deep Dive all about getting your product followed, liked, loved, and reviewed. This hour-long session covered actionable steps and expert tips on positioning your product and connecting with your audience using product journey examples from Scott’s work at Wyze, including:(00:00) About C2C and Google Cloud Startups (02:50) Introduction to Scott Wilson, his experience at Wyze, and agenda overview for his best practices for product positioning (08:45) Step 1: Create a remarkable solution that surpasses your users’ expectations Defining “solution” as product plus experience Identifying your core user Creating customer avatars Creating a method of trial Meeting and surpassing expectations Example: what makes Wyze remarkable (21:40) Step 2: Make it easy to share so your customers can advocate for you Building into the solution Encouraging and asking customers to share Example: Wyze sharing (26:20) Step 3: Tell the right people so they do the marketing for you Example: Wyze outreach campaigns Finding the right people and using the right tools (all linked below) Creating a one-pager Drafting your outreach message Sending your message How to persist (45:50) Step 4: Keep your solution remarkable so users keep coming back Example: How Wyze keeps their product remarkable Continually moving the goalpost by keeping a pulse on the market (48:05) Bonus: use cases at QA Wolf (53:15) Open community questions Extra CreditScott shared a great variety of his favorite tools for finding the right people, including:AHREFs for SEO tools and resources Quantcast for digital advertising, website analytics, and audience insights WhatRunsWhere for ad intelligence Brand24 for media monitoring SimilarWeb for website traffic analytics HappierLeads for identifying potential buyers Sparktoro for audience research To connect with Scott, reach out to him via email at scott@qawolf.com

On Tuesday, March 8, also known as International Women’s Day, C2C France Team Leads @antoine.castex and @guillaume blaquiere were excited to welcome Google Lead Developer Advocate @Priyanka Vergadia to host a powerful session for the Google Cloud space in France and beyond. These sessions intend to bring together a community of cloud experts and customers to connect, learn, and shape the future of cloud. At this C2C Connect event, Vergadia led a broad and enthusiastic discussion about Vertex AI and the MLOps pipeline. 60 Minutes Summed Up in 60 Seconds ML and AI are the cornerstone technologies of any company that wants to leverage its data value. ML can be used across different platforms, including Google Cloud. BigQuery ML is a key example of serverless ML training and serving. Vertex AI is the primary end-to-end AI product on Google Cloud and interacts with many other Google Cloud products. Low-code and no-code users can reuse pre-trained Vertex AI models and customize them to fit their business use cases. It’s perfect for beginner and no-ML engineer profiles. Advanced users can leverage Vertex AI’s managed Jupyter Notebook to discover, analyze, and build their models. Vertex AI also allows users to train models at scale, to deploy serverless models, and to monitor drift and performance. As Vergadia reminded the audience, ML engineering makes up only 5% of the effort that goes into the ML workflow. The upstream steps (data cleaning, discovery, feature engineering preparation) and the downstream steps (monitoring, retraining, deployment, hyperparameter tuning) must be optimized to save time, effort, and money. To this end, VertexAI supports a pipeline definition, based on the TFX or Kube Flow pipelines, to automate the end-to-end tasks around ML engineering. This pipeline is called MLOps. Watch the full recording of the session below:  Despite its 60-minute time limit, this conversation didn’t stop. VertexAI is a hot topic, and it certainly kept everyone’s attention. The group spent time discussing data warehouses, data analytics, and data lakes, focusing on products like BigQuery, Datastudio, and Cloud Storage. Attendees also offered their own feedback on the content of the session. For example, halfway through the presentation, Soumo Chakraborty asked how users can integrate ML pipelines in a CI/CD pipeline, and pipeline integration became a focal point of the remainder of the discussion. Preview What's Next These upcoming C2C events will cover other major topics of interest that didn’t make it to the discussion floor this time around:  Make the Cloud Smarter, April 12, 2022 Looker In the Real World with Looker PM Leigha Jarett, May 10, 2022 (In-person event in Paris) If these are topics you’re eager to explore at future events, be sure to sign up to our platform! Extra Credit Looking for more Google Cloud products news and resources? We got you. The following links were shared with attendees and are now available to you: VertexAI BigQueryML C2C Events

