This week on the podcast, Stephanie Wong and Alexandrina Garcia-Verdin are diving into an important topic for our global community: sustainability and carbon aware computing. Kendal Smith, program manager for Carbon Intelligent Computing, and Chris Talbott, leader of the sustainability product marketing efforts at Google Cloud, start the show telling us why sustainability is so important in the tech world. Environmentally conscious data centers are an important part of Google Cloud sustainability efforts. Using computing in the smartest way possible, Kendall tells us, is the root of green computing. Wind, solar, and other low or carbon-free energy sources are employed at Google Cloud data centers to accomplish this goal. Kendall and Chris detail the green goals Google has met or exceeded, including carbon neutrality in 2007, and future goals for Google. Chris explains how Google Cloud customers have taken advantage of Google’s sustainability practices and been inspired in their own businesses. Kendall details the Carbon Intelligent Computing Platform and how they adjust compute times to align with available carbon-free energy. We hear about Google’s sustainability metrics, including the Carbon Free Energy Percentage, and how these measurements can help Google and its customers run environmentally friendly applications. Chris describes the process he and his team go through when helping Google clients design their carbon aware strategy. To wrap up the show, our guests talk about the future of de-carbonized computing at Google. Kendal Smith Kendal is the Program Manager for Carbon Intelligent Computing at Google, which reduces the carbon footprint of Data Centers by exploiting flexibility in compute workloads. She also helps Google engineers build products efficiently, as well as advise other Bets on carbon measurement and tracking. Chris Talbott Chris leads sustainability product marketing and customer engagement efforts for Google Cloud, and works on opening new Google Cloud data centers throughout the globe. He helps customers improve the environmental impact of their IT operations and identify new opportunities to tackle climate change challenges with cloud technology. Cool things of the week Active Assist’s new feature, predictive autoscaling, helps improve response times for your applications site Maximizing developer productivity video Interview Google Carbon Aware Computing Workshop 2021 site Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows blog How carbon-free is your cloud? New data lets you know blog Google Cloud Region Picker site What’s something cool you’re working on? Alexandrina is working on a new series called People & Planet AI. The first episode, Recovering global wildlife populations using ML is out now. She’s also been working on internal websites to share climate information. Stephanie has been working on a blog post about AppSheet Automation, which we talked about in-depth last week on the podcast.

Stephanie Wong and co-host Carter Morgan learn all about the no-code experience of AppSheet Automation this week. Guests Jennifer Cadence and Prithpal Bhogill introduce us to AppSheet, a platform that empowers anyone to build applications without code. The strong focus on openness means AppSheet offers support for all manner of APIs and services, making it easy to use and customize. Jennifer starts by telling us how AppSheet increases productivity and satisfaction at work. She describes how people’s individual characteristics and use of time affect productivity and explains that tasks that can be automated free people up to work on higher value tasks or focus on important issues. Employees are not only more productive but happier in their jobs when mundane or frustrating tasks are automated. Later, Prithpal describes using the software. The AppSheet Unified Platform supports any application creator so users can build their apps and automations without ever leaving the AppSheet dashboard. Data stays where it is, with no upload requirements, further easing the build process. We hear some real-world uses of AppSheet Automation, including employee onboarding, customer support, and more. Prithpal takes us behind the scenes, using examples to explain the inner workings of AppSheet and walks us through the steps of using this powerful tool. Jennifer tells us how the AppSheet Community helps shape the platform and talks about the future of AppSheet Automation. Jennifer Cadence Jennifer is the Product Marketing Manager for AppSheet. She’s also a dog lover, community builder, and curious human. Prithpal Bhogill Prithpal is the Lead Product Manager for AppSheet, frequent blogger, and featured speaker on several tech conferences. Cool things of the week Choose your own cloud adventure video Recovering global wildlife populations using ML blog Introduction to AI Platform (Unified) docs Interview AppSheet site AppSheet Community site Invisible Woman book Apps Script site Workspace site What’s something cool you’re working on? Stephanie and Carter are working on some new features for the podcast! Stephanie will be speaking at CTC. Sound Effects Attribution “Applause 1” by Ichapman1980 of Freesound.org

