Kategorie: Google Cloud Platform

Knock, knock, who's there? It's Guidion, bringing timely service calls with APIs

Editor’s note: Today we hear from Aditya Bhargava, Solutions Architect and agile coach at Guidion, on how the company is using the Google Cloud’s Apigee API Management Platform to transform the Dutch solar panel and communications equipment installation landscape. Read more to learn how Guidion uses APIs to deliver technical services in and around the house, bringing happiness to seven customers every minute.  Guidion is a Dutch field service management company. We install consumer solar panels and broadband internet for our partners via a pool of about 2,000 freelance expert technicians. We provide our partners with a fully digitized, B2B cloud platform that we use to schedule and manage installations. The installation work we do isn’t the innovation—it’s way we deliver our services that’s the game changer.Streamlining the service economy with APIsMost people can think of more than one occasion when they needed a technical service like internet or cable television installed at their homes. This usually involves phoning the company to make the order, then waiting for a call back or an email or text message from the provider with the pre-ordained “installation window.” Often this painstaking process requires taking a day off to wait around for the technician to arrive. Customers don’t usually have a way to easily reschedule if the service window provided isn’t convenient. And they often don’t have ways to get updates on the day of the appointment about when–or if–the technician will arrive. This can obviously lead to frustration. Guidion has reimagined service delivery, putting our partners’ customers first with our on-demand installation platform. Once our partners notify us of an installation via our online platform, the customer is provided a link to schedule the installation at their convenience, and at a fixed appointment time that works best for them. Our technicians rely on the app to notify us of their availability, accept jobs, and if necessary, communicate directly with customers. Using Apigee to satisfy partner requirementsAbout four years ago, we migrated from our legacy system to use the Field Service Lightning and FinancialForce platforms from Salesforce to run our business. They do a great job for us, but we needed to find a way to adapt to how individual partners want to communicate with us without also migrating our legacy APIs. Since we already had existing, strong custom APIs that we didn’t want to adapt to the many partner-specific requirements, we started to look for a way to handle those kinds of translations while receiving the same API call via the same API proxy from different partners. We wanted to be able to handle the translations based on which partner is calling the API and then push the request back to Salesforce. That’s where the Apigee platform comes in. We were motivated to adopt an end-to-end API management platform because we didn’t want to have to develop a tool in-house to do SOAP-to-REST API translations (though we do offer REST endpoints that send requests to the same Salesforce custom APIs—partners can choose which route they take to integrate with our services). We chose Apigee to implement the SOAP endpoints, but also to enable us to do much more.Discovering out-of-the-box Apigee functionalityWith Apigee we have a standard way of having all our partners communicate with our Salesforce platform. The Apigee developer portal allows us to expose our endpoints and make partner onboarding very easy. We also we made a switch within Apigee that allows partners to make a choice about how they use our new system. We can either quickly and easily turn the request over to Salesforce to manage in their own REST API schema, or we can send it through Apigee as a pass-through endpoint which hands off to the old legacy system. Apigee also gives us the possibility of doing login monitoring, analytics, debugging, whitelisting, and certificate-based authentication. These are all functionalities that we got out of the box from Apigee, which we really appreciated. It meant that we didn’t have to invest any time in making or buying additional solutions.Our partners are large enterprises that need us to adapt to their requirements, so we need to keep all of the partner variations within the Salesforce platform. If we didn’t have Apigee, it would take us twice the time to implement partner-specific requirements, not to mention create a lot of additional resource-intensive maintenance. Cascading benefits to the businessAnother huge benefit stems from the fact that new partner onboarding is now handled by the business side rather than the technical side of Guidion. When a new partner or an existing partner needs a new service, the only thing our team members need to do is log in to Apigee as an operations administrator and fill in the key value map. Once the right information is in there, the partner is onboarded with no IT assistance required. Instead of waiting days for the IT team to get to it, the business is self-servicing partner able to react in real time to customer needs. In the past when we were using SOAP endpoints, integrations were considered a tough job. Not anymore. I think of Apigee as a restaurant. The menu is the Swagger documentation, then the waiter is the API that takes your order to the kitchen. The kitchen is the server that prepares your order and delivers it back to clients. Having Apigee makes our integrations as easy as eating out.To learn more about API management on Google Cloud, visit the Apigee page.
Quelle: Google Cloud Platform

How the cloud can drive economic growth in APAC (and everywhere)