The field of data engineering is growing, and demand for certified data engineers is growing even more rapidly. The Google Cloud Data Engineer certification was the top-paying cloud certification of 2021, after the Cloud Architect certification held the distinction for the two preceding years. Given these stats, some questions are likely coming to mind for C2C community members looking into Google Cloud certifications: What’s driving the increase in interest in this field? Is data engineering the right choice for Google Cloud users looking for a new professional challenge? What is data engineering in the first place?Peak6 Technologies Principal Engineer Dan Sullivan recently joined C2C for a coffee chat to answer these questions and others, including:How is data engineering related to software engineering? What are DevOps, DataOps, and MLOps? What are the different compute and storage options on the Google Cloud Platform? What topics are covered in the Professional Data Engineer exam?Watch a full video of the event below to hear Sullivan’s answers and more questions from members of the C2C community:  Extra Credit:  

To new startups, older, more successful startups are lodestars guiding them to their ultimate destinations. No startup is this big or this visible at first. Before 3co was recognized as the provider of a leading AI 3D scanning solution, it was a formative business facing the everyday challenges of defining a brand and choosing the right path to growth. In this fireside chat with C2C and the Google Cloud Startups team, Lance Legel of 3co looks back on his startup journey, touching on everything from the human biochemical response to the physical presence of flowers to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche along the way. Topics explored during this conversation include: (1:30) - Introduction to Lance Legel and 3co elevator pitch (6:40) - How 3co became the business it is today (9:40) - How to approach and prepare for incubators (16:00) - How to take advantage of mentors and feedback (19:45) - How to evaluate opportunities for your business (28:00) - How passion for you business helps you overcome challenges (35:00) - How to challenge yourself to master new solutions and skills (38:00) - How to take advantage of the relationships that will help you grow (40:25) - Lightning round (46:35) - Audience questions and answers Watch a video of the full conversation below:  Extra Credit:  

The Google Cloud SAP Executive Council covered the latest strategy and solution updates and roadmap items for Google Cloud’s SAP business. Both expert Google speakers and current customers provided their insights. Watch a full recording of the Asia, EMEA, and Japan event below to learn from the best in Google Cloud and SAP, and use the following timestamps to navigate to the main segments of the program: (0:00) - Welcome from Steve Wainwright, EMEA SAP Director (5:00) - Introduction to C2C Community from Geoff Scott, Chief Community Champion (12:10) - SAP Business Update from Edy Sardilli, Global Partnerships & Business Development  (28:14) - Data Cloud Update from Miguel de Luna, Senior Product Manager Data Analytics (1:00:00) - Solution Engineering Update from Abdul Razack, Vice President, Solution Engineering (1:22:04) - Cortex Innovation Update from Alison Hettrick, Head of SAP Strategy & Architecture  

The Google Cloud SAP Executive Council covered the latest strategy and solution updates and roadmap items for Google Cloud’s SAP business. Both expert Google speakers and current customers provided their insights. Watch a full recording of the Americas event below to learn from the best in Google Cloud and SAP, and use the following timestamps to navigate to the main segments of the program: (2:00) - Session Starts/Welcome from Edy Sardilli, Global Partnerships & Business Development (9:40) - Introduction to C2C Community from Geoff Scott, Chief Community Champion (21:15) - SAP Business Update from Snehanshu Shah, Managing Director, SAP Solution Engineering (37:29) - Cortex Innovation Update from Alison Hettrick, Head of SAP Strategy & Architecture (56:35) - Solution Engineering Update from Abdul Razack, Vice President, Solution Engineering (1:19:05) - Data Cloud Update from Bruno Aziza, Head of Data & Analytics (1:50:00) - Customer Presentation from Calvin Leong, VP of Information Technology, DistributionNOW (2:08:00) - Customer Presentation from Roberto Oikawa, CTO and CIO, Casa dos Ventos Energias   

