Category Archives: Google for Work Blog

Work is going Google

Pivot to the cloud: intelligent features in Google Sheets help businesses uncover insights

When it comes to data in spreadsheets, deciphering meaningful insights can be a challenge whether you’re a spreadsheet guru or data analytics pro. But thanks to advances in the cloud and artificial intelligence, you can instantly uncover insights and empower everyone in your organization—not just those with technical or analytics backgrounds—to make more informed decisions.

We launched "Explore" in Sheets to help you decipher your data easily using the power of machine intelligence, and since then we’ve added even more ways for you to intelligently visualize and share your company data. Today, we’re announcing additional features to Google Sheets to help businesses make better use of their data, from pivot tables and formula suggestions powered by machine intelligence, to even more flexible ways to help you analyze your data.

Easier pivot tables, faster insights

Many teams rely on pivot tables to summarize massive data sets and find useful patterns, but creating them manually can be tricky. Now, if you have data organized in a spreadsheet, Sheets can intelligently suggest a pivot table for you.


In the Explore panel, you can also ask questions of your data using everyday language (via natural language processing) and have the answer returned as a pivot table. For example, type “what is the sum of revenue by salesperson?” or “how much revenue does each product category generate?” and Sheets can help you find the right pivot table analysis.

GIF

In addition, if you want to create a pivot table from scratch, Sheets can suggest a number of relevant tables in the pivot table editor to help you summarize your data faster.

Suggested formulas, quicker answers

We often use basic spreadsheet formulas like =SUM or =AVERAGE for data analysis, but it takes time to make sure all inputs are written correctly. Soon, you may notice suggestions pop up when you type “=” in a cell. Using machine intelligence, Sheets provides full formula suggestions to you based on contextual clues from your spreadsheet data. We designed this to help teams save time and get answers more intuitively.

Formula suggestions in Sheets

Even more Sheets features

We’re also adding more features to make Sheets even better for data analysis:

  • Check out a refreshed UI for pivot tables in Sheets, and new, customizable headings for rows and columns.
  • View your data differently with new pivot table features. When you create a pivot table, you can “show values as a % of totals” to see summarized values as a fraction of grand totals. Once you have a table, you can right-click on a cell to “view details” or even combine pivot table groups to aggregate data the way you need it. We’re also adding new format options, like repeated row labels, to give you more fine-tuned control of how to present your summarized data.
  • Create and edit waterfall charts. Waterfall charts are good for visualizing sequential changes in data, like if you want to see the incremental breakdown of last year’s revenue month-by-month. Select Insert > Chart > Chart type picker and then choose “waterfall.”
  • Quickly import or paste fixed-width formatted data files. Sheets will automatically split up the data into columns for you without needing a delimiter, like commas, between data.

These new Sheets features will roll out in the coming weeks—see specific details here. To learn more about how G Suite can help your business uncover valuable insights and speed up efficiencies, visit the G Suite website. Or check out these tips to help you get started with Sheets.

Source: Google Cloud


METRO AG, Viessmann and BOTfriends move onto Google Cloud

Google Cloud Summit took place in Munich today—the biggest cloud event in the Germany-Austria-Switzerland region. There, we announced collaborations with three well-known German companies of different sizes, from different industries and each facing different challenges.

metro

With more than 150,000 employees in 25 countries and sales of more than 36 billion euros, METRO Group is one of the largest companies in the food industry. In order to be prepared for digital challenges, METRO is migrating its e-commerce platform to Google Cloud, which it believes has advantages in terms of performance and scalability.

For us, Google Cloud’s reliability and its leading technology—not to mention its pricing—were decisive. With Google machine learning and artificial intelligence, we've found the perfect partner for the future. Timo Salzsieder
CIO and CSO of METRO AG
viessman-logo

The Viessmann Group, one of the world's leading manufacturers of heating, industrial and cooling systems, is also counting on Google Cloud. The company has grown rapidly in recent years, especially internationally. In order to improve internal collaboration between employees, Viessmann Group will use G Suite. In just six months, Viessmann was able to migrate almost all its data and applications into Google Cloud and make them available to all employees worldwide.

