Google Cloud Next London 2023 – a small venue but BIG ideas

We had a small booth with a BIG message that resonated with attendees and aligned nicely with Google’s key message for Google Cloud in 2023, namely around all things Artificial Intelligence. Google are focused on AI and have set their sights on dominating Data Cloud and Responsible GENAI (Generative Artificial Intelligence), which is very aligned with GFT’s goals for 2024. For more info see the new GFT AI.DA Marketplace. 

This year, Google split the event into two days, with content that appealed to specific roles within any business. 

• Day 1 was created to appeal to the C-Level business leader community to showcase Google Cloud’s client and market successes in 2023 and Google’s vision for 2024, which, of course, has enterprise grade GenAI, Data Modernisation and Security at its heart. 

• Day 2 was focused on the Tech Innovation Hub which included technical ‘deep dives’ into new products and services, designed to appeal more to developers and engineers. Responsible GenAI and Data was of course ubiquitous throughout both days, but there was also a focus on security and infrastructure services. 

GFT, like most partners, had a relatively small booth, but offered BIG ideas. Our Head of Data, Analytics & AI, David Tuppen, and Head of AI, ML & Data Science, Simon Thompson were there to discuss GFT’s recently announced GFT AI.DA Marketplace. AI.DA demonstrates GFT’s best practice in AI and Data, displaying our commitment to GenAI, and our extensive success in implementing Data Modernisation for some of the world biggest banks and financial services businesses. 

Simon Newton, GFT’s Head of Cloud Security, and Pambos Charalambos, Google Cloud Security Lead, were also on hand to highlight our deep expertise in all areas security, highlighting the important work undertaken by GFT’s growing Cloud Security practice. 

Ivan Lopez, Senior Principal Cloud Architect at GFT was excited to attend the conference, chatting with many attendees about GFT’s achievements and success in using Google Anthos to build hybrid cloud platforms for our customers. 

Following the close of the conference on the first day, GFT co-sponsored a networking event on the rooftop with C2C, Google’s customer community, which was a fantastic way to relax and discuss the highlights of the day with Googlers, clients, other attendees, and partners. It would have been better if the rain had held off, but we cannot have everything – it was in London after all! 

Given the many AI-based announcements made by Google during Google Next in Vegas earlier this year, it was no surprise that Google Next London was also dominated by all things AI; more specifically GenAI and Duet AI. Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you will know what is meant by GenAI, so I will cover Duet AI in more detail, as this is likely a new term for most. In short, Duet AI is a new AI-powered collaborator that can help users with tasks like summarisation, generation and translation. 

The general availability of AlloyDB Omni was also announced at Google Next in London. AlloyDB Omni is a downloadable edition of AlloyDB that can be installed within a customer’s own data centre. It is a fully managed PostgreSQL-compatible database service for very demanding enterprise workloads and combines the best of Google with PostgreSQL, for superior performance, scale and availability. 

AlloyDB Omni caters to customers seeking to move away from expensive legacy databases with challenging licensing terms. It offers the flexibility to run a top-tier database in various environments, including on-premises, in multiple cloud platforms, and even on developer laptops. It is supported by Google’s enterprise support and comes at a fraction of the cost of traditional databases. 

AlloyDB Omni includes support for AlloyDB AI, which enhances database capabilities for building AI applications. It said to be 10x faster at vector queries than standard PostgreSQL and integrates with Google Cloud AI like Vertex AI Model Garden. Additionally, Google Cloud Customer Care is available for AlloyDB Omni to ensure high-level support for mission-critical applications. 

This feature aims to simplify common database tasks, including database provisioning, backups, secure connectivity and observability, allowing customer to easily run AlloyDB Omni in more Kubernetes environments.