Reducing Scope 2 and Scope 3 carbon emissions can be complicated for global organizations; the process can be long and expensive, and it can be difficult to prove the return on investment. Hearing from leading experts in this field can make an immense impact on your plans. During this event C2C’s Uk and Ireland community heard from Trinity Lloyd, Energy Transition and Sustainability Specialist at Google Cloud, and Eric Jen, CEO and Founder of Ren Energy. The two discussed how technology can transform the decarbonization process, reduce time to value, and activate an ecosystem of shared cost. As always, there was plenty of time for audience questions.Here are some of the key takeaways from this session:Google’s energy consumption is the equivalent of that of a small country. Google hit 100% renewable in 2017, and in 2020 they limited their carbon legacy impact to 1998. Getting to 100% renewable energy is a process. It took 10 years for Google to get from carbon neutral to 100% renewable energy. Google has partnered with Ren Energy to get GCP customers carbon neutral and renewable. In 2018, Eric Jen, founder and CEO of Ren Energy, built a corporate renewable energy program at Nike that was co-ranked #1 in the world with Apple, Inc. These accolades highlighted his forward-looking approach to Scope 3 emissions in the supply chain in addition to traditional Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Ren is a Google supported sustainability fulfillment platform that transitions corporations to carbon neutral by aggregating energy demand and sourcing the most renewable solutions. To address the climate crisis, businesses need to start looking at each other and working together. If they don’t, then we will all be working independently, going about our business in uncoordinated chaos, individually trying to accomplish our carbon reduction goals. This doesn’t work, and it’s not getting us where we need to be.Watch the full recording of the session below:  Looking for more events like this? Join C2C Connect: UK & Ireland again on March 17, 2022 for this event with Cloud Developer Advocate Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine: 

Between electronic payments emerging as a default option for digital native and traditional businesses alike and blockchain technology going mainstream in the private and public sectors, FinTech is quickly becoming a solution no startup can afford to undervalue. As Simon Taylor of 11:FS put it in the C2C Deep Dive he hosted on Feb. 10, 2022, “Every company is becoming a FinTech company.”For any who weren’t able to make this live session, the full recording is worth a watch. In a concise but rapid half-hour session, Taylor offers a complete functional overview of the Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) model, covering every operational consideration from customer experience to go-to-market strategy.The real benefit of connecting live with a guest like Taylor, however, is the opportunity to ask him direct questions and get an immediate response. For those who want to dive straight into the issues this presentation brought up for discussion, below are some of Taylor’s answers to questions from C2C community members.First, a question about consolidation of the BaaS space in a post-integration market prompted Taylor to walk through a series of real and hypothetical acquisitions at major FinTech companies, including FiServ, Synapse, and Unit:  Later, a question about cryptocurrency in the digital payment space prodded Taylor to amend his previous statement about FinTech to “Every company is becoming a crypto company.” He also introduced the concept of the “DeFi” mullet, a “business up front, party at the back” model for FinServ companies which puts “FinTech at the front, Decentralized finance or crypto at the back”:  Taylor was also more than willing to point attendees to a host of resources 11:FS has made available for specialists looking to dive even deeper into BaaS:  Is your company a FinTech or crypto company, or becoming one? What do Taylor’s points imply for your company’s financial future? Post on one of our community pages and let us know what you think! Extra Credit11:FS Pulse Report 2022 Banking as a Service: the future of financial services 11:FS podcast Decoding: Banking as a Service - Episode 1 11:FS YouTube Plus, don’t miss the next event hosted by our startups community:  

Sometimes, the biggest challenge for a startup is not developing the perfect product or drafting a foolproof business plan; it’s finding the clearest and most succinct way to tell investors and customers what kind of solution the startup offers. That’s why, on Thursday, Feb. 17, C2C and the Google Startups team hosted a coffee chat all about defining problem statements for startups. Host Louis Huynh broke down the main elements of an effective problem statement before inviting guests to ask questions and discuss them with the group. Highlights of the session include:(3:10) Questions to ask yourself (4:15) Problem definition framework: customers (14:55) Problem definition framework: competition (30:20) Problem definition framework: constraints (35:45) Audience Q&AWatch the full recording below: Extra Credit:  