G Suite enables us to manage tasks better and work cooperatively on documents. Even though our employees often work in different countries and time zones, we have moved closer together as a team Alexander Poellman
Smart Office and Collaboration Manager at Viessman
botfriends-logo

The start-up BOTfriends is a leader in the development of chatbot applications, which can make initial customer contact more effective and help staff answer questions faster. BOTfriends uses machine learning from Google Cloud for its chatbots, resulting in more natural communication and an improved user experience.

Our chatbots would not have been possible without Google Cloud. Thanks to machine learning, we are improving the effectiveness of customer support and recruitment teams. Michelle Skodowski
Co-founder of BOTfriends

We’re excited to bring the power of Google Cloud technologies customers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. To learn more about our cloud solutions, visit our Google Cloud Platform website.

Source: Google Cloud


Get ready for AI to help make your business more productive

Editor’s note: Companies are evaluating how to use artificial intelligence to transform how they work. Nicholas McQuire, analyst at CCS Insight, reflects on how businesses are using machine learning and assistive technologies to help employees be more productive. He also provides tangible takeaways on how enterprises can better prepare for the future of work.

Employees are drowning in a sea of data and sprawling digital tools, using an average of 6.1 mobile apps for work purposes today, according to a recent CCS Insight survey of IT decision-makers. Part of the reason we’ve seen a lag in macro productivity since the 2008 financial crisis is that we waste a lot of time doing mundane tasks, like searching for data, booking meetings and learning the ins and outs of complex software.

According to Harvard Business Review, wasted time and inefficient processes—what experts call "organizational drag"—cost the U.S. economy a staggering $3 trillion each year. Employees need more assistive and personalized technology to help them tackle organizational drag and work faster and smarter.

Over the next five years, artificial intelligence (AI) will change the way we work and, in the process, transform businesses.

The arrival of AI in the enterprise is quickening

I witnessed a number of proofs of concept in machine learning in 2017; many speech-and image-based cognitive applications are emerging in specific markets, like fraud detection in finance, low-level contract analysis in the legal sector and personalization in retail. There are also AI applications emerging in corporate functions such as IT support, human resources, sales and customer service.

This shows promise for the technology, particularly in the face of challenges like trust, complexity, security and training required for machine learning systems. But it also suggests that the arrival of AI in enterprises could be moving more quickly than we think.

According to the same study, 58 percent of respondents said they are either using, trialling or researching the technology in their business. Decision-makers also said that on average, 29 percent of their applications will be enhanced with AI within the next two years—a remarkably bullish view.

New opportunities for businesses to evolve productivity

In this context, new AI capabilities pose exciting opportunities to evolve productivity and collaboration.

  • Assistive software: In the past year, assistive, cognitive features have become more prevalent in productivity software, such as search, quicker access to documents, automated email replies and virtual assistants. These solutions help surface contextually relevant information for employees and can automate simple, time-consuming tasks, like scheduling meetings, creating help desk tickets, booking conference rooms or summarizing content. In the future, they might also help firms improve and manage employee engagement, a critical human resources and leadership challenge at the moment.
  • Natural language processing: It won’t be long before we also see the integration of voice or natural language processing in productivity apps. The rise of speech-controlled smart speakers such as Google Home, Amazon Echo or the recently-launched Alexa for Business show that creating and completing documents using speech dictation, or using natural language queries to parse data or control functions in spreadsheets, is no longer in the realm of science fiction.
  • Security: Perhaps one of the biggest uses of AI will be to protect company information. Companies are beginning to use AI to protect against spam, phishing and malware in email, as well as the alarming rise of data breaches across the globe; the use of AI to detect threats and improve incident response will likely rise exponentially. Cloud security vendors with access to higher volumes of signals to train AI models are well placed to help businesses leverage early detection of threats. Perhaps this is why, IT professionals listed cybersecurity as the most-likely adopted use of AI in their organizations.

One thing to note: it’s important that enterprises gradually introduce their employees to machine learning capabilities in productivity apps as not to undermine the familiarity of the user experience or turn employees off in fear of privacy violations. In this respect, the advent of AI into work activities resembles consumer apps like YouTube, Maps, Spotify or Amazon, where the technology is subtle to users who may not be aware of cognitive features. The fact that 54 percent of employees in our survey stated they don't use AI in their personal life, despite the widespread use AI these successful apps, is an important illustration.

