There has been no shortage of interesting and incisive industry profiles during the first five weeks of Google Cloud Next OnAir. The breadth and depth of the on-demand content is just right for leaders of enterprises looking for inspiration from peers and in-the-trenches know-how across several key industries.
As VP of Industry Solutions Lori Mitchell-Keller noted in her welcome remarks, Google Cloud is focusing on a set of core areas to help drive business transformation for organizations in those industries. (See below.)
Let’s take a closer look at some of the key industries that have been covered and what customers can take away from the compelling stories we’ve heard so far.
1. Retail Is Rocking
Since July, we’ve heard numerous fascinating and insightful retail presentations during Google Cloud Next OnAir, as well as announcements from leading retailers that are seeking to change the status quo. We’ve heard from brand-name giants and smaller players about how they are charting their own paths during 2020 and how they’re preparing for the future.
Best Buy, for example, is partnering with Google Cloud to “unify its data sources across various legacy platforms in order to develop more personalized shopping experiences for consumers,” according to ZDNet. Once the data house is in order, Best Buy is going to tap Google’s analytics, AI, and machine learning wares to create new retail services across channels.
Keurig Dr Pepper is going to “shift to virtual machines running on Google Cloud by the end of 2020, retiring two data centers with more than 1,000 servers,” writes CIO Dive. The move is key for Keurig Dr Pepper’s “merger integration and modernization efforts.”
Etsy did good for its business-modernization efforts and for the environment: “Etsy completed its Google Cloud migration in only two years, allowing the organization to scale both up and down as needed based on the cycles of its e-commerce business,” notes ITProPortal. “This transition enabled Etsy to be more cost-effective and set the organization up to reduce its overall energy use by a whopping 25% by 2025.”
Lastly, online shopping can get much more personal—and help drive lasting customer loyalty—with Recommendations AI. Read about the topic on this post by Google Cloud’s Pallav Mehta. You can also check out a great summary of retail sessions and resources compiled by Carrie Tharp, Google Cloud VP of retail, including some helpful advice on getting ready for the holiday shopping season—which will be here before we know it.
2. Financial Services
Start your financial services deep dive with high-level conversations between Google Cloud and its customers Capital One and The Bank of New York Mellon. For the record, Google Cloud’s financial service category includes banks, capital markets, and insurance companies.
Melanie Frank, managing VP of PowerUp Technology at Capital One, offers a look into its seven-year digital transformation journey, with a key focus around talent and how its employees work. Frank talks about how the company’s “work from anywhere, at any time, on any device” strategy has been hugely critical to operations during COVID-19.
Sarthak Pattanaik, CIO of clearance and collateral technology at The Bank of New York Mellon, shares the financial institution’s “bi-modal” approach to technology strategy: its transaction platform, which is on-premise; and its cloud platform investments, which serves as the basis of its “innovation engine,” Sarthak said. One example: the bank is using Google Cloud Platform to predict the probability of a transaction fail, which is a huge customer service win for the bank.
Another recent article involved CME Group and how the company has approached real-time data feeds. Of course, there are key constituents that need market data delivered in real time—and that’s what CME Group already does. But what about those who don’t need real-time data for, say, analysis of big sets of data? Here’s a look at CME’s offering so that its customers “can now access its delayed data, useful for analytics that don’t need more expensive real-time data, through Google Cloud,” according to Forbes.
Finally, take an inside look at KeyBank’s decision-making around moving its data warehouse to the cloud. “There are some big considerations that go into making these kinds of legacy versus modern enterprise technology decisions,” writes Michael Onders, EVP chief data officer, divisional CIO, and head of enterprise architecture at KeyBank, in a blog post.
3. Health Care and Life Sciences
COVID-19 has forced nearly every industry to reimagine “business,” and none more critical than health care and life sciences. Dr. John Halamka, president of Mayo Clinic Platform and a practicing ER physician, shared that “COVID-19 is pushing us toward a digital-first health care delivery system” during his interview on Google Cloud Next OnAir. He went on to predict that big change will continue: “Health care will be 60% or more virtual across all modalities of delivery in this new normal.”
As for managing health care data, he offered this quip: “We have too much data and not enough wisdom.”
Take a deeper dive into the Mayo Clinic’s story and read how its data platform has been accelerated using BigQuery and Variant Transforms. Beyond the ability to provide better services and make better decisions, there’s this benefit: “As Mayo Clinic scales out sequencing to hundreds of thousands of patients, they estimate saving $1.5 million over three years by using Google Cloud and Variant Transforms instead of their existing solution,” notes this Google Cloud blog post.
We all know that, in many cases, good health care starts with the human being. This profile of how Fitbit moved its monolithic application to the Google Cloud Platform offers insight into how its “progressive” project plan kept Fitbit’s users happy during the transition. “Fitbit ultimately found success with its approach,” according to a diginomica article, “completing the migration three weeks early.” Which is always a nice win-win.
4. What’s Next?
What you just read was a small sampling of the customer stories, product insight, and resources available for Google Cloud customers across numerous industries.
At C2C, we are continuing the conversation on multiple fronts and for multiple industries, so please join us:
On Friday, Aug. 21, we host our first Next OnAir Talks, and cover Google Cloud industries and takeaways from Google Cloud Next OnAir. Read more about the series and register for that event or our two other upcoming sessions.
On Thursday, Sept. 10, we’re kicking off our Rockstar Conversations series with none other than Lori Mitchell-Keller. You can reserve your spot here. Don't delay—seating is limited.
