Posted by Suzanne Frey, Director, Security, Trust, and Privacy, Google Apps

Every company has data that it must keep secure — whether that data is about confidential innovations, strategic plans or sensitive HR issues — keeping all of your data safe from inadvertent or purposeful leaks needs to be simple, quick and reliable. Google for Work already helps admins manage information security with tools such as encryption, sharing controls, mobile device management and two-factor authentication. However, sometimes user actions compromise the best of all of these controls; for example, a user might hit “Reply all” when meaning to send a private message with sensitive content.

Starting today, if you’re a Google Apps Unlimited customer, Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for Gmail will add another layer of protection to prevent sensitive information from being revealed to those who shouldn’t have it.

How Gmail DLP works

Organizations may have a policy that the Sales department shouldn’t share customer credit card information with vendors. And to keep information safe, admins can easily set up a DLP policy by selecting “Credit Card Numbers” from a library of predefined content detectors. Gmail DLP will automatically check all outgoing emails from the Sales department and take action based on what the admin has specified: either quarantine the email for review, tell users to modify the information or block the email from being sent and notify the sender. These checks don’t just apply to email text, but also to content inside common attachment types ― such as documents, presentations and spreadsheets. And admins can also create custom rules with keywords and regular expressions.

Check out the DLP whitepaper for more information including the full list of predefined content creators, and learn how to get started. Gmail DLP is the first step in a long-term investment to bring rule-based security across Google Apps. We’re working on bringing DLP to Google Drive early next year, along with other rule based security systems.

As we round out the year, let’s take a look at what we did in 2015 to enhance the security, privacy and control you have over your information.

• To verify the good work we do on privacy, we were one of the first cloud providers to invite an independent auditor to show that our privacy practices for Google Apps for Work and Google Apps for Education comply with the latest ISO/IEC 27018:2014 privacy standards. These confirm for example, that we don’t use customer data for advertising.
• To make security easier for all, we've expanded our security toolset:
• We introduced Security Keys to make two-step verification more convenient and provide better protection against phishing. For admins, we released Google Apps identity services, which allows secure single sign on access with SAML and OIDC support and we delivered device (MDM) and app (MAM) Mobile Management across Google Apps.
• We launched Postmaster tools to help Gmail users better handle large volumes of mail and report spam.
• For Google Cloud developers, the Cloud Security Scanner allows you to easily scan your application for common vulnerabilities (such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and mixed content).
• For those who want the power and flexibility of public cloud computing and want to bring their own encryption keys, we announced Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys for Google Cloud Platform.
• To give more transparency on how email security, even beyond Gmail, is changing over the years we published the Safer Email report.
• We introduced new sharing features, alerts and audit events to Google Drive for Google Apps Unlimited customers. For example, administrators can now create custom alerts and disable the downloading, printing or copying of files with Information Rights Management (IRM). New sharing settings give employees better control within their organization unit and now admins can let them reset their own passwords.
• Google Groups audit settings allow better tracking of Groups memberships. For all, the launch of google.com/privacy gives better control over personal data and Android for Work makes it easier to keep personal and work data separate on employee devices.

Companies are moving to the Cloud for all kinds of reasons, but Security and Trust remain critical and predominant differentiators between providers. That’s why millions of businesses trust Google to do the daily heavy lifting in security ─ preventing, testing, monitoring, upgrading and patching, while working towards the future. Because Google was born in the cloud, we’ve built security from the ground up across our entire technology stack, from the data centers to the servers to the services and features we provide across all of your devices. No other Cloud provider can claim this degree of security investment at every single layer.

While 2015 was a great year, there’s a lot more in store for 2016. To learn more about how our technology is evolving, please join us at the Enigma conference in San Francisco on January 25th to discuss electronic crime, security and privacy ideas that matter.

Posted by Devavrat Shah, Chief Scientist and Co-founder of Celect

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Blog.)

Editor's note: Today’s guest blog comes from Devavrat Shah, Chief Scientist and Co-founder of Celect, which helps retailers understand buying patterns and customer choices.

Retailers spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out what people will buy and when, online or offline. Many retailers see this as an art, but at Celect, we want to add science to this process. The answer lies in what we call the “Choice Engine,” which gathers data on what customers buy and don’t buy – instead of just simply finding out how they rate products they like. Think of the shopping process this way: If someone browses black shirts and red shirts online, but puts a blue shirt in the shopping cart, they’re giving you comparative information. Celect can take these choices and suggest which products a retailer should stock more or less of – as well as predict when price becomes a factor in a shopper’s purchase decision.

My cofounder Vivek Farias and I, both professors at MIT, decided to put our brains together and see if we could bring our technology to the commercial market. We knew our technology was great, so we bootstrapped a team together – two professors, two engineers, and one person on the ground doing business development. Our biggest challenge was scaling our technology even though we had an extremely small development team. We didn’t want to run a system when we didn’t yet have clients.

Fortunately for Celect, we met the criteria for Google Cloud Platform for Startups, giving us $100,000 in credit for Google Cloud Platform products and easy access to engineers and architects to help us make the most of our infrastructure. We quickly found out how good Google’s documentation is, which matters when you’re a startup that needs to move quickly. We get to tap into the expertise of people who’ve spent 10 years building cloud infrastructure, and they know it very well. The web user interface of Google Cloud Storage is very intuitive to navigate, and gives us an overall view of the system and the resources in use.

We run our workloads on Google Compute Engine, which operates easily with our commodity Linux machines – another way we save money as a startup. Google Cloud Platform also gives us peace of mind about security. Retailers trust us with highly proprietary information, and they’re very sensitive to data breaches. When they hear we rely on Google, retailers know we’re adhering to strong security standards.

Since we’re going after large retailers for our product, we need the scalability to store massive datasets. We can create new data stores in Google Cloud Platform so that every client’s data is siloed from the others. It’s the perfect on-demand infrastructure for a company like ours that needs to run lean for the first couple of years.

At this stage in our growth, we want to make very efficient use of every dollar we spend. The past year has been very successful for us, with some great retailer brands signed on and a threefold growth in employees. Google Cloud Platform will grow with us, while helping us develop our products better and faster.

- Posted by Devavrat Shah, Chief Scientist and Co-founder, Celect

Posted by Amit Singh, President, Google for Work

What’s in a name? Last September, when we changed our name from Google Enterprise to Google for Work, it wasn’t just about what we call ourselves – it was about what we stand for. We want to build great products that help you with every aspect of your life – including work (where many waking hours are spent).