How your company can prepare for change

Businesses of all shapes and sizes need to prepare for one of the most important technology shifts of our generation. For those who have yet to get started, here are a few things to consider:

  1. Introduce your employees to AI in collaboration tools early. New, assistive AI features in collaboration software help employees get familiar with the technology and its benefits. Smart email, improved document access and search, chatbots and speech assistants will all be important and accessible technologies that can save employees time, improve workflows and enhance employee experiences.
  2. Take advantage of tools that use AI for data security. Rising data breaches and insider threats, coupled with the growing use of cloud and mobile applications, means the integrity of company data is consistently at risk. Security products that incorporate machine learning-based threat intelligence and anomaly detection should be a key priority.
  3. Don’t neglect change management. New collaboration tools that use AI have a high impact on organizational culture, but not all employees will be immediately supportive of this new way of working. While our surveys reveal employees are generally positive on AI, there is still much fear and confusion surrounding AI as a source of job displacement. Be mindful of the impact of change management, specifically the importance of good communication, training and, above all, employee engagement throughout the process.

AI will no doubt face some challenges over the next few years as it enters the workplace, but sentiment is changing away from doom-and-gloom scenarios towards understanding how the technology can be used more effectively to assist humans and enable smarter work. 

It will be fascinating to see how businesses and technology markets transform as AI matures in the coming years.

Source: Google Cloud


Please Welcome Diane Bryant to Google Cloud

I am happy and excited to announce that Diane Bryant, former Group President at Intel, will be joining Google Cloud as our Chief Operating Officer. I can’t think of a person with more relevant experience and talents. She is an engineer with tremendous business focus and an outstanding thirty-year career in technology.

Most recently, Diane was head of Intel’s Data Center Group, which generated $17 billion in revenue in 2016. Over her five years as Group President, Diane expanded the business to additionally focus on pervasive cloud computing, network virtualization and the adoption of artificial intelligence solutions. Previously, Bryant was Intel’s Corporate Vice President and Chief Information Officer, where she was responsible for corporate-wide information technology solutions and services.  

Diane serves on the board of United Technologies. Throughout her career, Diane has worked to mentor and sponsor women in technology.

Google Cloud is the most technologically advanced, most highly available, and most open cloud in the world. We are growing at an extraordinary rate as we enable businesses to become smarter with data, increase their agility, collaborate and secure their information. Diane’s strategic acumen, technical knowledge and client focus will prove invaluable as we accelerate the scale and reach of Google Cloud.

I am personally looking forward to working closely with Diane Bryant as we enter what promises to be a great 2018 for Google Cloud.

Source: Google Cloud


The new maker toolkit: IoT, AI and Google Cloud Platform

Voice interaction is everywhere these days—via phones, TVs, laptops and smart home devices that use technology like the Google Assistant. And with the availability of maker-friendly offerings like Google AIY’s Voice Kit, the maker community has been getting in on the action and adding voice to their Internet of Things (IoT) projects.

As avid makers ourselves, we wrote an open-source, maker-friendly tutorial to show developers how to piggyback on a Google Assistant-enabled device (Google Home, Pixel, Voice Kit, etc.) and add voice to their own projects. We also created an example application to help you connect your project with GCP-hosted web and mobile applications, or tap into sophisticated AI frameworks that can provide more natural conversational flow.

Let’s take a look at what this tutorial, and our example application, can help you do.

Particle Photon: the brains of the operation

The Photon microcontroller from Particle is an easy-to-use IoT prototyping board that comes with onboard Wi-Fi and USB support, and is compatible with the popular Arduino ecosystem. It’s also a great choice for internet-enabled projects: every Photon gets its own webhook in Particle Cloud, and Particle provides a host of additional integration options with its web-based IDE, JavaScript SDK and command-line interface. Most importantly for the maker community, Particle Photons are super affordable, starting at just $19.

voice-kit-gcp-particle

Connecting the Google Assistant and Photon: Actions on Google and Dialogflow

The Google Assistant (via Google Home, Pixel, Voice Kit, etc.) responds to your voice input, and the Photon (through Particle Cloud) reacts to your application’s requests (in this case, turning an LED on and off). But how do you tie the two together? Let’s take a look at all the moving parts:


  • Actions on Google is the developer platform for the Google Assistant. With Actions on Google, developers build apps to help answer specific queries and connect users to products and services. Users interact with apps for the Assistant through a conversational, natural-sounding back-and-forth exchange, and your Action passes those user requests on to your app.

