TL;DR-warning;) Wow, March was a blast regarding GCP-related updates. There’s a lot coming your way:

1. CO2-free until 2030: „Google Cloud operates the cleanest cloud in the industry” and “aims to operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030”. That’s only possible, when you continuously push the boundaries to a new level. Google is “now piloting a concept known as Time-based Energy Attribute Certificates (T-EACs) – a new, hourly approach for verifying clean energy matching at our data centers” in Denmark and Midwestern USA. Read more here and sign up for the Wabion Sustainability Summit on 22 April 2021, 09:00 to 10:30. Along with Google Cloud, Plant-for-the-Planet and e-motion we will not only demonstrate how Google Cloud helps reduce your company’s carbon footprint, but also plant a tree for every participant.

2. App Performance: Memorystore for Memcached, GCP’s fully managed In-Memory Caching Service, now fully supports Memcached in addition to Redis and provides more options to build fast and scalable web applications.

3. Troubleshooting on GKE: “Applications fail, containers crash.” Read here how GCP helps you deal with issues on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).

4. MongoDB and Google Cloud: MongoDB Atlas is available as a fully managed service via GCP Marketplace including pay-as-you-go-pricing. Get more information here and read customer examples, highlighting how to benefit from MongoDB Atlas on GCP.

5. Extended BigQuery BI Engine: Google announced an important update to BigQuery BI Engine, which is now able to work with “any BI or custom dashboarding applications that require sub-second query response times.” As explained here, you can easily integrate with Looker, Tableau or Microsoft’s PowerBI.

6. GKE Autopilot: Another big one! This new mode of operation for GKE simplifies the operation of your K8s-Clusters even further. Read how GKE Autopilot “automatically applies industry best practices and can eliminate all node management operations, maximizing your cluster efficiency and helping to provide a stronger security posture.”

7. Hadoop-Migration: In case you plan to migrate Apache Hadoop to GCP, Priyanka Vergadia, Developer Advocate at Google, created a new Sketchnote making it easy for you to find the right solution.

8. 5G: As you may have read about, Google Cloud and Intel join forces to advance 5G networks. Read here what the innovation champions strive to achieve. The article is especially interesting for telecommunication providers.

9. K8s and Terraform: At Wabion, we love both technologies as we love GCP. So, this article on how to “Quickly Deploy Applications Using Terraform With Kubernetes on GCP on medium” is a must-share.

10. Risk Protection Program: Introducing a first-of-its-kind alliance, „Google Cloud partners with German companies Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) and Munich Re, who designed a specialized cyber insurance policy exclusively for Google Cloud customers, called Cloud Protection +”. So, who’s the most trusted cloud-provider in the world?

11. Cloud Operations and GKE: This nice little improvement brings GKE Logs “closer to where you are – in the Cloud Console – with a new logs tab in the GKE resource details pages.”

12. SAP and GCP: Speeding up Digital Transformation with SAP and Google Cloud, “With RISE, SAP is recognizing that enterprises need both an easy path to the cloud, plus cloud providers and consulting partners who will help them achieve business objectives.” Read here how Google Cloud shares this vision, and is aligned with SAP’s goals for RISE in several ways – and re-watch the webinar & demo “SAP and GCP: Infrastructure for Innovation” Wabion held on March 3rd in collaboration with Google Cloud and ITPC.

13. Identity & Security: Enhancing GCP Firewall functionalities, hierarchical firewall policies are now GA to “provide a means to enforce firewall rules at the organization and folder levels in the GCP Resource Hierarchy.”

14. Flutter 2: Do you want to build great applications for web, mobile or desktop from a single codebase? Then check out the Flutter 2 announcement in the Google Developers Blog.

15. Data Protection: To help you find the right Data Protection approach, this guide provides a great overview on GCP’s various Data Protection offerings available. 

16. Scaling in GKE: “In Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), application owners can define multiple autoscaling behaviors for a workload using a single Kubernetes resource: Multidimensional Pod Autoscaler (MPA).”

17. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery: Find out here how to create a “Zero Footprint” Disaster Recovery solution, combining Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) with the leading backup and disaster recovery software provider Actifio.

18. VM Performance: GCP VMs are fast, but fast might not be fast enough. Hence, it’s good to know Google keeps innovating and improving it’s network stack and can now offer up to 100 Gbps bandwidth for superior networking performance.

19. Virtual showrooms for the automotive industry: Creating a new way to engage with customers in times of COVID-19, Google Cloud has teamed up with Unreal Engine, NVIDIA, MHP and MONKEYWAY to enable the first virtual showroom for an Italian Luxury Hypercar manufacturer. Many more will follow – and we are happy to support MONKEYWAY from Munich with their GCP efforts.

20. Networking: Last, but not least another big one; With Network Connectivity Center, Google Cloud announced “a revolution in simplifying on-prem and cloud networking” in preview.

March 21 was a very busy month. I hope you enjoyed browsing the list and reading some of the articles mentioned. Have a great April!

Stay safe and healthy,

Jörn