Enterprise is old business. We believe in a new way of working with collaboration at the core. A world where we work how we choose. Where getting stuff done in the office doesn’t feel like traveling back in time. Where our work tools are just as good or even better than the ones we have in our personal lives.

We bring the best of Google to work. The same cloud computing infrastructure that we use to run our search engine; powerful apps and services to help you get work done – fast; simple, secure platforms to access everything, wherever you are.

While we have much more in store, it’s been a busy year and we’ve hit some great milestones over the last twelve months:

• More than one million paying organizations are actively using Google Drive, including companies like The New York Times, Uber, Fossil, Wedding Wire and BBVA.

• Google Apps for Work is proving to be the next generation tool of choice: according to a Better Cloud study, Millennials (aged 18-34) are 55% more likely to use Google Apps than alternatives. It’s cost effective, too: Forrester Research’s Total Economic Impact calculator shows that companies using Google Apps see a 304 percent return on investment.

• We’ve introduced groundbreaking new services with Google Cloud Platform, such as Nearline and Cloud Bigtable for storage and Kubernetes, an open-source container orchestration system. In total, we’ve added over 30 products to our stack, and our online community has nearly doubled.

• Chromebooks are now the best-selling device in the US for K-12 education, according to a report from IDC.

• More than 10,000 companies are testing, trialling and using Android for Work following its launch in February. In July, we added carriers such as AT&T and Verizon to our partner program and introduced a new class of devices for regulated industries, like the Blackphone by Silent Circle and Samsung's KNOX devices.

And the best is yet to come. Cloud computing will continue to get more powerful, and we’re only at the beginning of what machine learning can do to help businesses and people contextualize data.

Imagine an even smarter digital assistant that can surface the information you need at just the right time and help you manage your schedule for stress-free productivity. Virtual reality products, such as Expeditions, are going to help us learn and work in exciting new ways. And finally, more and more of the objects around us will connect to the internet, enabling more efficient information transfer and actionable data for businesses than ever. These advances will affect all aspects of our lives, including work, and the possibilities are great. We’ll keep our focus forward, so that wherever we’re going, we’re always embarking on what’s next.

Posted by Kevin Mathers, Country Sales Director, Google UK and former Army Captain

I was fourteen when I knew I wanted to join the Army. I was a cadet at school, in the cold and wet Lake District hills. I revelled in the fun of confronting and overcoming seemingly impossible challenges and hardships with my mates. I loved being part of something; a team, a mission. To me, the Army was something to be part of. Something to believe in.

I served for five years with the Highland Fusiliers, a British Army infantry regiment, after university. What I cherish most from my time in the military is how my character developed from repeatedly having to achieve goals, against the odds, with some of the best teams I could imagine. I remember leading five young Glaswegian soldiers across the glaciers of the Karakoram mountains in Pakistan, and watching as their courage and resolve grew with every icy step. Then, later, I saw them become leaders of teams on operations. It was soldiers like those that taught me leadership is about serving a team, not running a team.

This is just one of many lessons that ex-servicemen and women learn from the military that make them great entrepreneurs. In addition to recognizing the power of a team, they’re taught to plan and act with imperfect information and limited resources. They prepare for every scenario, but know how to react quickly and logically to sudden obstacles. And they learn to do it all while under extreme pressure and often in dire circumstances — skills that become priceless qualities for entrepreneurs in fast-moving business environments.



Now, thanks to development in cloud technology and web-based tools, it’s easier than ever for ex-military personnel to pursue entrepreneurship. They don’t need a physical office to bring a team together; with video conferencing and collaborative tools, they can work with colleagues from all over the world as if they’re in a room together. Having a website means no longer needing an expensive storefront or being limited to customers within driving distance, and online advertising makes it possible to find the clients who are looking for exactly what you offer. Starting a business now costs a fraction of what it used to, with even more tools available to get your idea off the ground.

So, in honour of Armed Forces Day in the United Kingdom, we’re celebrating those leaders in service who became leaders in British business. We’re highlighting people like Andy McNab, the best-selling author and entrepreneur who joined the military at 16 with the literacy of an 11-year old. Or Tom Bodkin, who spent six years in the Parachute Regiment before starting a fast-growing company that leads treks to remote places around the world. And to encourage ex-servicemen and women to pursue their passions as entrepreneurs, we’re offering discounts on Google Apps, Google AdWords and Google Cloud Platform, and providing business training from our Digital Garage in Leeds.

To all those who have served and continue to serve in so many ways, thank you for your dedication and courage. With greatest respect and gratitude, I salute you and your families this Armed Forces Day.

Posted by Miles Ward, Global Head of Solutions, Google Cloud Platform

Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog.

As the most recent and deadly Ebola outbreak spread in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the global philanthropic community sought new and innovative ways to raise money for much needed awareness and relief. Band Aid 30 was imagined as a modern echo of the original Band Aid’s successful campaign to address hunger in Africa. A global team immediately set out to organize a live performance that would feature dozens of the world’s top music artists.

Sounds a bit ambitious, right? In this case, as with many ventures that make a true impact, the team behind the scenes was a lot smaller than you’d think. The number of developers responsible for deploying the website for this fast-paced, globally critical project: two. Mukesh Randev and Jonathan Horne, web developers from a cutting edge media agency in the UK called Adtrak, took the job on with great urgency. A couple of nice chaps in Nottingham, trying to change the world. Well, ok, mostly trying to keep the website online.

The project came together in just shy of 14 days, so things were a bit frenetic. The logos changed 17 times. Layout and top billing were in constant flux. The front page had UK and US donation links… or maybe just UK? Looming in the back of Jonathan’s mind was the fact that when this site goes live, and several dozen artists with an aggregate 100+ million twitter followers all invite the world to donate, the traffic would be coming fast and heavy.

They were using Google Cloud Platform, which was a bit new to them, and they were really eager to set up automatic scaling so that they’d be able to handle the load. They were also using Google DNS to direct traffic to a Google Compute Engine instance hosting Wordpress and using a local instance of MySQL as the database.

As I explained to Mukesh and Jonathan the standard best practices required to operate a dynamic website like this correctly (e.g., use a load balancer, use replica pools, use autoscaler, and move MySQL to CloudSQL with MemCacheD, and configure WordPress for performance), an idea struck:

Miles: “Hey, what dynamic stuff are you running through WordPress?”

Mukesh: “Well, really nothing. All payment processing is offloaded, comments are using disqus, but that’s really just for layout. And so the PR/media team can make updates on the day of the event.”