Public cloud adoption in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region continues to outstrip the pace of growth in North America and Europe, according to BCG’s “Ascent to the Cloud: How Six Key APAC Economies can Lift-off” report. BCG’s report examines the public cloud’s economic impact in six key APAC markets: Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. Although public cloud adoption in these markets are still emerging when compared to the U.S. and Western Europe, the growth rate is much faster (25% in APAC versus less than 20% in the U.S. and Western Europe) and there is great potential for further development. The Cloud is not just a digital transformation story; it’s also an economic one. BCG finds that cloud adoption is expected to contribute about $450 billion of GDP across the six markets between 2019 and 2023. The direct effects of the economic boost has the potential to produce approximately 425,000 jobs in the covered economies, and influence about 1.2 million additional jobs by second order effects of public cloud deployment in key industries that drive the economy. Greater acceleration of cloud adoption and a supportive policy environment could increase the contribution to $580 billion with 770,000 direct jobs created and as many as 2.1 million jobs influenced.As part of its research, BCG identified six key benefits APAC businesses are experiencing as they embrace the cloud—with broad applications for businesses worldwide. Here’s more on what BCG’s research found.1. The cloud enhances team productivityBecause the cloud creates a standardized environment with scalable back-end systems and functions, and it provides access to proven tools that the IT teams can use to develop systems, many businesses find that moving to the cloud results in improved IT efficiencies. This means they can focus more on high value tasks like customer targeting, content development, and bringing new products to market. Better collaboration tools such as G Suite create administrative and communication efficiencies, while advanced applications such as artificial intelligence or machine learning, enable faster, clearer insights that enhance the overall productivity of the organization.L&T Financial Services provides quick access to financial services for rural communities in India. It relies on G Suite to help staff work together efficiently. Employees can interact with each other in real time using Hangouts Meet, and the task of information sharing is more seamless and secure through Drive. BigQuery also helps L&T Financial Services generate behavior scorecards to track credit quality of its micro-loan customers.“Cloud is the technology that enables us to achieve scale and reach,” says Sunil Prabhune, Chief Executive-Rural Finance, and Group Head-Digital, IT and Analytics, L&T Financial Services. “Today there are countless data points available about rural consumers which enable us to personalize our products to serve them better. With access to faster compute power, we can also on-board consumers more efficiently. Our rural businesses have clocked a disbursement CAGR of 60% over the past three years.”2. The cloud can reduce time to marketThe public cloud allows users to take new products and services to market quickly, helping organizations develop a fail fast approach that alerts them to problems immediately and makes a fast turnaround possible when something needs to be fixed.The mobile game maker Netmarble, for example, uses advanced public cloud based tools including analytics and machine learning to support new game development, manage infrastructure, and infuse business intelligence throughout its operations. The company also uses productivity tools for real-time collaboration across front and back offices.“The public cloud aligns with our vision for innovation and is as committed as we are to building better player services with advanced artificial intelligence and reliable, scalable cloud infrastructure,” says Duke Kim, SVP, Head – Netmarble AI Revolution Center, Netmarble.3. A better security and compliance environment can be found in the cloudThe top public cloud providers spend billions of dollars every year on cyber security—far more than most businesses can spend on their own. As a result, security has increasingly become a key incentive to using the public cloud. Recognizing that gaining and maintaining trust would be key to customer and partner adoption of its new products and services, Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Bank BRI) decided to pursue ISO 27001 certification in 2018. In fact, it was the first bank in ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) to be certified as information security compliant. Now, fintechs, insurance companies, and financial institutions that lack the talent or the financial resources to do quality credit scoring and fraud detection on their own are turning to Bank BRI. They also package data through more than 50 monetized open APIs for more than 70 ecosystem partners wanting to do credit scoring, business assessments, and risk management.4. The cloud helps businesses launch new products and services faster and more efficientlyMany businesses find that the compute infrastructure they gain by moving to the cloud allows them to introduce new products or services, as well as the internationalization of new digital products and services. With the public cloud, they are better able to expand their business models. Australia Post recently expanded into parcel delivery and growing its digital business to include retail, travel, and financial services and solutions. Using BigQuery, Australia Post has visibility into every stage of the mail delivery process and reduced the time taken to perform analytics. Operations managers can now see what’s happening in sorting facilities in real time, helping to identify flow blockages almost instantly. Previously, these types of insights would only be available at the end of the day, but now they’re delivered within 15 seconds—that’s 300 times faster. “With near real-time data analytics, we can free up valuable resources, act quicker and provide better service to the millions of Australians that rely on us every day,” says Australia Post CIO John Cox.5. The cloud enables enhanced customer engagement and experiences For many businesses, moving to the cloud means access to advanced tools such as big data analytics and machine learning that can help them improve customer experiences. To win over new customers, many feel the need to excel over their competitors when it comes to engaging the clientele and offering a positive experience—and are turning to the cloud to do it.DeNA leverages public cloud-based ML to improve the experience for new players of its mobile game Gyakuten Othellonia. To help beginners learn how to play the complex game competitively, and most importantly, enjoy the game, DeNa used AI to create a deck recommendation system for beginners and a smart AI player that would match the gamer’s level of skill. “Using the public cloud, we have been able to leverage Google Cloud’s expertise in AI to build and serve several components in our game,” says Kenshin Yamada, Director of AI Dept, DeNA Co., Ltd. “The cloud’s open and serverless technologies also enabled us to host our AI models without worrying about scalability of infrastructure or portability of code.”6. The cloud can reduce costsThe cloud offers the potential for substantial and meaningful cost reductions when businesses embrace transforming their architecture and consolidating their IT management functions. As a result, many find they’re able to achieve cost efficiencies that result from operating with smaller, fully autonomous agile IT teams that are able to focus on business rather than on managing the IT infrastructure. Before moving to the cloud, AirAsia ran its IT apps and services in an on-premises infrastructure that required extensive maintenance that diverted technology team members away from projects that would add value to the business. In addition, the infrastructure could not scale quickly and cost effectively to support its data-first transformation to a digital airline. By moving to the cloud, AirAsia found the business agility it needed, as well as a 5% to 10% forecast reduction in operating costs. It’s now looking at adopting machine learning to drive further cost efficiencies through optimizing pricing for a range of services and predicting demand for items like additional baggage, seats, and meals.Building better businesses with the cloud in APAC—and beyondWith its scalable infrastructure and a flexible, pay-as-you-go delivery of computing services, the cloud has become an increasingly essential digital transformation driver for APAC. By embracing the public cloud, these businesses are finding they can fuel growth through increased productivity, enhanced customer experiences, decreased costs, and reduced time to market. Many organizations also find significant benefit in the public cloud’s ability to provide security at a scale that often surpasses what even large companies can afford. To learn more about BCG’s findings, download a copy of the report.
Quelle: Google Cloud Platform

