Deloitte and Google Cloud unveil plans to collaborate on next-generation security offerings

Building on their existing global alliance, Deloitte and Google Cloud announces that they will jointly leverage the strength of their portfolios in cyber and cloud solutions to provide customers with end-to-end secure cloud transformation services and solutions in support of their digital transformation journeys and to better combat cyber threats.

As organizations move more of their businesses to the cloud, better control over data and activities in the cloud, as well as preventing privilege misuse, becomes critically important. Migrating a single application to cloud can seem straightforward, but more often, that application's function is tied to multiple business processes. Deloitte employs complex logic, data-driven analysis, and automated tools to rapidly map your applications and infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), helping to increase speed, quality and savings.

Deloitte has received Google Cloud’s Cloud Migration and Infrastructure specializations, demonstrating success in architecting and building GCP infrastructure and workflows, and migrating customer workloads to GCP.

Google Cloud’s infrastructure is designed, built and operated with rigorous attention to security. Deloitte has spent decades helping clients protect their businesses from security threats, and can help move securely to the cloud.

As clients increasingly leverage cloud native services to modernize their existing application portfolios and build new and innovative products and services for their customers, they turn to us to help drive increased value through Google Cloud. Its functional knowledge of client businesses and products, combined with the capability of Google Cloud services, helps clients reduce technology operating costs, accelerate innovation, and increase business agility and security.

Through its alliance with SAP, Deloitte and Google have the people, knowledge and experience to help capture the transformative potential of SAP running on Google’s fast, reliable, and global platform. Its integrated SAP offering can help leverage the power of SAP S/4 HANA and Deloitte’s preconfigured solutions to devise a comprehensive cloud strategy.

As a recognized global leader in business analytics and business strategy, Deloitte and Google are able to help harness the power of Google Cloud’s array of big data processing and analytics tools to enable data-driven insights at speeds and volumes that were previously unimaginable. Combined with its cognitive computing practices, Deloitte uses Google Cloud’s machine learning engine to provide next-generation machine learning offerings that help solve tough business challenges.

Deloitte provides dedicated, active, scalable cloud management as a service to help you set the pace of change in your industry. We leverage our secure platform and worldwide network of specialists to understand every dimension of your challenges and how they impact your requirements. Deloitte’s business insight, coupled with turnkey, on-demand cloud management offerings on Google Cloud, make it possible to accelerate the path to cloud.

"The increasing integration, interconnectedness, and data exchange of our businesses and lives create shared vulnerabilities where a problem in one area can quickly cascade into another. By building security into these environments, organizations can better protect their data, privacy, and operations," said Deborah Golden, U.S. cyber leader, Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory, and principal in Deloitte & Touche LLP. "Together with Google, we are supporting secure transformative change for our clients, something that all organizations should prioritize, and can enable them to be better secured in their critical cyber and cloud needs."

"For enterprise customers moving to the cloud, security isn't an afterthought, it's at the top of every CIO's list, and in general is a board level topic," said Sunil Potti, vice president engineering at Google Cloud Security. "Building in the right security processes and controls from the beginning of the cloud journey can significantly reduce risks and costs for customers, and so we are delighted to be collaborating with Deloitte to help deliver end-to-end security services and solutions to our joint-customers."

As a Google Cloud Security Premier Partner, Deloitte offers cloud security services to its clients globally and helps assist Google Cloud Platform customers address security, privacy and compliance related risks as they migrate and transform their business in the cloud. 

As part of growing the alliance, Deloitte will offer Google Cloud customers cloud security solutions in the areas of security monitoring and threat response, zero trust, identity and access management (IAM) and data security. 

The alliance will also provide next-generation capabilities that can help organizations proactively detect, continuously monitor and respond to unauthorized activity before it can adversely affect networks, and establish and operationalize a zero trust architecture and program to continuously monitor and authenticate users — constantly determining their level of risk based on who they are, what they access, and when and where they do it from. 

The companies will also enhance a digital transformation strategy and lay the foundation to leverage new data-driven identity models as they evolve, and provide a suite of services designed to help organizations address data risk management challenges and help them understand the value of their data and privacy considerations, as well as to operationalize their data risk governance program. 

McAfee joins with Google Cloud to integrate McAfee Security offerings with GCP for Linux and Windows workloads, containers

McAfee and Google Cloud entered into an alliance to integrate key McAfee solutions for endpoint and container security within Google Cloud. Under this new partnership, McAfee will tightly integrate its endpoint security solutions for Linux and Windows workloads, as well as its MVISION Cloud solution for container security, on Google Cloud infrastructure.