Brian Dorsey joins Stephanie Wong this week for an in-depth discussion on Workflows. Guests Kris Braun and Guillaume Laforge introduce us to Google Cloud Workflows, explaining that this fully managed serverless product helps connect services in the cloud. By facilitating the creation of an end-to-end schema, Workflows lets developers specify what microservices or other software respond when certain events occur in a detailed, visual format. Kris and Guillaume list the benefits of using Workflows and detail the many uses for this powerful tool. The ability to add detailed descriptors, for example, helps companies avoid errors in calling up other pieces of software. New employees have an easier time getting acquainted when the steps are clearly defined as well. Our guests use real-world examples to illustrate the three main uses for Workflows: event-driven, batch, and infrastructure automation. Workflows are flexible and customizable. Later, we hear about Cloud Composer and its relation to Workflows, and our guests help us understand which product is right for each client type. The Workflows team continues to expand offerings. More connectors are being added to allow developers to call other GCP services. Working with lists will soon be easier, allowing Workflows to run steps in parallel. And Kris details other exciting updates coming soon, including Eventarc. Kris Braun Kris Braun is the Product Manager for three Google Cloud products that connect services to build applications: Workflows, Tasks, and Scheduler. Before Google, Kris’ adventures include founding and growing startups, leading a team of network security researchers investigating threats like Stuxnet, and writing the original BlackBerry simulator for app development. He’s a passionate advocate for opening job opportunities to skilled refugees displaced by war and disaster. Guillaume Laforge Guillaume Laforge is a Developer Advocate for Google Cloud, focusing on serverless technologies. More recently, he dived head first in Workflows, and started presenting the product at online events, wrote articles, tips and tricks, and videos on the topic. Cool things of the week How sweet it is: Using Cloud AI to whip up new treats with Mars Maltesers blog Turbo boost your Compute Engine workloads with new 100 Gbps networking blog Benchmarking higher bandwidth VM instances docs Interview Workflows site Spanner site Cloud SQL site Cloud Composer site Pub/Sub site Cloud Run site Eventarc site Eventarc Documentation docs Workflows Insiders site Quickstarts site How-To Guides site Syntax Reference site Guillaume’s Workflow Tips and Tricks blog A first look at serverless orchestration with Workflows blog Orchestrating the Pic-a-Daily serverless app with Workflows blog Better service orchestration with Workflows blog Get to know Workflows, Google Cloud’s serverless orchestration engine blog 3 common serverless patterns to build with Workflows blog Introduction to serverless orchestration with Workflows codelab Pic-a-Daily Serverless Workshop codelab Pic-a-daily: Lab 6—Orchestration with Workflows codelab What’s something cool you’re working on? Brian is working on use cases around VMs. Stephanie has been writing about database migration.

Hosts Stephanie Wong and Priyanka Vergadia learn about data governance this week in an interesting chat with Jessi Ashdown and Uri Gilad. While data governance includes security measures, the overarching term also means knowing your data, where it is, and how to use it. In their book, Jessi, Uri, and their co-authors hope to make data governance more accessible by sharing the knowledge Google has developed over twenty plus years. We talk about the challenges companies of all sizes face implementing data governance frameworks and Uri shares a few tips for streamlining the process. Communication and prioritization are important no matter the size of your team. Companies must also understand the sensitivity of the data, how it’s protected and managed, and why it’s collected. Having a thoughtful, thorough understanding of what data gives you the most bang for your buck can help companies prioritize certain data collection, make better decisions, scale efficiently, and save money. When communicating with team members, it’s important to share vital information about the data. Knowing who’s in charge of what data, for example, makes accessing that data faster. With proper communication and thorough prioritization, teams can begin to think about how developing automated tools can increase functional data utilization. Later, we discuss the ways companies can support employees on the data governance journey by clearly communicating the best practice rules. Uri describes how Google uses data governance principles and shares resources Google has published that detail these steps further. Tools like BigQuery and Data Catalog are Google-built products meant to provide companies with more automated data governance solutions. Jessi and Uri wrap up