Compute Engine or Kubernetes Engine? New trainings teach you the basics of architecting on Google Cloud

Google Cloud wants you to be able to use the cloud on your terms, and we provide a range of computing architectures to meet you where you are. In practice, this often means choosing between Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). But, which one will best serve your needs?If you’re used to managing virtual machines (VMs) in your on-premises environment or other clouds, and want a similar experience in Google Cloud, then Compute Engine is for you. It offers scale, performance, and value so you can easily launch large compute clusters on Google’s infrastructure. Compute Engine also lets you build predefined VMs or tailor custom machine types to your specific needs.If you’re working with containers, and need to coordinate more than one in your solution, then GKE—our managed, production-ready environment for deploying containerized applications—is your best choice. It uses our latest innovations in developer productivity, resource efficiency, automated operations, and open source flexibility to help you accelerate your time-to-production.Of course, your cloud architecture will look very different depending on whether you build it with VMs (Compute Engine) or containers (GKE). That’s why we now offer two architecting training paths, available on-demand or in a classroom setting:Architecting with Google Compute EngineArchitecting with Google Kubernetes EngineArchitecting with Google Compute Engine takes you from introductory to advanced concepts in five courses. You’ll learn all the basics of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) console and how to create virtual machines using Compute Engine. Then, you’ll dive into core services, such as Identity and Access Management (IAM), database services, billing resources, and Stackdriver services. Next, you’ll gain an understanding of how to configure load balancers and autoscaling for VM instances. The course will teach you to automate the deployment of GCP services and leverage managed services for data processing, as well as how to design highly reliable and secure GCP deployments.Over four courses, Architecting with Google Kubernetes Engine teaches you the basics of the GCP console, and then goes deeper into deploying and managing containerized applications using GKE. You’ll learn all the tools of GKE networking, and how to give your Kubernetes workloads persistent storage, while gaining an understanding of security, logging, monitoring, GCP managed storage, and database services.Ready to learn more about architecting with GCP? Join us on Friday, October 25 at 9:00 AM PST for a special webinar, Architecting with Google Compute Engine: Building your cloud infrastructure. In this webinar, we’ll give you an overview of the different Compute Engine services and demonstrate some of those services in GCP. By attending the webinar, you’ll also get one month of access to this training on Coursera at no charge. Click here to register today.
Quelle: Google Cloud Platform

Best practices for password management, 2019 edition

It is hard to imagine life today without passwords. They come in many forms, from your email credentials to your debit card PIN number, and they’re all secrets you use to help prove your identity. But traditional password best practices are no match for today’s sophisticated, and often automated, cybersecurity threats. With the all-too-often news of massive data breaches, leaked passwords, and phishing attacks, internet users must adapt to protect their valuable information. While passwords are far from perfect, they aren’t going away in the foreseeable future. Google’s automatic protections prevent the vast majority of account takeover attacks—even when an attacker knows the username and password—but there are also measures that users and IT professionals can take to further enhance account security. In the spirit of October being National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’ve released two new whitepapers to help you navigate password security.Modern password security for users provides pragmatic and human-centric advice for end users to help improve your authentication security habits. We go in-depth with tips on improving the security of the passwords you use today, advice on how to answer security questions, and explanations of why certain practices should be avoided.Modern password security for system designers is the first paper’s technical counterpart, outlining the latest advice on password interfaces and data handling. It provides technical guidance on how to handle UTF-8 characters, advice on sessions, and best practices for building a secure authentication system that can stand up to modern threats.Our aim is to promote an open and secure internet where users are equipped to protect their personal information and online systems are designed to prevent credential loss, even if those systems are compromised. We hope these whitepapers—available in PDF form at the links above—help you in your quest to better protect your environment.
Quelle: Google Cloud Platform