  • Dialogflow (formerly API.AI) lets you build even more engaging voice and text-based conversational interfaces powered by AI, and sends out request data via a webhook.

  • A server (or service) running Node.js handles the resulting user queries.


Along with some sample applications, our guide includes a Dialogflow agent, which lets you parse queries and route actions back to users (by voice and/or text) or to other applications. Dialogflow provides a variety of interface options, from an easy-to-use web-based GUI to a robust Node.js-powered SDK for interacting with both your queries and the outside world. In addition, its powerful machine learning tools add intelligence and natural language processing. Your applications can learn queries and intents over time, exposing even more powerful options for making and providing better results along the way. (The recently announced Dialogflow Enterprise Edition offers greater flexibility and support to meet the needs of large-scale businesses.)


Backend infrastructure: GCP

It’s a no-brainer to build your IoT apps on a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) backend, as you can use a single Google account to sign into your voice device, create Actions on Google apps and Dialogflow agents, and host the web services. To help get you up and running, we developed two sample web applications based on different GCP technologies that you can use as inspiration when creating a voice-powered IoT app:


  • Cloud Functions for Firebase. If your goal is quick deployment and iteration, Cloud Functions for Firebase is a simple, low-cost and powerful option—even if you don’t have much server-side development experience. It integrates quickly and easily with the other tools used here. Dialogflow, for example, now allows you to drop Cloud Functions for Firebase code directly into its graphical user interface.

  • App Engine. For those of you with more development experience and/or curiosity, App Engine is just as easy to deploy and scale, but includes more options for integrations with your other applications, additional programming language/framework choices, and a host of third-party add-ons. App Engine is a great choice if you already have a Node.js application to which you want to add voice actions, you want to tie into more of Google’s machine learning services, or you want to get deeper into device connection and management.


Next steps

As makers, we’ve only just scratched the surface of what we can do with these new tools like IoT, AI and cloud. Check out our full tutorials, and grab the code on Github. With these examples to build from, we hope we’ve made it easier for you to add voice powers to your maker project. For some extra inspiration, check out what other makers have built with AIY Voice Kit. And for even more ways to add machine learning to your maker project, check out the AIY Vision Kit, which just went on pre-sale today.

We can’t wait to see what you build!

Source: Google Cloud


[Q&A] Behind the scenes: the making of Jamboard

We sat down with TJ Varghese, senior product manager at Google, to talk about how he and his team helped create Google’s first collaborative, digital whiteboard—Jamboard—and the role technology plays in fostering creativity during, and outside of, meetings.

Creativity and collaboration seem to be big passions of yours. Can you tell us about your background?

Super G

I started at Google in 2012 through the acquisition of Quickoffice and began working on the Google Docs and Drive teams. I found it interesting that team members used Docs during video conference calls to present information and convey ideas. Documents don’t always lend themselves to visual or free-form expression easily, like design discussions or walking through the flow of a process.

I am a visual thinker and prefer to sketch notes or “express” an idea by showing it. This made me think that there had to be a better way to share visual ideas across geographies when conferencing.

How did your team come up with the idea for Jamboard?

In 2013, Barine Tee—a fellow software engineer—and I entered a Google Hackathon competition. We tossed around submission ideas over lunch, and decided on a collaborative, drawing app for tablets that brings real-time visual brainstorming directly into meetings. We built a prototype that same day.

Did you win the hackathon?

We came in second place to a team that built a travel-planning app. Guess you can’t beat vacations! But in spite of this, it helped us solicit early feedback on how to improve the app.

How did Jamboard get started as an official project?