Because 100% of the site was static, rather than creating all of the above services, we simply copied the Band Aid 30 website to Google Cloud Storage. Cloud Storage is integrated into the Google front end, a powerful distributed edge routing and caching system that provides incredible performance for serving static content. Just imagine how much content is being served through this system for YouTube, Google Play, Picasa... it’s staggering!

Copying the site might sound complex, but let me assure you, it’s not. In fact, it’s exactly three short lines of code at your command line prompt:

//go get my website, make sure you go to an empty folder first
wget --convert-links -q --mirror -p --html-extension --base=./ -k -P ./ http://ipaddressforyourstagingserver

//put that website in the cloud
gsutil cp -R * gs://www.yourrockingwebsite.com

//let everyone read it
gsutil -m acl set -R -a public-read gs://www.yourrockingwebsite.com

That’s it! This solution had simplicity written all over it.

Simplicity also meant cost savings. The dynamic setup – which is obviously more functional – allows lots of simultaneous site editors, data-driven features and richer logging, but is also substantially more expensive to operate. We think all of that would’ve looked something like this, and cost in excess of $10,000 USD per month.

Now, compare that to what we actually built.

It only cost $9.17 (yes, you read that right) to run this production website on launch day, without a single performance hiccup or any risk of operational crisis. It just worked.

That’s a 99.92% discount from our original approach. Assuming all other costs of Band Aid 30 are zero (clearly they aren’t), this would represent a 40,621,592.14% ROI based on their smash success of raising over £2.5 million GBP. Not too shabby ;)

We’re really excited about the positive impact in Ebola victim’s lives that Band Aid 30 is making, the outstanding execution under pressure that Mukesh, Jonathan and the whole Adtrak team delivered (in less than 14 days) and our opportunity to help in this little way.

Posted by Greg Demichillie, Director of Product Management

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog.)

At Google Cloud Platform, we strive to deliver innovative cloud computing technology to developers at low costs with massive scale. Currently, our cloud offerings are powered by best-in-class data centers, virtualization software and container-based applications, but as we consider the future of cloud computing, we realize there’s a major opportunity ahead that would allow us to deliver an unprecedented improvement in the power, efficiency and reliability of our infrastructure. We can elevate cloud computing like never before.

We’re answering the question that’s been in front of us the whole time: why isn’t cloud computing built in actual clouds? Well, as of today, it is. We’re excited to announce Google Actual Cloud Platform: all of our incredible services and products running in actual clouds in the troposphere.

Starting on April 1, Google Actual Cloud Platform brings with it a number of exciting new features:

• New compute zone: We’ve added a new compute zone, troposphere-1a, to make it easier than ever to provide your app with non-earth-bound availability. Now, you no longer have to make a choice between high availability and high altitude.

• New machine types: Alongside our current machine types, we’ve added a new category of “physical” devices: actual-cloud machine types. Choose from cumulus-16gb, cirrus-32gb and stratocumuliform-64g (created specifically for data intensive workloads).

• Stormboost: Drawing on charges from electrical fields during thunderstorms, we’re able to supercharge read/write performance on all persistent disks and offer 50% higher IOPS.

• CloudDrops: A new, game-changing content distribution system. CloudDrops can provide blazingly fast content delivery to all of your users using—you guessed it—rain drops.

• Weather Dashboards in the Developer’s Console: With new weather-dependent performance features, you need a way to monitor the atmospheric conditions of your servers. Now, you can monitor humidity/request, watch your app’s altitude and see a 7-day forecast right next to the rest of your stats.

• Bare-metal container support: Applications deployed on Actual Cloud Platform can run in containers too. The lightweight shared kernel model of containers makes them ideal for non-terrestrial deployments.

From all of us on the Google Cloud Platform team, here’s to clear skies ahead.

Posted by Brian Goldfarb, Head of Cloud Platform Marketing

Today at Enterprise Connect in Orlando, Avaya announced their new OnAvaya™ cloud-based contact center solution, built exclusively on Google Cloud Platform. Avaya provides solutions that help companies increase their engagement within a contact center across multiple channels and devices. Their new product – Customer Engagement OnAvaya™ Powered by Google Cloud Platform – provides a low-cost solution that allows customer service agents to work from anywhere, right in the browser. Aiming to meet the specific demands of a communications platform, Avaya chose Google Cloud Platform for its reliability, performance and scalability – and our simple pricing structure. OnAvaya™ runs on Google Compute Engine and utilizes Google's advanced networking capabilities to provide Unified Communications services running in the public cloud. The Chrome device based agent endpoints communicate using WebRTC with their cloud infrastructure.

“Google is one of the world leaders in cloud environments,” says Tony Pereira, director of business development at Avaya. “They have built an impressive architecture with security features that they are constantly evolving to make the most of cloud efficiencies.”

OnAvaya™ takes advantage of the unique capabilities of Chrome devices. You simply provision a Chromebook and headset and your customer service agents can work from home or wherever there's an Internet connection and have full Avaya contact center functionality. In the event of a snowstorm or network interruption, you can shift your support operations to any site that has Wi-Fi. Since employees no longer need a physical phone, you'll save costs on additional hardware.

With Customer Engagement OnAvaya™ Powered by Google Cloud Platform, customers will be able to support growth in their business and seasonal spikes without huge capital investments. And since we manage the technology on our end, implementation time for OnAvaya™ customers should drop from months to weeks – or even days.

The solution will be available to certified Avaya business partners as well as Google for Work service partners starting in the spring of 2015. Learn more about the OnAvaya™ solution on their blog.

We’re thrilled to welcome Avaya to the Cloud Platform family!

Posted by Eran Feigenbaum, Director of Security, Google Apps for Work

Many organizations are in the dark about the security of their data, especially with the rise of shadow IT and numerous recent breaches. It’s no wonder IT execs are concerned about how their data is protected and who has access to their confidential information.

Every day I meet CIOs who ask me how Google’s cloud can offer the level of security they need, and many IT execs likely have the same nagging worries. To ease those worries — and since today is Safer Internet Day — I’d like to highlight five ways in which Google’s cloud keeps your information safe:

1. Secure physical infrastructure
There are many layers of security baked into our data center security measures and infrastructure. A very small percentage of Googlers are allowed in our data centers, and even fewer are allowed on the floor where the servers are located. And as they near the core of the data center, they encounter more sophisticated security measures, like biometric scanners and under floor laser beams.

2. Control over the entire technology stack
From the servers and routers we build ourselves, to the submarine fiber that connects our data centers, to the mobile management of our software interface, our team has control and visibility over the entire chain of technologies. This enables us to detect weaknesses faster and respond to threats that may emerge swiftly.