Several enterprise customers leverage virtual machines (VMs) running in the cloud to handle key Linux and Windows workloads. Ensuring security of these workloads is critical. With this new integration, customers will be able to deploy McAfee’s advanced endpoint security solutions across these key workloads and VMs via Google Cloud Marketplace.

McAfee’s workload security technology uses advanced machine learning and cloud analytics to help protect against file-based, fileless, and script-based threats at scale for workloads deployed on Google Cloud.

Google Cloud provides organizations with critical infrastructure, platform capabilities and solutions, along with expertise, to reinvent their business with data-powered innovation on modern computing infrastructure. The Mountain View, California-based company delivers enterprise-grade cloud solutions that leverage Google technology to help companies operate more efficiently, modernize for growth and innovate for the future. Customers in more than 150 countries turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to solve critical business problems.  

McAfee is the device-to-cloud cybersecurity company. Inspired by the power of working together, McAfee creates business and consumer solutions that make the world a safer place. 

McAfee MVISION Cloud for Containers service extends data security, threat prevention, governance, and compliance capabilities of the MVISION Cloud platform to provide additional security for container-based workloads on Google Cloud. Organizations can also leverage MVISION to integrate security into DevOps processes and toolsets to discover and address security issues before applications are deployed.

“Increasingly, customers are choosing to move critical workloads and applications to the cloud because of the strong security protections it can provide,” said Anand Ramanathan, vice president of product and marketing at McAfee. “As more of these enterprises choose to leverage Google Cloud’s hyperscale capabilities, we’re excited to integrate our core capabilities in VM and container security to ensure Google Cloud customers can benefit from the highest levels of data protection and threat prevention.”

“We’re excited to partner with McAfee to bring their proven, trusted security capabilities to enterprise customers,” said Kevin Ichhpurani, corporate vice president, Global Ecosystem at Google Cloud. “Integrating McAfee’s solutions into Google Cloud means customers will have even more tools to ensure the highest levels of data security and protections as they migrate mission-critical workloads to the cloud.”

Denodo Platform now available on Google Cloud Platform marketplace offering data delivery through data virtualization

Denodo announces availability of the Denodo Platform through Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Marketplace, making it easier for organizations to transition data to Google Cloud to accelerate cloud data analytics and data lake initiatives. 

As a subscription-based offering, the Denodo Platform on GCP Marketplace provides a true enterprise-scale data management solution for real-time data integration without the cost and complexity associated with traditional data replication. 

As organizations increasingly move data and processing to the cloud, and as data residing across multiple cloud repositories becomes a reality, there is a growing need for faster, more agile data integration methods like data virtualization. 

The Denodo Platform integrates on-premise data sources such as relational databases, data warehouses and CSVs; cloud data sources (Big Query, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, Bigtable, Apigee and more), SaaS applications, such as Salesforce, to deliver a standards-based data gateway making it quick and easy for users of all skill levels to access and use data.

Denodo's easy-to-use tools allow data engineers and integrators to quickly prepare integrated data sets for analysts to use in their GCP-based analytical sandbox, while Denodo's dynamic data catalog allows data stewards tag and categorize data assets for easy discovery.

The Denodo Platform delivers accelerated performance by leveraging MPP processing with Spark, Impala, and Presto, in Big Data scenarios, together with a dynamic data catalog so that users can easily find the data that they need. 

Google Cloud customers who deploy the Denodo data virtualization product can realize easy access to a wide breadth of data by connecting, combining and consuming data from a variety of data sources, including Google BigQuery, Google Cloud Storage, and other Google Cloud data sources, to provide a more data-driven approach to advanced real-time analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to help make better business decisions.

The offering also enhances BigQuery support that provides native connectivity and pushdown optimization to enable customers to process massive workloads with better query efficiency. The Denodo Platform’s ability to deliver real-time data access with BigQuery cloud-native APIs enables easy data movement between existing on-premises and cloud data sources and cloud storage.

BigQuery can be leveraged as a high-performance caching database for the Denodo Platform in the cloud. This supports advanced optimization techniques like data movement (data shipping), which enables multi-pass executions based on intermediate temporary tables. Users can leverage utility-based pricing through a number of offerings on the GCP Marketplace. They can start small and scale as needed.

Atos announces new Workplace as a Service offering for optimal employee experience with Google Cloud

Atos announces its new Workplace as a Service | Google Edition, part of its Atos Digital Workplace solutions, to provide enterprise customers with a way of enhancing the employee workplace experience, through greater choice for users and a boost to productivity. 

With Atos Digital Workspace, users combine skills, from advisory to consulting and design thinking through to business and vertical solutions, including applications to the digital workplace platform. It offers complete solution to customers, with its end-to-end workspace transformation, helping customers’ address their employees’ needs with no compromise on security.