On February 8, 2022, C2C members @antoine.castex and @guillaume blaquiere hosted a powerful session for France and beyond in the cloud space. C2C Connect: France sessions intend to bring together a community of cloud experts and customers to connect, learn, and shape the future of cloud. 60 Minutes Summed Up in 60 Seconds  Guillaume Laforge and Mete Atamel, both Developer Advocates, were the guests of the session. The guests introduced the concepts and discussed the pros and cons of event-driven choreography and event-orchestration. Choreography is an ideal solution for event hosting and attendance, especially when you have to extend a service by driving registration to an existing event. There is nothing additional to do except add new attendees! A downside of choreography is the difficulty of overseeing and managing events and responding to errors. Orchestration drives, retries, and manages the processing chain in a central place, and provides a single point of view. To extend a service in orchestration requires a new orchestrator version deployment. Similarly to other orchestrators like Cloud Composer, Cloud Workflow solves event-driven challenges in a serverless environment with no code, only YAML description. Event-driven workflows are great for triggering simple actions, and potentially better designed for performing processing sequences that support a business process or flow chart. The event-driven and orchestration dichotomy isn’t exclusive. Both have their use cases, and that’s why Google Cloud also works on Eventarc to more easily generate events on the Google Cloud Platform.  Get In on the Orchestration and Choreography Conversation! Despite its 60-minute time limit, this conversation didn’t stop. Orchestration and Choreography are hot topics, and they certainly kept everyone’s attention. The group spent time on the key products in the event-driven and event-orchestrated world, such as:  Cloud Workflow Apache Airflow and Cloud Composer Eventarc  Members also shared likes and dislikes. For example, one mentioned missing features on Cloud Workflow, such as retries after errors, or ongoing execution graphs.  Preview What's Next These upcoming sessions will cover topics that came up but didn’t make it to the discussion floor:  Security Threat with Carter Morgan (To be confirmed), April 12th Looker with Leigha Jarret, in-person in Paris, France, May 10th AppEngine with Wesley Chun, June 14th More details soon on the C2C event page.If any of these events interests you, be sure to sign up to get in touch with the group! Extra Credit Looking for more Google Cloud products news and resources? We got you. The following links were shared with attendees and are now available to you! Session video Cloud Workflow Cloud Composer Eventarc C2C eventarc session with the product manager

On Jan. 13, 2022, The C2C Connect: DACH group invited Michel Lovis of TX Group to their community gathering to give a presentation about TX Group’s migration from Microsoft Suite to Google Workspace. After an introduction from co-host and DACH team lead Chanel Greco (@chanelgreco), Michel analyzed the digitization process, the challenges TX Group faced, and the measures they took to ensure that the effort would succeed. Below are summaries of some of the key points covered during the session: 1. TX group has evolved from being a newspaper-only company in 1893 to becoming an internationally recognized network of media and platforms. 2. TX Group has become the largest private digital network platform in Switzerland, reaching over 80% of the population, with 3,700 employees, around 500 technology experts, and 800 journalists from over 50 nations, and their digital revenue share is 53%. 3. TX Group today consists of Tamedia (paid media), 20 Minuten (free media), Goldbach (advertising), and TX Markets AG (market places), all of which are using scalable technology architecture in a federated organizational setup (cloud first/only, with strong push for agility & speed). 4. In 2015, the company shifted workspace operations from Microsoft to Google. The goal of the project was to get all users to adopt most of the Google Workspace applications, including Sheets, Docs, Slides, and Meet, thus making a big change toward the digital environment they have today.  5. Vision vs. reality: close customer care is key! The challenge of migrations is that it takes time for people to lose their original workspace and get used to change. Today TX Group retains many Microsoft installations, and will retain them long-term in some areas, departments, and Teams.  6. TX Group introduced the following measures and resources after launching Workspace: An internal Google CC with Google Experts Business proximity concept implementation Welcome info for new employees Knowledge-sharing and other help offerings Roadshow coffees  Inviting people to express questions via management care and a satisfaction survey Specific courses including transformation lab 7. The second bigger change was the implementation of Goldbach. The bigger challenges here included the employees integrating a new company, which required a complete change of their working environment. 8. TX Group identifies six main different measures that were taken in order to make the process easier. 9. At the end of the session, the guests shared the benefits from their Google journey and the areas that would need a closer look.  10. Key takeaways from the session included: act faster, become more open, try something new, and "Pull faster than your shadow IT".   Watch a full recording of the event below:  