3. Investment in active security research beyond Google
More than 500 security engineers work to protect our systems, while dedicated teams look for malware and vulnerabilities beyond our own infrastructure, in other operating systems and all over the web. For this, we know there is power in numbers, which is why we engage the broader security research community with our Vulnerability Reward Program. In the last year, we paid 1.5 million dollars to security researchers and hackers from every corner of the world to attack our systems and share the vulnerabilities they identified.

4. Locations chosen for speed and reliability
When picking the location of our data centers, we have many priorities that keep speed and reliability top of mind. Among these factors, the location must:

1. Be distributed geographically for better user experience and greater resiliency
2. Have reliable, fast Internet connectivity and stable energy sources
3. Be in politically stable areas with legal systems that maintain laws protecting cloud users from liability for content in the systems
4. Abide by rule-of-law that protects our right and the rights of users as it relates to human rights and challenging third-party requests

With all of our data centers adhering to these location priorities, we can surpass the capabilities of on-premise data centers by creating an infrastructure built for speed, reliability, and protection of users’ data

5. There's no downtime
Information is distributed across our servers and data centers worldwide, so if a single server or even an entire data center fails, your information will still be accessible. Our team is committed to reliability, and the way we built our data model for applications and networks allows us to “replace the engines as the plane is flying,” so we can complete our maintenance while providing an uptime guarantee with no scheduled downtime.

Our team has gone to great lengths to build one of the most secure cloud infrastructures in the world. While Safer Internet Day may only happen once a year, we take the trust and security of our customers information very seriously year-round (which we like to share in writing, too). Whether it’s creating easy-to-use tools to help organizations manage their information or keeping customer information safe from prying eyes, we’re constantly investing to ensure that Google earns and keeps your trust.

Posted by Murali Sitaram, Managing Director, Global Partner Strategy & Alliances, Google for Work

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

Many businesses around the world rely on VMware datacenter virtualization solutions to virtualize their infrastructure and optimize the agility and efficiency of their data centers. Today we’re excited to announce that we are teaming up with VMware to make select Google Cloud Platform services available to VMware customers via vCloud Air, VMware’s hybrid cloud platform. We know how valuable flexibility is to a business when determining its total infrastructure solution, and with today’s announcement, enterprise businesses leveraging VMware’s datacenter virtualization solutions gain the flexibility to easily integrate Google Cloud Platform.

Businesses can now use Google Cloud Platform tools and services – including Google BigQuery and Google Cloud Storage – to increase scale, productivity, and functionality. VMware customers will benefit from the security, scalability, and price performance of Google’s public cloud, built on the same infrastructure that allows Google to return billions of search results in milliseconds, serve 6 billion hours of YouTube video per month and provide storage for 425 million Gmail users.

With Google BigQuery, Google Cloud Datastore, Google Cloud Storage, and Google Cloud DNS directly available via VMware vCloud Air, VMware customers will benefit from a single point of purchase and support for both vCloud Air and Google Cloud Platform:

• vCloud Air customers will have access to Google Cloud Platform under their existing service contract and existing network interconnect with vCloud Air, and will simply pay for the Google Cloud Platform services they consume.
• Google Cloud Platform services will be available under the VMware vCloud Air terms of service, and will be fully supported by VMware’s Global Support and Services (GSS) team.
• Certain Google Cloud Platform services are also fully covered by VMware’s Business Associate Agreement (BAA) for US customers who require HIPAA-compliant cloud service.

Google Cloud Platform services will be available to VMware customers beginning later this year, so we’ll have more information very soon. In the near future, VMware is also exploring extended support for Google Cloud Platform as part of its vRealize Cloud Management Suite, a management tool for hybrid clouds.

Today’s announcement bolsters our joint value proposition to customers and builds on our strong, existing relationship around Chromebooks and VMware View and also around the recently announced Kubernetes open-source project. We look forward to welcoming VMware customers to Google Cloud Platform.

Posted by Brian Stevens, VP of Product Management

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

Today, tens of thousands of developers from around the world are joining us at Google Cloud Platform Live — either in person in San Francisco, at our watch parties in New York, Austin, and London, or on the livestream. One of the things we are discussing is that the cloud of today is not yet where developers need it to be. The promise of cloud computing is only partly realized; too many of the headaches of on-premise development and deployment remain. We want to do better. Today, we get one step closer with some important updates to Cloud Platform:

Simple, Flexible Compute Options Development in the cloud today is by and large a fragmented experience. You need to decide up front whether you want to work with virtual machines — and therefore build everything yourself, either from scratch or by wiring together open source components — or to adopt a managed platform, and give up the ability to control the underlying infrastructure. At Google, we think about compute in the cloud differently: as a continuum which allows you to pick and choose the level of abstraction that is right for your application, or even for a component of your application. Today, we’re happy to announce two important steps towards that vision.

Google Container Engine: run Docker containers in compute clusters, powered by Kubernetes

Google Container Engine lets you move from managing application components running on individual virtual machines to launching portable Docker containers that are scheduled into a managed compute cluster for you. Create and wire together container-based services, and gain common capabilities like logging, monitoring and health management with no additional effort. Based on the open source Kubernetes project and running on Google Compute Engine VMs, Container Engine is an optimized and efficient way to build your container-based applications. Because it uses the open source project, it also offers a high level of workload mobility, making it easy to move applications between development machines, on-premise systems, and public cloud providers. Container-based applications can run anywhere, but the combination of fast booting, efficient VM hosts and seamless virtualized network integration make Google Cloud Platform the best place to run them.

Managed VMs in App Engine: PaaS - Evolved

App Engine was born of our vision to enable customers to focus on their applications rather than the plumbing. Earlier this year, we gave you a sneak peek at the next step in the evolution of App Engine — Managed VMs — which will give you all the benefits of App Engine in a flexible virtual machine environment. Today, Managed VMs goes beta and adds auto-scaling support, Cloud SDK integration and support for runtimes built on Docker containers. App Engine provisions and configures all of the ancillary services that are required to build production applications — network routing, load balancing, auto scaling, monitoring and logging — enabling you to focus on application code. Users can run any language or library and customize or replace the entire runtime stack (want to run Node.js on App Engine? Now you can). Furthermore, you have access to the broader array of machine types that Compute Engine offers.