the show with some more best practices in the data governance sphere, like proper metadata to increase the trustworthiness of data. And Uri details the tools Google Cloud has developed to make your data life easier, giving examples of companies putting these tools into practice. Jessi Ashdown Jessi Ashdown is a User Experience Researcher for Google Cloud who conducts user studies with customers from all over the world and uses the findings and feedback from these studies to help inform and shape Google’s data governance products to best serve those users’ needs. Uri Gilad Uri is leading the Data Governance efforts, within the Data Analytics area in Google Cloud. As part of his role, Uri is spearheading a cross-functional effort to create the relevant controls, management tools and workflows that enable a GCP customer to apply Data Governance policies in a unified fashion wherever your data may be in your GCP deployment. Prior to Google, Uri served as an executive in multiple Data Security companies: most recently as the VP of product in MobileIron, a public Zero Trust/Endpoint security platform. Uri was an early employee and a manager in CheckPoint and Forescout - two well known Security brands. Uri holds an M.sc from Tel Aviv University and a B.sc from the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology. You can find him on Linkedin. Cool things of the week Batter up! Anthos on bare metal helps MLB gear up for upcoming season blog Introducing Network Connectivity Center: A revolution in simplifying on-prem and cloud networking blog Interview Data Governance: The Definitive Guide: People, Processes, and Tools to Operationalize Data Trustworthiness book Goods White Paper doc Dremel White Paper doc BigQuery site Data Catalog site Identity and Access Management site Strata Data Superstream Series event What’s something cool you’re working on? Priyanka has been working on GCP Comics and new GCPSketchnotes. Stephanie is working on an animated series about data centers.

This week on the podcast, fellow Googlers Kaslin Fields and Anthony Bushong chat with hosts Mark Mirchandani and Stephanie Wong about how to optimize your spending with Google Kubernetes Engine. Cost optimization doesn’t necessarily mean lower costs, Kaslin explains. It means running your application the best possible way and accommodating things like traffic spikes while keeping costs as low as possible. As our guests tell us, standard best practices can aid in optimization, but when it comes to efficiently running on a budget, there are more tips and tricks available in GKE. One of GKE’s newest operation modes, Autopilot, means Kubernetes nodes are now managed by Google. Customers pay by the pod so the focus can be on the application rather than the details of clusters and their optimization. Best practices for resource utilization and autoscaling are included with Autopilot. Kaslin and Anthony break up Google’s GKE cost optimization tips into four categories: multi-tenancy, autoscaling, infrastructure choice, and workload best practices and tell us how company culture effects these decisions. Proper education around Kubernetes and GKE specifically is the first step to using resources the most efficiently, Anthony tells us. Keeping tenants separate and resources well managed on multi-tenant clusters is made easier with Namespaces. Scaling pods and the infrastructure around them is an important part of optimization as well, and Anthony helps us understand the best practices for fine tuning the autoscaling features in GKE. Scaling infrastructure to handle spikes or lulls is an automatic feature with Autopilot, helping projects run smoothly. To control workloads efficiency, GKE now offers a host of features, including horizontal, vertical, and multidimensional pod autoscaling. Later, we walk through the steps for implementing some of these optimizations decisions while keeping your application running. GKE Usage Metering is a useful tool for measuring tenant usage in a cluster so resource distribution can be managed easier. Kaslin Fields Kaslin is a Developer Advocate at Google Cloud where she focuses on Google Kubernetes Engine. Anthony Bushong Anthony is a Specialist Customer Engineer at Google Cloud, where he focuses on Kubernetes. Cool things of the week A2 VMs now GA—the largest GPU cloud instances with NVIDIA A100 GPUs blog How carbon-free is your cloud? New data lets you know blog Our third decade of climate action: Realizing a carbon-free future blog Interview Kubernetes site GKE site Best practices for running cost-optimized Kubernetes applications on GKE docs Docker site Autopilot overview docs Namespaces docs Kubernetes best practices: Organizing with Namespaces blog Optimize cost to performance on Google Kubernetes Engine video Using node auto-provisioning docs Scaling workloads across multiple dimensions in GKE blog Enabling GKE usage metering docs Kubernetes in Google Cloud Qwiklabs site Kubernetes Engine Qwiklabs site Cloud Operations for GKE Qwiklabs site Earn the new Google Kubernetes Engine skill badge for free blog Beyond Your Bill videos Cloud On Air Webinar: Hands-on Lab: Optimizing Your Costs on Google Kubernetes Engine site Cloud OnBoard site Adopting Kubernetes with Spotify video

