4 Insights from Google Cloud Next '18 in London

Samuel Oey and Clemens Gerth visited Google Cloud Next ’18 in London at the beginning of October and caught up on what’s new in the Google Cloud universe. Their insights revolve around geo data, the GCP Marketplace, and Istio.

Geo data insights on the rise

Data, data, and even more data: We call it Location Intelligence, at Deloitte it’s "Urban Mobility Intelligence" – no matter the specific service or name, geo data is a hot topic all-around. Presentations on BigQuery, GIS functionalities, and machine learning (e.g. by Geotab) gave an idea of the possibilities for future mobility, traffic, and urban planning as soon as anonymized movement and frequency data of sufficiently high quality will be available.

With GCP Marketplace, Google shows the platform’s potential for third-party providers

With GCP Marketplace, Google offers third-party providers the opportunity to distribute their software directly via Google Cloud Platform, just like an app store for server-side solutions. The Marketplace impresses with its simplicity: with just one click, you can acquire Wordpress, Jenkins, and MongoDB solutions for the GCP infrastructure. This adds over 160 third-party products and services to more than 90 Google Cloud products.

Istio

We were also really interested in the announcements about Istio, an open platform for connecting, monitoring, and protecting microservices. Google continues the very successful Kubernetes strategy and published essential core functions as open-source software.

Digitization in London

Not only did Google Cloud Next ‘18 give us food for thought, but England itself also impressed us with its forward-thinking use of digital services: taxi providers like Uber and Via, paying for parking with your smartphone, and small restaurants that completely do without cash. We’d love to see Germany being a bit more keen when it comes to experimenting with such convenient, innovative solutions.