Google Cloud Interconnect: better network connectivity to support global architectures A flexible, high performance and secure network is the backbone of any Internet-scale application or enterprise IT architecture. Today, we’re making it easier for you to get the benefits of Google’s worldwide fiber network by introducing three new connectivity options:

1. Direct peering gives you a fast network pipe directly to Google in any of over 70 points of presence in 33 countries around the world
2. Carrier Interconnect enables you to connect to Google with our carrier partners including Equinix, IX Reach, Level 3, TATA Communications, Telx, Verizon, and Zayo
3. Next month, we will introduce VPN-based connectivity

We’ll follow up with a deeper look at Networking on Wednesday.

Firebase: it’s easier to build mobile and web real-time applications 

Two weeks ago, we announced that Firebase joined Google. Today, we are demonstrating a hint of what makes their platform so powerful. Users of today’s mobile apps are used to real-time flow of communication such as chat, presence, commenting and location. However, current developer tools make it cumbersome to manage the relationship between multiple devices, and the underlying database and storage layer in real time. Google Firebase makes this easier, which is why it powers over 60,000 applications. We’ll follow up with a deeper look at their technology on Thursday.

Google Cloud Debugger: ending printf-style debugging 

At Google I/O, we gave you a sneak peek at how Cloud Debugger makes it easier to troubleshoot applications in production. Today, this service is publicly available in beta. With Cloud Debugger there’s no more hunting through logs to guess at what is going on with your services. Now you can simply pick a line of code, set a watchpoint and the debugger will return locals and a full stack trace from the next request that executes that line on any replica of your service. There is zero setup time, no complex configurations and no performance impacts noticeable to your users.

Google Compute Engine Autoscaler

Today we are launching Compute Engine Autoscaler. It uses the same technology that Google uses to seamlessly handle huge spikes in load and gives developers the ability to dynamically resize a VM fleet in response to utilization and based on a wide array of signals, from QPS of a HTTP Load Balancer, to VM CPU utilization, or custom metrics from the Cloud Monitoring service.

Cloud Platform Free Trial 

New customers can now sign up for a free trial at http://cloud.google.com and receive $300 in credits that you can spend on all Cloud Platform products and services. There are no ongoing commitments — we will never charge your credit card until you upgrade your account. With $300 you can run two n1-standard-2 VMs 24x7 for 60 days, store over 11TB of data, or process over 60TB of data with BigQuery. Learn more about the free trial and start building something for free.

A growing partner ecosystem 

Our Partner Lounge at the SF event features Tableau, Red Hat, DataStax, MongoDB, SaltStack, Fastly and Bitnami. Bitnami announced its Launchpad for Google Cloud Platform featuring almost 100 cloud images, enabling our users to deploy common open source applications and development environments on our infrastructure in one-click. Fastly announced a new offering called Cloud Accelerator, a collaboration with Google Cloud Platform that improves content delivery and performance at the edge.

Rapid adoption 

Over the past months, thousands of new companies have moved to Cloud Platform and adopted it as their development platform of choice. Kevin Baillie took the stage to talk about how Atomic Fiction is able to use thousands of Compute Engine cores to produce high-quality visual effects for Hollywood studios. We also spoke about Wix, one of the most popular consumer website builders, whose media services are built entirely on Cloud Platform. We’re happy to support the launch of their media services platform today. Finally, Office Depot moved its entire printing service from a hosted storage solution to one powered by Cloud Platform — helping them reduce cost, develop with greater agility and power their in-store and online printing service for over 2000 locations.

New price reductions: continued leadership in price-performance

As always, we have an enduring commitment to passing along the savings we receive from Moore’s Law to our users. That is why today we’re announcing price reductions on Network egress (47%), BigQuery storage (23%), Persistent Disk Snapshots (79%), Persistent Disk SSD (48%), and Cloud SQL (25%). These are in addition to the 10% reduction on Google Compute Engine that we announced at the beginning of October and reflect our commitment to make sure you benefit from increased efficiency and falling hardware prices.

A personal note 

I want to end on a personal note. I joined Google just two months ago, and during this time I’ve been floored by what our teams are doing to create the world’s best cloud. We are committed to not just evolving technology for technology’s sake but to staying focused on the user and delivering real value. From what I’ve seen at Google I don’t think the combination of world class technology, innovation and user-focus exists anywhere else in the world today. Today’s announcements are representative of that, and we have so much more in store.

Posted by Dr. Naoyuki Kitamura, CEO, Japan’s Medical Network Systems Inc.

Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform blog

Japan faces a critical shortage of radiologists. Although major hospitals are well equipped to conduct scans, the scarcity of experts to read them and give patients their diagnoses means that people, especially those in rural areas, often have to wait a long time to discover their results. This can have tragic consequences for people with serious conditions.

To address this shortage and help people get accurate diagnoses faster, Medical Network Systems Inc. (MNES) in Hiroshima started running a remote diagnosis service in 2000. Rather than waiting for patients to come to hospitals, we bring the radiology equipment to them. This teleradiology service has helped combat the challenge of getting scanning technology to people in remote areas; however, we are still short on specialists that can read the scans, and we wanted to find ways to give access to patients in areas without specialists.

Last year, our team started using Google Cloud Platform to power our remote-diagnosis systems. Patients used to be given a hard copy of their scan to take to a doctor or specialist. Moving the process to the cloud speeds everything up. All of our buses are equipped with CT scanning machines, so our technicians upload images and scans right from the bus. Specialists can then log into the system from wherever they’re working and see the scans and diagnose the patient remotely.

Reading scans is a very specialized process. Radiologists must examine lots of images and scans in a very particular sequence, and it’s important that this process isn’t laggy or slow. One of the benefits of using Google’s services is that they can handle massive volumes of information. Google App Engine processes the images and data in the right sequence and enables us to cross reference patient inputs with existing radiographic and pathological information.

Instead of waiting for a few days or a week for a diagnosis, which was the usual turnaround for our teleradiology service, patients get their results within a few hours. And it’s not just our patients benefiting from remote diagnosis; enabling our radiologists to work from anywhere has meant that many of our female specialists are able to stay in the workforce — diagnosing scans while working from home and taking care of their kids. With so few radiologists in Japan, this flexibility helps us keep skilled technicians in the workforce.

We’re optimistic about the potential for cloud-based technology to enrich our understanding of pathological issues and believe it signals a new chapter for the healthcare industry by removing geographical barriers between patients and doctors.

Posted by Brian Peterson and John Rector, co-founders, Switch Communications

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform blog)

Today’s guest bloggers are Brian Peterson and John Rector, co-founders of Switch Communications, a San Francisco-based voice communications startup.