After the hackathon, Barine and I continued pursuing Jamboard on the side. We both work in New York City, but he lives in Pennsylvania and has a long commute. Because of this, we fittingly iterated on the prototype while commuting. Most might see this geography constraint as a hindrance, but it actually was the opposite for us. We collaborated through the app despite being in different states. It forced us to fix bugs faster because we depended on the app to move our idea along.


It was around this same time that Google created an internal team focused on the future of work. The rise of remote workers and technologies like machine learning in the workplace are creating new opportunities for collaboration and creativity tools. Jamboard felt like a natural fit for the project. Over the course of 3 years, our project and team grew from two employees to more than 40.

Tell us how your team refined Jamboard.

We continued to focus on solving real problems for teams. Users shared feedback that they needed a bigger screen for more natural expression and easier workflows, so we evolved our solution to move beyond just a tablet app and began to think about hardware.

Hardware is hard, but we knew that in order to make an effective digital whiteboard, it has to feel like you’re drawing on an actual whiteboard—a tool with very low latency, or lag, when you write. To make this a reality, we went back to the drawing board and built Jamboard as a hardware appliance from the ground up, baking design, software and hardware into one experience.

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How does Jamboard and G Suite help teams be more creative?

With G Suite, we’re focused on helping teams maximize their creative output, and unveiling work that historically lives within the confines of formal presentations and email attachments. That’s why we invented cloud-first tools like Docs and Slides, so you can collaborate instantly from anywhere. And Hangouts Meet and Chat, so you can share your idea face-to-face or through group messaging.

With Jamboard, you can sketch ideas as they come to you and watch your colleagues tackle a problem no matter where they are, as they would on a whiteboard in a single room. And companies are already using Jamboard in creative ways. For example, Instrument uses Jamboard to create and present creative projects to clients, and larger companies, like Dow Jones and Spotify, use Jamboard in their workflows to make bring their ideas to life and make meetings more effective.

What role do you think artificial intelligence has in helping businesses be more productive? 

I think we're headed toward a future where your productivity tools become intuitive and intelligent enough to help you go from ideas to action quickly. We think machine intelligence can help teams eliminate time spent on mundane tasks, like manually scheduling meetings. But it can also help surface and format content, so we spend more time executing on ideas and making them better.

These are exciting opportunities that we look forward to exploring with Jamboard.

Source: Google Cloud


With Google Maps APIs, Toyota Europe keeps teen drivers safe and sound

Editor’s note: Today’s post is from Christophe Hardy, Toyota Motor Europe’s Manager of Social Business. He’ll explain how Toyota used Google Maps APIs to build an Android app to keep teen drivers safe.

It’s a milestone that teenagers celebrate and parents fear: getting that first driver’s license. For teens, a license means freedom and a gateway to adulthood. For parents, it means worrying about their kid’s safety, with no way to make sure they’re doing the right thing behind the wheel.

We know that the risk of motor vehicle crashes is higher among 16-19-year-olds than any other age group, and that speeding and using smartphones are two of the main causes. So as part of Toyota's efforts to eliminate accidents and fatalities, we worked with Molamil and MapsPeople to build Safe and Sound, an Android app for European teen drivers. It takes a lighthearted but effective approach to help young drivers stay focused on speed limits and the rules of the road, not on their cellphones. And it can be used by anyone, not just Toyota owners.

One way Safe and Sound combats speeding and distracted driving is by using music. Before parents turn over their car keys, parents and teens download and run the app to set it up. The app syncs with Spotify, and uses the Google Maps Roads API to monitor a teen’s driving behavior. If Safe and Sound determines the teen is speeding, it’ll override the teen’s music with a Spotify playlist specifically chosen by the parent—and the teen can’t turn it off. As any parent knows, parents and kids don’t always agree on music. And there’s nothing less cool to a teen than being forced to listen to folk ballads or ‘70s soft rock. (The embarrassment doubles if their friends are in the car.) The parents’ playlist turns off and switches back to the teen’s only when the teen drives at the speed limit.

The app also helps prevent distracted driving. When it detects the car is moving above nine miles an hour, it switches on a “do not disturb” mode that blocks social media notifications, incoming and outgoing texts, and phone calls. If the teen touches the phone, the app will detect that too, and play the parents' Spotify playlist until the teen removes his or her hand. At the end of the drive, Safe and Sound alerts parents to how many times their teen exceeded the speed limit or touched the phone. Parents can also tap a link in the app that displays the route the teen drove in Google Maps.