Google Cloud wants its solutions to be accessible to all organizations seeking to scale and stay current. To that end, Google Cloud offers local certification training and support resources to all communities of practicing and prospective Google Cloud users. C2C is committed to connecting community members to these resources.On Jan. 20, 2022, The C2C Connect UK and Ireland group invited Carl Tanner, Google Cloud’s EMEA Business Training Leader, to lead a session for customers interested in pursuing the Cloud Digital Leader certification.Here are some of the key takeaways from Carl’s session: Business leaders consider lack of skills the biggest barrier to cloud adoption. Google is committed to training 40 million people in Google Cloud via the Google Cloud Skills Boost program to close the skills gap. Google Cloud Certifications are considered more difficult than competitor cloud certifications. Certification provides a significant boost to the confidence and attractiveness of an applicant’s CV. Google certified professionals rank as the most in-demand and consequently receive higher salaries. Certified individuals can opt in to an online public certification directory. There are 8 professional level certifications, 1 associate level certification, and 1 foundational certification. The foundational certification is Cloud Digital Leader. Tanner covered the following details about the Cloud Digital Leader certification: The Cloud Digital Leader certification covers the basics of cloud computing and how Google Cloud products help organizations. The certification is designed to help organizations attain a consistent level of cloud skills. Exams are available in English and Japanese and cost $99. The exams are multiple choice and taken over a two-hour period. Free self-paced training is available as part of the Cloud Skills Boost program, and also from Coursera and Pluralsight. Instructor-led training is also available. Since Jan. 26, 2022, some technical aspects of the exam have been removed, and are more closely aligned with the training material.   The following updates to the certifications program are coming in the near future: Industry-specific learning is in focus for 2022. French and Spanish training materials and exams will be rolled out soon. Watch the full recording of the event below:  Extra Credit:  

Challengers in the financial services industry—existing firms looking to innovate, start-ups looking to scale, and everyone in between—will gain an in-depth understanding of the banking and payments system from this Deep Dive.   The recording from this Deep Dive includes:(1:15) Introduction to Simon Taylor and 11:FS (4:00) Introduction to banking as a service (BaaS) and its role across brands (7:20) Understanding the depth of service from BaaS API providers (13:10) How API providers enable focus on building user experience and expediting time to market (15:15) Embedding financial services into various customer experiences (17:25) Go-to-market requirements for launching FinTech products (20:10) Overcoming challenges between FinTech vendors and BaaS providers (21:20) Building finance operating systems (22:00) The four core issues and challenges: provider lock-in, geographic limits, flexibility vs. speed, and product configuration gaps (24:35) Open audience questionsFeatured in this session:   Simon TaylorCo-Founder and Chief Product Officer, 11FS Simon Taylor is the Co-Founder and Blockchain Practice Lead at 11:FS. Simon has been immersed in the technology of financial services for as long as he’s been working. He is consistently voted one of the most influential people in Banking, Insurance, and Fintech by banks, his peers, and industry bodies. Simon led Blockchain Research and Development at Barclays. In his time there, Barclays became the first bank in the world to perform a live trade finance transaction over a Blockchain / DLT with a real customer attached. Today Simon advises governments, regulators, and some of the worlds largest banks, financial institutions, and corporations on how Blockchain and DLT will impact their business in the short, medium, and long term. Previously, Simon helped build the Barclays www.thinkrise.com program and held a number of roles in payments, banking, and the telco sector.  Extra Credit11:FS Pulse Report 2022 Banking as a Service: the future of financial services 11:FS podcast Decoding: Banking as a Service - Episode 1 11:FS YouTube