When companies first started using business phones, work was a place you went; today, work is a thing you do, whether you’re at your desk or in transit. Yet the business phone hasn’t evolved to work the way that you do. With today’s mobile worker in mind, we created Switch.co, a business phone system built in the cloud, from the ground up. With Switch.co, you can receive calls on any device, whether it’s your desktop through the Chrome app, on mobile with the Android or iOS apps, or even your old desk phone (if you really, really want to). You can even switch seamlessly between devices, so if you start a call on your cell in your car, you can transfer it to your desk when you get into the office without having to hang up then dial back in.

On top of that, Switch.co is designed specifically for Google Apps for Work users: given its rich set of APIs, Google Apps is deeply integrated into the app, allowing users to view recent Gmail messages, see upcoming Calendar events, and access recently shared Docs while in the context of a conversation. You can even launch a Hangout directly from a call. We know Google Apps admins expect setup and management to be easy, so we’ve ensured you can get started with Switch.co over your lunch break.

We built Switch.co for Google Apps users because we’re such heavy Google users ourselves: Switch.co runs on Google App Engine and our team relies on Google Apps internally to keep business running smoothly and efficiently. Because many of our employees work remotely, it’s vital that we can access information at any time and on any device, then collaborate in real-time, no matter where we are. With single sign-on, we can access all the Google products we need with just one log-in; with Google Drive, we can store and share all of our files in one place; and with Google Sheets and Google Docs, we can work together on projects without worrying about out of date attachments.

Drive is particularly powerful in enabling our design and engineering teams to easily share and centralize the many assets required to take a idea from a concept to launch. We deal with a ton of huge files – hi-res graphics, professional grade videos, Adobe Illustrator files — and the ability to store and share them from Drive makes working together so much more seamless. Not only are these files too big for email, but they’d also otherwise splinter into countless versions distributed throughout our employees’ individual hard drives. Plus, the files are backed up by Google so we know they won’t get lost, and they’re centralized in one system, so we don’t have to worry about sensitive data leaving our company’s domain. And given that Google got its start as a search company, being able to search by document name or the copy within a file makes finding what you need easy and fast.

We rely on Google Sheets for our highly collaborative projects, like launch planning. Our entire calendar for the development and promotion of Switch.co, for example, was created and constantly updated in a Google spreadsheet. That way, our marketing and PR teams can access the latest version of the go-to-market plan whenever they need it.

We couldn’t have launched Switch.co without the power of Google Apps for Work enabling us to collaborate and work with the flexibility that a fast-paced startup needs. Google Apps for Work does for Switch Communications what Switch.co does for callers everywhere — it enables you to be agile, connected, and always on the go.

Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Technical Infrastructure

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform blog)

Today at Atmosphere Live, I spoke about how Google is helping developers realize the promise of cloud computing by providing on-demand access to world-class technology at an affordable price.

We believe that compute — the core of any cloud workload — should be simple and fast to provision, scale without effort, and be priced in accordance with Moore’s Law. In March of this year we set a new standard for economics in the public cloud when we brought the price of core infrastructure, including compute & storage, in line with where it should be.

And, as predicted by Moore’s Law, we can now lower prices again. Effective immediately, we are cutting prices of Google Compute Engine by approximately 10% for all instance types in every region. These cuts are a result of increased efficiency in our data centers as well as falling hardware costs, allowing us to pass on lower prices to our customers.

Old and new prices for all our Compute Engine instance types

Using Compute Engine doesn’t just lower costs; it makes developers more productive, agile and efficient. Many development teams spend about 80% of time on what we call “fix and fiddle,” such as managing systems, fixing bugs and just keeping the lights on. Only 20% of time is spent how it should be — building new products or systems that will be platforms for growth.

With Compute Engine and the rest of Cloud Platform, it doesn’t have to be this way. A small company like Snapchat can reach a global audience with just a few people on their development and operations team. Workiva, which processes financial reports for 60% of the Fortune 500, can focus on solving the needs of their users rather than managing infrastructure. And, this past World Cup, Coca Cola and Cloud Platform partner CI&T built and ran the Happiness Flag campaign in just a few weeks with the help of Google Compute Engine. The campaign solicited over three million contributions from fans in more than 200 countries.

We've made a lot of progress in the past year and look forward to what's coming next. Tune in to Google Cloud Platform Live on November 4th to learn more about where we’re headed.

Posted by Julie Pearl, Director of Cloud Developer Relations and Partner Engineering, Google

Today at the Google for Entrepreneurs Global Partner Summit, Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Technical Infrastructure & Google Fellow announced Google Cloud Platform for Startups. This new program will help eligible early-stage startups take advantage of the cloud and get resources to quickly launch and scale their idea by receiving $100,000 in Cloud Platform credit, 24/7 support, and access to our technical solutions team.

This offer is available to startups around the world through top incubators, accelerators and investors. We are currently working with over 50 global partners to provide this offer to startups who have less than $5 million dollars in funding and have less than $500,000 in annual revenue. In addition, we will continue to add more partners over time.

This offer supports our core Google Cloud Platform philosophy: we want developers to focus on code; not worry about managing infrastructure. Starting today, startups can take advantage of this offer and begin using the same infrastructure platform we use at Google. For example, Headspace is helping millions of people keep their minds healthier and happier using Google Cloud Platform for Startups.

Thousands of startups have built successful applications on Google Cloud Platform and those applications have grown to serve tens of millions of users. It has been amazing to watch Snapchat send over 700 million photos and videos a day and Khan Academy teach millions of students. We look forward to helping the next generation of startups launch great products.

 For more information on Google Cloud Platform for Startups, visit http://cloud.google.com/startups.

Posted by Benjamin Bechtolsheim, Product Marketing Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

We’ve had a great time giving you our predictions for the World Cup (check out our post before the quarter-finals and semi-finals). So far, we’ve gotten 13 of 14 games correct. But this isn't about us picking winners in World Cup soccer - it’s about what you can do with Google Cloud Platform. Now, we are open-sourcing our prediction model and packaging it up so you can do your own analysis and predictions.

We used Google Cloud Dataflow to ingest raw, touch-by-touch gameplay day from Opta for thousands of soccer matches. This data goes back to the 2006 World Cup, three years of English Barclays Premier League, two seasons of Spanish La Liga, and two seasons of U.S. MLS. We then polished the raw data into predictive statistics using Google BigQuery.

You can see BigQuery engineer Jordan Tigani (+JordanTigani) and developer advocate Felipe Hoffa (@felipehoffa) talk about how we did it in this video from Google I/O.

Our prediction for the final
It’s a narrow call, but Germany has the edge: our model gives them a 55% chance of defeating Argentina due to a number of factors. Thus far in the tournament, they’ve had better passing in the attacking half of their field, a higher number of shots (64 vs. 61) and a higher number of goals scored (17 vs. 8).

