Last week, Google Cloud Next welcomed 23,000 guests through the doors of the Moscone Center in San Francisco for its largest conference to date. Over three days, Google unveiled sweeping updates to Google Cloud Platform and G Suite. SADA Systems, a Google Cloud Premier Partner and Premier Sponsor of the event, showcased its solutions and services for everything Google Cloud. SADA hosted panel sessions, connecting with customers, and attended the festivities throughout the week! There is a lot to cover, and you can read the more product-specific highlights from Next in our G Suite and GCP blogs. Here is a quick recap of our major milestones and takeaways from this epic cloud event!
SADA Receives Partner of the Year Award and Google Designations of Specialization
A Google Cloud Premier Partner since 2013, SADA was honored to be named Google Cloud North America Sales Partner of the Year. This recognition underscores SADA’s dedication to enterprise transformation through migration to Google Cloud – a service line that saw a 300% increase in revenue in 2017, according to SADA CEO Tony Safoian.
Just prior to the event, SADA was also awarded the Location-Based Services and Enterprise Collaboration Partner Specializations for its work integrating the Google Maps Platform with Google Cloud, as well as its expertise in deploying G Suite at the enterprise level. Coupled with its North America Partner of the Year award, this made SADA one of the most highly decorated Google Partners in attendance at Next.
SADA Leadership at Next Panels on Healthcare, G Suite and Cloud Platform
Google Cloud Next focused on overall themes of the democratization of AI across the enterprise, the deploy-anywhere approach to enterprise architecture through updates to Kubernetes Engine and hybrid cloud support, and a maturation of G Suite services that bridge the gap to cloud workflows.
SADA participated in a series of three panels throughout the week. CEO Tony Safoian spoke at “Why Large Healthcare Organizations Are Going Google.” During this panel, Safoian hosted a speaker group featuring four of SADA’s large healthcare customers as they discussed their journeys to Google. “What’s interesting for me, being a student of the cloud, is that healthcare has all of a sudden gone from being the most cloud-fearing vertical to the one that’s adopting faster than any industry we are involved in,” says Safoian. Watch the video to learn more about the decisive moments that pushed these healthcare organizations to Google enterprise adoption.
At other panels, SADA’s Google Enterprise Search Director, Chad Johnson, spoke at “Google Cloud Search: A Fully Managed Secure Enterprise Search Platform from Google,” and SADA’s director of Cloud Services, Simon Margolis, spoke at “Google Cloud Platform: The What, The How, and The Why.” Each panelist covered the broader theme of increased enterprise adoption of Google Cloud and G Suite as a result of more conducive environments for a growing array of existing enterprise infrastructure.
Lahey Health Spotlights SADA as G Suite Implementations Partner During Keynote
During the Next keynote presentations, Lore Chapman from Lahey Health spotlighted SADA as their implementation partner in their successful bid to “Go Google at Lahey in 91 Days.” This was no small feat – Lahey boasts 15,000 employees running on four aging email systems which hung in a delicate, patchwork balance. “Our goal was dexterity and a digitized workspace, enabling collaboration anywhere, anytime,” says Chapman. The gargantuan effort required what Chapman called “The Force of 3 +1,” a combination of three of Lahey’s internal teams plus their trusted implementations partner, SADA Systems.
The result? Lahey Health is now the largest healthcare institution yet to partner with Google Cloud. With careful planning along with SADA’s expert guidance and healthcare vertical know-how, Lahey Health was able to achieve massive shift in its workflow in the course of just three months.
On the floor, away from all the keynote speakers and panelists, SADA’s Google Team chatted it up at their booth with other customers and partners in the West Hall of the Moscone Center. And visitors to the booth did not walk away empty handed! SADA set up a Cloud VR game and awarded three winners with a Google Home, Pixel 2 and Pixelbook.
What Did We Learn From Google Cloud Next ‘18?
Between the fun and games (which included a VR cloud game at our booth and a main stage concert by the Chainsmokers), there were plenty of platform updates to learn about with Google Cloud and G Suite.
Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of updates announced for Google Cloud Platform:
- Custom Machine Learning Models Made Easier: By releasing Cloud AutoML Vision, Cloud AutoML Natural Language, and AutoML translation to beta, Google is doubling down on its promise to make machine learning more attainable to enterprises that lack AI expertise. With these services, companies can train models custom to specific business needs with little or no coding knowledge. GCP also released improvements to Kubernetes management for ML workflows, as well as increased support for Cloud TPUs for model training.
- Increased Support for Microservices and Hybrid Cloud Environments: While we’ve touched upon Istio in the past, we know from Next 2018 that Istio will this week reach version 1.0, featuring integrations with Apigee API Management and more intelligent service discovery than ever before. Coupled with the release of GKE On-Prem to alpha, enterprises will be more equipped to transition from monolithic on-prem environments to cloud-ready, containerized microservices. These two tools will be well received by Cloud resistant enterprises that have awaited smoother stepping stones to the Cloud.
On the G-Suite side, customers can expect a litany of long-awaited product updates to existing Google Services:
- Google Voice for Early Adopter Program: This is Google’s most serious enterprise bid to replace legacy phone systems tied to landlines and devices. Aside from being device agnostic, Google Voice’s main draw is how easy it is to administer and track. Admins can create and assign numbers in bulk, and users can expect easy integration with Hangouts and Calendar.
- Third Party Indexing in Cloud Search: SADA is proud to be a partner of Google’s effort to extend search beyond just the content within an organization’s G Suite. The goal of this feature is to quickly and efficiently surface the company data you are looking for no matter the source. This new feature, just like the new standalone Google Drive for Enterprise, will also be available to non-G Suite customers.
- Much Welcomed Security Updates to G Suite: By announcing a new Investigation Tool in G Suite Security Center, along with the ability to choose the region in which your data is stored, Google is assuaging concerns of the hyper vigilant in a year highlighted by security scandals and GDPR rollouts in the tech industry. With these tools, enterprises are more equipped to monitor and prevent malicious activity on a daily basis from within G Suite.
Google Cloud Next ‘18 helped equip and energize SADA for another successful year of partnership in G Suite and Google Cloud. For a more comprehensive breakdown of updates, be sure to check the SADA Systems blog.Contact SADA System’s team of Google Cloud experts to discuss the logistics of bringing cutting-edge cloud capabilities to your organization.