Stephanie Wong joins our old pal Mark Mirchandani this week to chat about BeyondCorp Enterprise and the way enterprise companies are using this security software. Ameet starts the show explaining BeyondCorp’s three pillars of security, including how detailed customer and client knowledge aid in security. Kiran elaborates, stressing the importance of the web browser’s contribution to a secure experience. With BeyondCorp Enterprise offerings, companies can layer additional protections in the cloud, supplementing the often lacking network model and adding better security protections across devices. BeyondCorp offers a simpler implementation structure as well. Things like monitoring can be switched on with a click. We hear about the features of BeyondCorp, including how users help shape the way BeyondCorp protects their projects. Ameet walks us through how a client could add BeyondCorp to their current security infrastructure and the specific benefits of doing so. BeyondCorp Enterprise, an easy off-the-shelf offering, was inspired by Google’s own security measures. With automatic added protections in Chrome, BeyondCorp Enterprise takes the most secure browser in the world and ups the game for enterprise employees working from any device. Kiran describes these additional measures and why they’re important for enterprise users. Ameet and Kiran tell us the steps required to set up the software and the customizations available. Enterprise customers should think through groups of users and what will be allowed by each. On the browser side, the three tiers of security features, including invisible features, can be implemented and changed easily. With the new BeyondCorp Enterprise, enterprise clients are now able to take advantage of the advanced security of the cloud. Through real company examples, Ameet and Kiran share with us the ways this software is already changing the enterprise security game. Kiran Nair Kiran Nair is a product manager on Google Chrome. His focus area is security, and keeping Chrome users safe from web based threats. Besides spending the last 12 years building software and hardware products, Kiran is a certified yoga trainer and enjoys a casual game of tennis in the evening Ameet Jani Ameet is the product manager for BeyondCorp Enterprise. Cool things of the week Introducing #AskGoogleCloud: A community driven YouTube live series blog Cloud On Air: Build the future with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) event Google Cloud Born-Digital Summit: Inspiring the next generation of technology leaders blog Interview BeyondCorp site BeyondCorp Enterprise on Google site GCP Podcast Episode 221: BeyondCorp with Robert Sadowski podcast An overview: “A New Approach to Enterprise Security” research paper How Google did it: “Design to Deployment at Google” research paper Google’s frontend infrastructure: “The Access Proxy” research paper Migrating to BeyondCorp: “Maintaining Productivity while Improving Security” research paper The human element: “The User Experience” research paper Secure your endpoints: “Building a Healthy Fleet” research paper Question of the week Can you clearly explain GCP policy resource inheritance? What does it mean when the policy is effectively a union or additive? Resource Manager Understanding hierarchy evaluation Guide to Cloud Billing Resource Organization & Access Management

Jenny Brown and Mark Mirchandani are back this week to celebrate a special anniversary! This year marks ten years since the launch of the first Chromebooks, and our guests, Angela Gosz and Courtney Harrison, are here to reflect on the past and talk about the future Chrome OS. Chromebooks powered by Intel allow users to get the most out of their endpoints, serving as a secure and stable entrypoint to the Cloud. Our guests describe the key groups of Chromebook users and how the security, ease of use, and portability of Chrome OS benefits each group. The Google Admin Console allows more than 500 customizable security features to tailor the experience for employees or end customers, Angela explains. The changes brought on by the pandemic meant more companies had to support a distributed business, and Chrome OS has been able to facilitate this transition easily. With zero-touch enrollment, Chromebooks can be sent directly to employees, bypassing IT. Chromebooks can be configured through the Google Admin Console without any physical contact. Courtney tells us about her experiences with Chrome OS at Intel and how the automatic updates, computing speed, and other features have made her job easier. She explains the process of working with Google to develop Chromebook hardware and how the cloud comes into play for maximum performance. We talk about the many Chromebook options offered and what options will be available in the future. Angela Gosz Angela Gosz is a Customer Success Manager on the Chrome Enterprise Team, based out of Google