Google Maps provided us the ideal platform for building Safe and Sound. It has accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive map data, including road speed limits. The documentation is great, which made using the Google Maps Roads API simple. It also scales to handle millions of users, an important consideration as we roll out the app to more of Europe.

Safe and Sound is currently available in English throughout the continent, with a Spanish version launching soon in Spain, and a Dutch and French version coming to Belgium. And we’re looking to localize Safe and Sound into even more languages.

We hope Safe and Sound helps keep more teens safe, and brings more parents peace of mind. Plus, there’s never been a better use for that playlist of yacht rock classics.

Source: Google Cloud


MedXM keeps patients healthy, with help from G Suite and Chrome

Editor’s note: Today’s post comes from Sy Zahedi, CEO of MedXM, which works with health plan providers to offer preventive care and health education to patients. MedXM is using G Suite and Chrome to operate more efficiently and help outreach agents and clinicians improve care for patients.

Every day, 5,000 MedXM healthcare workers visit patients in their homes or in nearby clinics. Our clinicians and health aides make sure patients are taking medications, following doctor instructions and making progress in managing chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure. We believe that focusing on things like prevention, education and early detection will keep our patients healthy, and detect or deter illnesses before they become critical or require hospital stays.

Meeting with patients face to face is our strategy for keeping people healthy.  That’s why we rely on technology to remain connected with our patients.  Our outreach center agents need to be able to field calls from patients with questions or emergencies. Other employees communicate with health insurers about our wellness programs or to obtain documentation on patient progress. To meet our mission of delivering great person-to-person care, we chose G Suite, Chromebooks, and Chrome browser.

Switching to faster, more secure applications.


Before Google, we relied on laptops equipped with Microsoft Office. Healthcare workers and remote employees had to use VPNs to log in to our network. The process was slow and not user friendly. Plus, we plan to hire more remote workers in the future, so we needed easy and secure tools that allowed workers to share and update documents no matter where they were.

Once we determined that G Suite could allow employees to securely communicate with each other and with healthcare providers, we rolled out Gmail first, then moved on to Google Drive, Google Docs and Google Hangouts. We also deployed Chrome browser across all worker computers. Switching employees and outreach center agents to G Suite took very little time—many of our employees already used tools like Gmail and Google Docs at home. And once our IT team showed employees how multiple people could work on a Google Sheets spreadsheet at the same time, they never wanted to use anything but Google Sheets from then on.



Decreased costs. Increased productivity.


Since we began using G Suite and Chrome, productivity increased significantly, while software costs decreased by 40 percent. Since staff can share information with clinicians using Google Drive, employees no longer waste time with complicated VPNs when they need to upload work orders to healthcare providers. Plus, they can complete routine tasks faster, such as filling out vacation requests in Google Forms instead of passing around sheets of paper.

Switching to Google also reduced the workload for the MedXM IT team, which used to spend about 25 percent of its time supporting legacy desktop applications. Today, they need to provide very little support for G Suite so they can spend more time on creative projects, like using Google Apps Script to create custom dashboards for staff.

After adding up all of the benefits of using G Suite and Chrome, we’re taking the next step: replacing our outreach center and clinician computers with Chromebooks.

Because Google makes us more efficient, employees have more time to spend caring for patients. With more time tending to patients’ needs, we can fulfill our company mission: preventative healthcare, education and early detection. Now that’s good medicine.

Source: Google Cloud


Google Cloud at RSNA: engaging with the medical imaging community

Medical imaging is a critical pillar of modern healthcare: It's estimated that more than 300 million advanced imaging procedures are performed a year, and the majority of medical interventions require some type of imaging for diagnostic purposes. Next to genomics, medical images are one of the fastest growing data sources in the healthcare space.

At Google Cloud, we’re working with the research community, clinical community and the diagnostic imaging industry to help care providers be more accurate and effective in order to improve patient outcomes. And we’ve been excited to see our customers and technology partners use Google Cloud services and tools to uncover powerful insights that may help drive better patient care and facilitate better collaboration among care providers.