But, 55% is only a small edge. And, although we've been trumpeting our 13 of 14 record, picking winners isn't exactly the same as predicting outcomes. If you'd asked us which scenario was more likely, a 7 to 1 win for Germany against Brazil or a 0 to 1 defeat of Germany by Brazil, we wouldn't have gotten that one quite right.

(Oh, and we think Brazil has a tiny advantage in the third place game. They may have had a disappointing defeat on Tuesday, but the numbers still look good.)

But don’t take our word for it...
Now it’s your turn to take a stab at predicting. We have provided an IPython notebook that shows exactly how we built our model and used it to predict matches. We had to aggregate the data that we used, so you can't compute additional statistics from the raw data. However, for the real data geeks, you could try to see how well neural networks can predict the same data or try advanced techniques like principal components analysis. Alternatively, you can try adding your own features like player salaries or team travel distance. We've only scratched the surface, and there are lots of other approaches you can take.

You might also try simulating how the USA would have done if they had beat Belgium. Or how Germany in 2014 would fare against the unstoppable Spanish team of 2010. Or you could figure out whether the USA team is getting better by simulating the 2006 team against the 2010 and 2014 teams.

Here’s how you can do it
We’ve put everything on GitHub. You’ll find the IPython notebook containing all of the code (using pandas and statsmodels) to build the same machine learning models that we've used to predict the games so far. We've packaged it all up in a Docker container so that you can run your own Google Compute Engine instance to crunch the data. For the most up-to-date step-by-step instructions, check out the readme on GitHub.

Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

Kubernetes is an open source manager for Docker containers, based on Google’s years of experience using containers at Internet scale. Today, Microsoft, RedHat, IBM, Docker, Mesospehere, CoreOS and SaltStack are joining the Kubernetes community and will actively contribute to the project. Each company brings unique strengths, and together we will ensure that Kubernetes is a strong and open container management framework for any application and in any environment - whether in a private, public or hybrid cloud.

Our shared goal is to allow a broad range of developers to take advantage of container technologies. Kubernetes was built from the ground up as a lean, extensible and portable framework for managing Docker workloads. It lets customers manage their applications the way that Google manages hyper-scale applications like Search and Gmail.

Containers offer tremendous advantages for developers. Predictable deployments and simple scalability are possible because Docker packages all of a workload’s dependencies with the application. This allows for ultimate portability; you can avoid vendor lock-in and run containers in the cloud of your choice. It is just as important that the management framework has the same properties of portability and scalability, and that is what the community will bring to Kubernetes.

We look forward to the contributions of the expanded Kubernetes community:

• Microsoft is working to ensure that Kubernetes works great in Linux environments in Azure VMs. Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of the Cloud and Enterprise group at Microsoft told us, “Microsoft will help contribute code to Kubernetes to enable customers to easily manage containers that can run anywhere. This will make it easier to build multi-cloud solutions including targeting Microsoft Azure.”
  
• Red Hat is working to bring Kubernetes to the open hybrid cloud. Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies at Red Hat, told us, “Red Hat has a rich history of contributing to and maturing innovative, open source projects. Through this collaboration with Google on Kubernetes, we are contributing to the evolution of cloud computing and helping deliver the promises that container technologies offer to the open hybrid cloud.”
• IBM is contributing code to Kubernetes and the broader Docker ecosystem to ensure that containers are enterprise-grade, and is working with the community to create an open governance model around the project.
• Docker is delivering the full container stack that Kubernetes schedules into, and is looking to move critical capabilities upstream and align the Kubernetes framework with Libswarm.
• CoreOS is working to ensure that Kubernetes can work seamlessly with the suite of CoreOS technologies that support cloud-native application development on any cloud.
• Mesosphere is actively integrating Kubernetes with Mesos, making the advanced scheduling and management capabilities available to Kubernetes customers.
• SaltStack is working to make Kubernetes a portable container automation framework that is designed for the reality of the platform-agnostic, multi-cloud world.

You can view the source and documentation for Kubernetes on GitHub. We look forward to the contributions of these companies alongside the already vibrant open source community.

Posted by Amit Singh, President of Google Enterprise

Google I/O, our annual developer conference, kicked off this morning in San Francisco with more than 6,000 developers in person and millions more on the livestream. This year, 41 percent of live attendees represent companies that develop business-to-business (B2B) applications, which validates what we’ve known for a while: there’s great demand for better apps in the workplace. People want to work the way they live and use the apps and tools they love, whether they’re at home or in the office.

This drives so much of what we’re doing to bring the best of Google to our users at home to work. For those who missed it, earlier today Sundar Pichai, SVP of Android, Chrome & Apps and Urs Hölzle, SVP of Technical Infrastructure, announced and showed off a lineup of new products and features for Apps, Android, Chromebooks and Cloud Platform. Here are some of the highlights:

Introducing Google Drive for Work and updates to Google Docs

• Already, 190 million people actively use Drive at home, school or work, while companies like Crate & Barrel, HP, Jaguar Land Rover, Seagate and Tory Burch and rely on it to work faster and to connect employees and customers. Now, we’re making Drive even better for business with Google Drive for Work — a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls for $10/user/month.
• As of today, all files uploaded to Google Drive will be encrypted, not only from your device to Google and in transit between Google data centers, but also at rest on Google servers.
• Quickoffice is now full integrated into Docs, Sheets and Slides, so you can open and edit those documents in Office Compatibility Mode directly on Android, your Chrome browser and coming soon to iOS. This means you can open, edit, save and send Microsoft Word, Excel® and PowerPoint® files from your favorite device. You no longer have to buy additional software — it just works.

Reimagining developer productivity and data analytics in the cloud with Google Cloud Platform

• Google Cloud Dataflow, a managed service designed to help developers and companies process large datasets quickly and efficiently, was introduced today at Google I/O. Based on ten years of internal research and development, Cloud Dataflow is designed to let you focus on getting actionable insights from your data, while leaving the management, tuning, sweat and tears to Google.
• To enhance application management and operations in production, we’re launching Google Cloud Monitoring, built on the technology of Stackdriver, a company that recently joined Google, and introducing new tracing and debugging tools to increase developer productivity.
• We’re making it easier for mobile developers to build on our platform with a new version of Google Cloud Save and improved integrations in Android studio.

Today we also announced new features that are slated to launch in the next Android release — “L” — that are intended for enterprises. These features will make the transition for users from work to play more seamless, and provide IT administrators with more options to keep their employees' data secure and easy to access. Businesses will also be able buy apps in bulk on Google Play and make them available to employees — great for admins, great for developers. You can also read more about some of the updates coming to schools here.