“Cloud repatriation,” like “cloud migration” and “cloud native,” is a tech term borrowed from the language of social science: all of these terms describe a relationship to a place of origin. What each really describes, though, is where someone, or something, lives. In social science, that someone is a person, someone born a citizen of one country or returned there after displacement by conflict or other political circumstances. In tech, the something born in or returned to its place of origin is an asset or a resource an organization controls: it’s your organization’s data, its software, or whatever else you need to store to be able to run it.After years of cloud migration dominating the conversation about software and data hosting and storage, the term “cloud repatriation” is emerging as a new hypothetical for migrated and cloud native organizations. So many organizations are now hosted on the cloud that a greater number than ever have the option, feasible or not, to move off. Whether any cloud-native or recently migrated organization would actually want to move its resources back on-premises, to a data center, is another question. To discuss this question and its implications for the future of the cloud as a business solution, C2C recently convened a panel of representatives from three major cloud-hosted companies: Nick Tornow of Twitter, Keyur Govande of Etsy, and Rich Hoyer and Miles Ward of SADA. The conversation was charged from the beginning, and only grew more lively throughout. Sensing the energy around this issue, Ward, who hosted the event, started things off with some grounding exercises. First, he asked each host to define a relevant term. Tornow defined repatriation as “returning to your own data centers...or moving away from the public cloud more generally,” Govande defined TCO as “the purchase price of an asset and the cost of operating it,” and Hoyer defined OPEX and CAPEX as, respectively, real-time day-to-day expenses and up-front long-term expenses. Ward then stirred things up by asking the guests to pose some reasons why an organization might want to repatriate. After these level-setting exercises, the guests dove into the business implications of repatriation.The question of cost came up almost immediately, redirecting the discussion to the relationship between decisions around workloads and overall business goals:  Govande’s comments about “problems that are critical to your business” particularly resonated with the others on the call. Govande briefly elaborated on these comments via email after the event. “In the context of repatriation, especially for a product company, it is very important to think through the ramifications of doing the heavy infrastructural lift yourself,” he said. “In my opinion, for most product companies, the answer would be to ‘keep moving up the stack,’ i.e. to be laser focused on your own customers' needs and demands, by leveraging the public cloud infrastructure.”These sentiments resurfaced later in the discussion, when the group took up the problem of weighing costs against potential opportunities for growth:  The more the group explored these emerging themes of workload, cost, and scale, the more the guests offered insights based on their firsthand experiences as executives at major tech companies. Tornow used an anecdote about launching the game Farmville at Zynga to illustrate the unique challenges of launching products on the cloud:  During the audience Q&A, a question about TCO analysis gave Hoyer the chance to go long on his relevant experiences at SADA:  As soon as the conversation began to wind down, Ward put the guests on the spot again, to ask Tornow and Govande point-blank whether either of them would consider repatriation an option for their company that very day. Unsurprisingly, neither said they would:  By the time Ward handed the microphone back to Dale Rossi of Google Cloud, who introduced and concluded the event, the conversation had lasted well over an hour, leaving very few angles on the subject of repatriation unexamined. Many hosts might have felt satisfied letting an event come to an end at this point, but not Ward. To leave the guests, and the audience, with a sense of urgency and resolve, he treated everyone on the call to a rendition of “Reveille,” the traditional military call to arms, arranged exclusively for this group for solo Tuba:  Repatriation may not be a realistic option for many if not most businesses, but discussing the possibility hypothetically illuminates the considerations these same businesses will have to confront as they approach cloud strategy and workload balance. “Nobody on our panel had heard of anyone born in the cloud ever going ‘back’ to the data center,” Ward said in an email reflecting on the event. “Any infrastructure cost analysis is a ‘complex calculus,’ and there's no easy button.” For Ward, there is one way to make this complex calculus manageable: “To get maximum value from cloud, focus in on the differentiated managed services that allow you to refocus staff time on innovation.”When you hear the word “repatriation,” what comes to mind for you? What does it imply for your organization and the workloads your organization manages? Are there any relevant considerations you consider crucial that you want to talk through in more depth? Join the C2C Community and start the conversation! Extra Credit: