Google Cloud Kubernetes VP: Partners Drive Multi-Cloud
‘We see a lot of data services and other technology partners that are offering the services in a multi-cloud approach,’ Google executive Chen Goldberg tells CRN.
Chen Goldberg, general manager and vice president of engineering, Kubernetes and serverless
Google Cloud’s partners are helping to drive multi-cloud adoption by enterprises, and recent developments in the cloud vendor’s offerings around Kubernetes can help partners deepen their services to customers.
Those are some of the biggest takeaways from Chen Goldberg – the cloud vendor’s general manager and vice president of engineering, Kubernetes and serverless – who spoke to CRN in an interview ahead of Google Cloud’s annual Next conference.
“We see a lot of data services and other technology partners that are offering the services in a multi-cloud approach,” Goldberg told CRN. “Some of them are partners of Google Cloud. So their offering is available everywhere. AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.”
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Partners play a key role in the proliferation of the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) managed service, Goldberg said. And Mountain View, Calif.-based Google is investing alongside partners to give customers a “future proof” option for building applications.
“Today, what we can do with our partners is help evolve and continue and add capabilities,” she said. “And it‘s both customer centric, but it’s also future proof as a technology stack. So that‘s something that we are really taking pride in.”
Google Cloud Next 2022 runs online Tuesday to Thursday with small in-person events.
Miles Ward, chief technology officer of Los Angeles-based Google Cloud partner SADA – No. 102 on CRN’s 2022 Solution Provider 500 – called GKE a “critical substrate in in a trajectory of modernization” in an interview with CRN.
“We’re working with big, obvious household names who are looking at, not the next-step improvement, but the kind of next generational platform,” he said. “They’re making a 10-, 15-year bet. Like companies made on .NET or made on Java. This feels like the same kind of thing.”
Some of the biggest announcements from Google Cloud at Next 2022 around Kubernetes and offerings for developers include the “innovators plus” annual subscription tier for Google Cloud skills, a Software Delivery Shield (SDS) for end-to-end software supply chain security and Cloud Workstations – secure, fast workspaces for developers on Google Cloud and accessible by browser and integrated development environment (IDE).
The “innovators plus” subscription offers access to more than 700 hands-on labs, skill badges and courses, according to Google. It comes with $500 in Google Cloud credits, a Google Cloud certification exam voucher and another $500 Google Cloud credits after the first certification earned each year.
The subscription also includes live learning events led by Google Cloud experts and quarterly technical briefings hosted by Google Cloud executives, according to the vendor.
Partners can offer innovator plus subscriptions to customers as a benefit, Goldberg said.
“The onboarding and providing those skills is a challenge for everyone,” she said. “So we want to make sure that you continue to focus on that and provide them (customers) the best tools for that. So I do expect, with our commitment to partners – we are committed to getting 100 percent partner engagement with our customers. So this is one of the products or tools that we are providing them to make them successful.”
The Software Delivery Shield is a managed service with a modular set of capabilities for developers, development operations (DevOps) and security teams to build secure cloud applications. The offering includes capabilities in application development, software supply, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), production environments and policies.
“All of us, as developers, we increasingly need to plan for security attacks,” Goldberg said. “This is not going away. … It’s hard for all developers. And what’s interesting about that – Google has been dealing with that internally for decades.”