Today has been exhilarating, but it’s still just the beginning. Google I/O continues through the end of tomorrow, so tune in at google.com/io for more news and check back here for more updates and news throughout the week.

Posted by Daniel Viveiros, CI&T’s Head of Technology

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

Editor's note: Today's guest post is from Daniel Viveiros, Head of Technology at CI&T, a Google Cloud Platform Partner of the Year LATAM 2013. In this post, Daniel describes how CI&T in partnership with Coca-Cola built the ‘Happiness Flag’ for the Coca-Cola 2014 FIFA World Cup™ campaign in Brazil. To learn more about the Happiness flag visit this website.


As part of the ‘The World’s Cup’ campaign, Coca-Cola wanted to do something that would visually illustrate soccer’s global reach. Coca-Cola invited fans around the world to share their photos to create the Happiness Flag -- the world’s largest mosaic flag crafted from thousands of crowdsourced images submitted by people in more than 200 countries. The flag, 3,015 square meters in size, was unveiled during the opening ceremony of the 2014 FIFA World Cup™.

A project of this scale calls for high performing and reliable technology, so when we started working with Coca-Cola to build the infrastructure for the Happiness Flag campaign, we knew we had to use Google Cloud Platform. By using Google Cloud Platform, we turned a big, innovative idea into reality on a global scale.

To create the Happiness Flag, we leveraged the whole Google Cloud Platform stack as shown below:

Google App Engine enabled us to handle the computing workload, capable of handling millions of images via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and email, to the searches for images and view requests. The architecture was scalable to meet this kind of transaction demand and the fluctuations in traffic. We stored all the images in Google Cloud Storage, where integrated edge caching support and image services made it an ideal choice for serving the images. Meanwhile, Google Compute Engine gave us the capability for long-running processes, such as the Twitter integration and advanced image transformations. We were able to show how powerful the creation of hybrid environments can be, using both Platform-as-a-Service (Google App Engine) and raw virtual machines (Google Compute Engine) in the cloud.

We used other out-of-the-box Google Cloud Platform technologies like Memcache, Datastore and Task Queues to ensure outstanding levels of performance and scalability. We know that many fans will be viewing the Happiness Flag on their mobile devices, so we needed a platform that would offer different capacities of computational power. The system provides amazing user experience with high performance and low latency, regardless of the device and its location. Using Google Cloud Platform, the campaign runs smoothly 24/7 and includes redundancy, failover techniques, backups and state-of-the-art monitoring. Plus, it’s affordable.

After the physical flag was unveiled before the opening match, the digital mosaic was made available with a Google map-like zoom in and out with eleven levels of detail. Anyone who submitted an image can now search for themselves on the virtual flag and the search results will show up as pins in the mosaic, like locations found in a Google map. By clicking on the pin, their photos open up in an overlay and they are taken to the maximum level of zoom in to see the "neighborhood" around their image in the flag. After the match, a link to the Happiness Flag site was sent to each participant as a souvenir.

Our goal was to help Coca-Cola create a project that would celebrate the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ by enabling fans from all over the world to express their creativity in a show of unity and art. What better way to open the games than by displaying the Happiness Flag, which is a symbol of the spirit of the game and its fans.

Posted by Jeff Trom, CTO, WebFilings

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

Editor's note: Today’s guest post is from Jeff Trom, CTO at Webfilings, a Software-as-a-Service provider that develops cloud-based solutions for business reporting.

At Webfilings, we’re reinventing complex business reporting. Wdesk, our flagship product, is an enterprise solution that is transforming how companies manage and report complex business data. It’s a collective workspace for teams to come together to build documents and reports without having to go to IT for assistance. Using Wdesk, financial teams have quickly become accustomed to how the cloud has simplified collaboration, provided global accessibility and eliminated the replication of data and documents.

What started as an idea to automate SEC reporting has now grown to a robust offering that supports more than 60% of the Fortune 500 in just 4 years since launch. We’ve been able to build a great company and culture where rapid innovation and best-in-class customer service are key.

We rely on Google Cloud Platform to make a formerly onerous process seem easy. Cloud Platform replicates our terabytes of data across multiple datacenters seamlessly and allows our developers to focus on innovation, not infrastructure. We deploy updates daily and leverage Google App Engine’s ability to simultaneously serve traffic from multiple versions to test new features with a few customers before releasing them to everyone. This helps ensure that our customers have the best experience possible each time they log in to Wdesk. Check out the video below to learn more about how we’re using Cloud Platform.

In our product space, the data-in-motion architecture we’ve chosen is what sets us apart. It requires:

1. Dynamically scalable application servers to handle variable traffic patterns
2. Replicated storage that’s scalable and provides reliable performance under load
3. Enterprise-grade reliability to ensure 24 x 7 access for our customers

We love learning about how our customers innovate with Wdesk inside their own companies, and are constantly impressed by the solutions they produce. The possibilities seem endless.

Posted by Howard Wu, Head of Asia Pacific Marketing for Google Cloud Platform

Many of the world’s most successful new companies, from Angry Birds creator Rovio to photo messaging service Snapchat, have built their businesses on Google Cloud Platform. We want developers in the Asia-Pacific region to also experience the speed and scale of Google’s infrastructure, so starting today, we are expanding Google Cloud Platform support to include Asia Pacific zones and adding local language tools.

Google Cloud Platform is a set of compute, storage and big data products that allow developers to build on top of the same infrastructure and technology that powers Google. The expansion means that local developers across Asia Pacific can now experience better performance and lower latency. Developers around the world will also have access to a broader global network of servers.

Japanese game maker Applibot is an early adopter of Cloud Platform in the region and have already used it to build and deploy mobile games globally. With millions of downloads on Google Play and iTunes, the company says Cloud Platform has been critical to their success. Applibot does not need to worry about server maintenance or provisioning new hardware to serve millions of potential users when they ship the latest game. Google Cloud Platform scales smoothly so that the company can focus on what they do best — creating great games.

The expansion of Cloud Platform support to Asia is our latest investment we’re making to help businesses work better with cloud based tools as part of Google’s Enterprise business. In addition to local product availability, the Google Cloud Platform website and the developer console will also be available in Japanese and Traditional Chinese.

Developers interested in learning more about Google Cloud Platform can join one of the Google Cloud Platform Global Roadshow events coming up in Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul or Hong Kong. For more technical details, head over to the Cloud Platform blog.