Here's a little bit more about what our partners and customers are doing with Google Cloud, and what they have to say about it.

Change Healthcare is a leading provider of enterprise imaging solutions. By combining Change Healthcare’s clinical expertise and industry knowledge with our strengths in the areas of cloud infrastructure, advanced analytics and collaboration tools, we aim to meaningfully impact outcomes for patients and care providers. Change Healthcare is using Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to provide a more relevant, pervasive, scalable and cost-effective data infrastructure, and leveraging G Suite to develop new collaborative solutions for imaging specialists.

“Change Healthcare is positioned to transform the value that imaging brings to healthcare providers. By working with Google Cloud in this strategic collaboration, we are poised to accelerate that transformation. In today’s dynamic healthcare industry, providers are looking for new ways to improve patient care. That is why Change Healthcare will be working with Google Cloud to introduce innovative technologies and solutions to address the challenges healthcare providers face both today and in the future.” —Erkan Akyuz, Executive Vice President and President for Imaging, Workflow & Care Solutions, Change Healthcare

For partners like Kanteron Systems, GCP is providing a path to deployment at scale. Kanteron is leveraging their expertise in multimodality medical imaging and clinical genomics, using our artificial intelligence and cloud capabilities to help radiologists, pathologists, surgeons and oncologists collaborate by sharing and visualizing patient data with the relevant clinical context.

“Our focus is crystal clear: help clinicians deliver the best possible care. Leveraging Google Cloud’s healthcare-focused platform helps us get to this goal faster.” —Jorge Cortell, Founder and CEO, Kanteron Systems

Partners like Ambra Health, lifeIMAGE and Nautilus Medical are growing their workflow-driven, medical image sharing networks globally by leveraging Google Cloud. The partnership enables care coordination and collaboration on novel insights across multiple entities such as hospitals, imaging centers, patients and labs.

“In a world with 400 petabytes of imaging data produced annually, we plan to leverage Google Cloud’s global footprint to help our customers in a highly-regulated and life-critical space to perform at scale and manage IT risk effectively.” —Matthew A. Michela, CEO, lifeIMAGE

Partners like Zebra Medical Vision are using TensorFlow to train neural networks on existing radiology scans and create new models that aim to help clinicians detect specific conditions. These models are run using Cloud Machine Learning Engine to analyze new scans and deliver insights to hospitals to help inform clinical decisions at scale. Customers like Imagia are using machine learning APIs to accelerate AI-first multi-institutional research in precision medicine and deliver radiomics biomarkers for personalized healthcare. Companies like Arterys are using TensorFlow to generate heart measurements that may help cardiologists and radiologists work more effectively by automating some of the more repetitive, manual tasks, allowing physicians spend more time focusing on their patients.

Enterprise imaging IT-focused DICOM Systems is using Google Cloud to offer their customers the option of cloud storage. 

"The imaging industry typically upgrades or replaces their PACS solution every five to eight years. This is a pain for the hospital's IT department. We are starting to see healthcare customers recognize the power of the cloud—and how to leverage the cloud as a core part of their IT strategy." — Dmitriy Tochilnik, President and CTO, Dicom Systems

Client Outlook, the maker of eUnity, is providing an imaging viewer which can visualize radiology images stored on-premise or in the cloud. By integrating with Zebra Medical Vision’s AI1 platform, Client Outlook surfaces imaging-based measurements such as bone density and coronary calcium, helping augment radiology workflows.

“There is a need in the market for tools that help physicians be more effective in translating diagnostic images into clinical insights. We see our product as a platform serving these tools to the right user in the right context. With Google Cloud, we aim to use the emerging ecosystem of intelligent solutions to make sure that our users have the right tools for the job.” — Steve Rankin, CEO, Client Outlook


This week we’ll be at RSNA (Booth 8161), where you can learn more and meet some of our ecosystem partners. We’ll demo some of our work as well as host a corporate symposium featuring a panel discussion on the role of machine intelligence in the future of radiology (RSVP here). We’d love to learn how we can work with you to transform healthcare.