Chicago. With 17 years of experience in the IT Industry, Angela has been on the leading edge of digital transformation implementations, supporting Enterprise organizations and partners to adopt and optimize their endpoint computing strategy - especially in Healthcare. Today she ensures customers realize the full potential of their investment in Chrome OS as a cloud-first endpoint. Outside of work, she has been meditating daily for 5 years, teaches yoga and is a certified Reiki practitioner. Angela holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Courtney Harrison Courtney is an Account Director with Intel Corporation based in the San Francisco Bay area. Currently Courtney leads a team that supports all of the Intel business interactions with Alphabet and Google. A twenty-one year Intel veteran, Courtney has spent the past fifteen years in field sales working with top multi-national customers and local OEMs. Courtney began her career at Intel in CPU operations. Courtney has both a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from Stanford University in Industrial Engineering. Cool things of the week A new podcast explores the unseen world of data centers blog Back by popular demand: Google Cloud products in 4 words or less (2021 edition) blog Save the date for Google Cloud Next ‘21: October 12-14, 2021 blog Interview Intel site Chromebook site Chrome OS site Chromebook turns 10 site Building the future of business computing: 10 years of Chrome OS blog Form Factor Portfolio site Deploy devices with zero-touch enrollment site Thunderbolt site WiFi 6 site CloudReady site MCA site What’s something cool you’re working on? Mark is working on Costs meet code with programmatic budget notifications. Sound Effects Attribution “LeDancing” by Frankum of Freesound.org “Jingle Romantic” by Jay_You of Freesound.org

Jenny Brown co-hosts with Mark Mirchandani this week for a great conversation about the ML lifecycle with our guests Craig Wiley and Dale Markowitz. Using a real-life example of bus cameras detecting potholes, Dale and Craig walk us through the steps of designing, building, implementing, and improving on a piece of machine learning software. The first step, Craig tells us, is to identify the data collected and determine its viability in an ML model. He describes how to get the best data for your project and how to keep the data, code, and libraries consistent to allow better analysis by your ML models. He talks about the importance of a Feature Store to aid in data consistency. Craig explains how machine learning pipelines like TensorFlow are great tools to improve consistency in the ML environment as well, making it easier to improve your model and even to build new ones using the same data. Keeping this consistency from data scientist analyzation to ML developer to model deployment means a more efficient process and product. Evaluating models after production is an important step in the lifecycle as well to ensure accuracy, validity, and performance of the model. Craig gives us some examples and tips on monitoring models after they’ve been deployed. We talk about the challenges of scaling ML projects and Craig offers advice for developers and companies looking to build ML projects. Dale Markowitz Dale Markowitz is an Applied AI Engineer for ML on Google Cloud. Before that, she was a software engineer in Google Research and an engineer at the online dating site OkCupid. Craig Wiley Craig is the Director of Product for Google Cloud’s AI Platform. Previous to Google, Craig spent nine years at Amazon, as the General Manager of Amazon SageMaker, AWS’ machine learning platform as well as in Amazon’s 3rd Party Seller Business. Craig has a deep belief in democratizing the power of data, he pushes to improve the tooling for experienced users while seeking to simplifying it for the growing set of less experienced users. Outside of work he enjoys spending time with his family, eating delicious meals, and enthusiastically struggling through small home improvement projects. Cool things of the week Introducing GKE Autopilot: a revolution in managed Kubernetes blog At your service! With schedule-based autoscaling, VMs are at the ready blog Interview Google Cloud AI and Machine Learning Products site GCP Podcast Episode 240: reCAPTCHA Enterprise with Kelly Anderson + Spring ML Potholes with Eric Clark podcast Using machine learning to improve road maintenance blog Key requirements for an MLOps foundation blog TensorFLow site Kubeflow Pipelines site TensorBoard site How to dub a video with AI video Can AI make a good baking recipe? video Machine learning without code in the browser video What’s something cool you’re working on? Jenny started a new podcast that reads interesting Google blog posts over at Google Cloud Reader. Our friend Dr. Anton Chuvakin started the Cloud Security Podcast by Google. Read more about it and listen here. Follow the show and hosts on Twitter Cloud Security Podcast Anton and Tim And listen to Anton on the GCP Podcast Episode 218: Chronicle Security with Dr. Anton Chuvakin and Ansh Patniak.