Source: Google Cloud


Accelerating the journey to the cloud for SAP customers—access transparency preview and new certifications

From the moment we announced a partnership with SAP at Google Cloud Next in March, we’ve been busy readying SAP systems to run effectively on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Our momentum with SAP offers solutions for all types of business, from SMBs to the largest enterprises around the world, including developments with data access transparency, a sandbox environment, application migration and integrations for business systems. We’re also continuing to build on our progress with larger HANA certifications.  

This week, we’ll be on-site talking about the latest at SAP TechEd in Barcelona. Here’s an  update on what we're launching.

Access Transparency and the data custodian model

Managing and mitigating risk is a priority for any organization adopting the public cloud. As part of our partnership, SAP and Google have proposed a data custodian model that will allow enterprises to continuously monitor risk and help with their data protection and access control policies. Today, we're announcing a preview of Access Transparency, a new GCP security feature that helps enable this model.  

Access Transparency provides visibility into operational access by Google employees to cloud systems that store, secure or process customer data. Cloud providers may require operational access to address a customer support request, or, more rarely, to review whether a service can meet its availability and performance objectives. Access Transparency log entries include justification for access, the specific resource that was accessed, the time of access, and the corporate location of the accessor. Access Transparency enables security and compliance teams to gain meaningful oversight of their cloud provider.  

We're opening up an early access preview of Access Transparency to customers. The early access preview will provide visibility into operational access for a select set of GCP services—Google Cloud Storage (GCS), Identity and Access Management (IAM), Key Management Service (KMS) and Google App Engine (GAE). We intend to progressively roll out this capability to other GCP services that store, secure or process customer data.

To express interest in our Access Transparency early access preview, please complete the online request form.

SAP platform certifications

SAP offers an extensive ecosystem of products to address the needs of SMBs to the largest enterprises. The following systems are now all certified by SAP to run on GCP:


  • SAP HANA: SAP HANA is now certified to run in Compute Engine instances (VMs) of up to 1.4TBs of memory. For customers running analytics applications like SAP BW or SAP Customer Activity Repository (SAP CAR), we can now support scale-out configurations with up to 16 instances, for 22TB of total memory. Additionally, we have already announced our intention to quickly enable VMs with 4TB of memory in the short term.

  • The SAP Data Migration Option (DMO) is now certified for migrating on-premise SAP HANA and any DB-based SAP applications to SAP HANA on GCP.

  • SAP Hybris e-commerce and marketing solutions are now officially supported on GCP, enabling joint customers like Smyths Toys to further integrate its business systems and drive efficiency and value.

  • SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) platform is certified to run on both Windows and Linux environments on GCP.

  • SAP Business One, SAP’s small business software for ERP, is now certified to run on GCP. Customers like Sale Stock in Indonesia are leveraging GCP to run their mission critical Business One solutions.

  • For customers who want bring up non-production SAP applications on GCP, the SAP Cloud Appliance Library now supports GCP. With the click of a button, you can spin up a sandbox environment with SAP applications like S/4 HANA on GCP and incubate exploratory projects.

  • SAP Vora - Version 1.4 of SAP’s in-memory distributed computing system for big data analytics is supported on GCP and what’s more, version 2.2 leverages Kubernetes and will have support for Google Container Engine and Google’s managed Hadoop service Google Cloud DataProc in Q1 2018.

Manage, monitor and extend SAP

Running SAP on GCP is one thing. Integrating it into your larger IT environment is another. Together, Google Cloud and SAP have been working hard to certify the tools you need to make the most of your SAP environment.

  • Customers can now implement data tiering between SAP HANA and Google BigQuery using sample tools published by Google Cloud.

  • It’s now easier than ever to monitor performance from within the GCP console. A new monitoring agent is available to reliably collect and publish metrics from your SAP HANA instance to GCP Stackdriver, letting you set event notifications so you can have actionable insights around aggregated data. Get started now with this user guide.

Visit us online and at SAP TechEd Barcelona

We’re working hard to make Google Cloud the best place to run SAP applications. Visit us anytime online to learn more about the SAP Google partnership. And if you’re attending SAP TechEd in Barcelona, be sure to stop by the Google Cloud booth P13 to say hello, see some demos in action and share your thoughts on how we can help accelerate your journey to the cloud.

Source: Google Cloud