Mark Mirchandani and Stephanie Wong are back this week as we learn about all the new things happening with Google Cloud Spanner. Our guests this week, Dilraj Kaur and Christoph Bussler, describe Cloud Spanner as a fully managed relational database that boasts unlimited scaling and advanced consistency and availability. Unlimited scaling truly means unlimited, and Chris explains why Cloud Spanner offers this feature and how it’s making database design and development easier. Dilraj and Chris tell us all about the cool new features Spanner has developed, like generated columns and foreign keys, and how customer needs influenced these developments. Chris walks us through the process of using some of these new features, including how developers can monitor their database systems. Managed backups and multi-region configuration are additional recent additions to Cloud Spanner, and our guests explain how these are used by current enterprise clients. Dilraj and Chris explain the automatically managed features of Spanner versus the customer managed features and how people set up and manage database projects. We hear examples of companies using Cloud Spanner and how it has improved their businesses. Dilraj Kaur Dilraj Kaur is an Enterprise Customer Engineer with specialization in Data Management. She has been with Google for about 2.5 years and is based in Atlanta. Christoph Bussler As a Solutions Architect Chris is focusing on databases, data migration and data integration in enterprise customer settings. See his professional work and background on his website. Cool things of the week New to Google Cloud? Here are a few free trainings to help you get started blog Start your skills challenge today site Service Directory is generally available: Simplify your service inventory blog Interview Google Cloud Spanner site GCP Podcast Episode 62: Cloud Spanner with Deepti Srivastava podcast Using the Cloud Spanner Emulator docs Cloud Spanner Ecosystem site Cloud Spanner Qwiklabs site Google Cloud Platform Community On Slack site Creating and managing generated columns docs WITH Clause docs Foreign Keys docs Numeric Data Type docs Information schema docs Overview of introspection tools docs Backup and Restore docs Multi-region configurations docs ShareChat: Building a scalable data-driven social network for non-English speakers globally site Blockchain.com: Streamlining infrastructure for the world’s most dynamic financial market site What is Cloud Spanner? video What’s something cool you’re working on? Mark has been working on budgeting blog posts, including Protect your Google Cloud spending with budgets. Stephanie is working on her data center animation series

This week on the podcast, Mark Mirchandani and Gabi Ferrara talk with Nimesh Bhagat about Cloud SQL Insights. This powerful tool enables developers to diagnose database issues for faster, smoother performance. Nimesh tells us the inspiration for Cloud SQL Insight’s development and describes its biggest benefits. One of the important aspects of Insights is the ability for developers to gain an application-centric view by allowing them to tag database queries with SQL comments. These tags are aggregated in Insights and give developers a visual of the database queries. Here, developers can see load patterns and use that information to improve database efficiency. Cloud SQL Insights offers managed database analysis that helps developers understand the past and predict the future. Simplifying the journey of database debugging, Nimesh explains, was the goal of creating Cloud SQL Insights. He takes us through the process of using the software, pointing out the improvements Insights makes over the old way. Cloud SQL Insights only launched in January, but it’s already helping numerous clients with their projects. Nimesh describes these real-world uses, including Major League Baseball experience as part of Insights Early Access Program. Nimesh Bhagat Nimesh is a product manager at Google Cloud, he leads Cloud SQL Insights. He has worked across engineering and product roles, building highly available and high performance enterprise infrastructure used by Fortune 500 companies. His passion lies in combining powerful infrastructure with simple user experience so that every business and developer can build software at scale and velocity. Cool things of the week A new collaboration with Google Cloud blog Don’t fear the authentication: Google Drive edition blog Interview Cloud SQL Insights docs Cloud SQL Documentation docs GCP Podcast Episode 163: Cloud SQL with Amy Krishnamohan podcast Google Cloud Monitoring site Database observability for developers: introducing Cloud SQL Insights blog Introduction to Cloud SQL Insights codelab Boost your query performance troubleshooting skills with Cloud SQL Insights blog Introducing Sqlcommenter: An open source ORM auto-instrumentation library blog Introducing Cloud SQL Insights video Cloud SQL Github site What’s something cool you’re working on? Gabi is working on several things, including Schema Migrations with CI/CD pipelines. She is always available on Twitter and she offers free office hours! Sound Effects Attribution “Small Audience Laugh” by Tim Kahn of Freesound.org