As part of its partnership with Google Cloud, Atos is offering a unique integrated and secure package including the supply and support of Chromebooks with Atos’ Circuit software, as well as Google’s G Suite, supported with setup, migration and management services.

G Suite and Chromebooks, used together, provide an enhanced user experience, which is consistent across all devices and apps, enabling workforces to be more productive and engaged, while security and compliance are built-in and reinforced with a ‘zero trust’ security framework, which requires strict ID verification for every person and device trying to access resources, in order to prevent data breaches.

The offering is available in a subscription-based model, delivered by Atos, with self-service, automation and virtual agents embedded, so businesses can both optimize costs and at the same time transform the way people collaborate thereby increasing productivity.

G Suite is a set of apps such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, and Hangouts, which are designed with real-time collaboration and machine intelligence to bring people together and help them work smarter and safer.

Circuit, the Atos unified communications and collaboration cloud solution, provides easy-to-use, powerful team collaboration capabilities and can be used in combination with existing communication platforms and business apps, such as G Suite.

“At Atos, we’re proud to support our customers in providing a secure and innovative workplace environment in which people and businesses are engaged and effective,” said Eric Grall, senior executive vice president and head of global operations and infrastructure & data management at Atos. “Our new Workplace as a Service offering provides enterprise customers with greater choice and a complete package to deliver an optimal employee experience and enhanced productivity.” 

“The cloud can transform the way people collaborate and get work done,” said Kevin Ichhpurani, corporate vice president, global ecosystem at Google Cloud. “This new service from Atos provides customers with a streamlined path to adopt a cloud-native approach to collaboration and productivity with G Suite and Chromebooks. We are delighted to partner with Atos to bring these capabilities to customers.”

International Medical Solutions launches CloudSync for Google Cloud healthcare customers transitioning to the cloud

International Medical Solutions (IMS), a Google Cloud Partner, announced a solution that will enable radiologists and other healthcare clinicians to transition to the cloud. 

The IMS CloudSync enables radiology sites to transition to the cloud and continue to use their legacy on-premise workstations and DICOM viewers. The front-end solution designed with the needs of initial Google Cloud Platform (GCP) users in mind uses an implementation that enables GCP to be added to an on-premise legacy viewing workflow, where GCP would act as the archive. 

The plug-and-play solution works out-of-the-box and allows PACS sites to sync their on-premise storage of medical images with their cloud storage. The added benefit is the sites can continue to use their legacy PACS workstations to view images stored in the cloud. 

"IMS has been working closely with Google Cloud to solve unmet needs for customers who are starting to transition to the cloud. CloudSync™ is an out-of-the-box, cost-effective solution that improves clinician workflows while enabling them to use on-prem legacy systems at the same time," says Vittorio Accomazzi, CTO of International Medical Solutions. Accomazzi adds, "Also, CloudSync inherently provides image sharing as it allows multiple sites to share and exchange images on GCP."

IMS CloudVue will also be featured at RSNA this year. The solution, which launched earlier this year, is a cloud-based viewing platform that provides the experience of an installed application on any device or workstation. CloudSync and CloudVue can also be used as a disaster recovery solution since CloudSync will upload the on-premise data onto GCP, which can be accessed using CloudVue. At any given time, the user has two copies of the data and at least two ways for accessing it.

Over the last year, IMS has worked closely with Google Cloud to enhance the integration with the Google Cloud Healthcare API, including integrating with machine learning backend.

NetApp and Google Cloud help customers unlock the power of data with enterprise-class data services and solutions

NetApp and Google Cloud announced general availability of NetApp Cloud Volumes Service, NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Google Cloud, and support for Anthos on NetApp HCI to help organizations focus on innovation across any hybrid environments.

As enterprises seek to take advantage of the agility and efficiency benefits of the cloud, they need to know that their data is secure and in the right place, for the right cost, at scale. 

To achieve these goals, they are building data fabrics that provide maximum flexibility as they move to hybrid multi-cloud environments. With NetApp and Google Cloud, customers can unlock the power of their data with integrated, enterprise-class data solutions that are optimized and validated for Google Cloud.

NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud is a cloud-native, Google Cloud integrated file service with the performance, availability, and security required to efficiently run business-critical applications. Additionally, customers can run production workloads in Google Cloud. Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud is also now available in the United Kingdom region.

Also, now globally generally available, NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Google Cloud is a data management solution that accelerates the enterprise cloud journey by bringing enhanced data protection, storage efficiencies, and mobility to Google Cloud and hybrid multicloud environments.

NetApp HCI is a scalable, on-premises hybrid cloud infrastructure that transforms private clouds into a deployable region of a multicloud. NetApp HCI is now validated to work with Google Cloud’s Anthos, giving customers the peace of mind of a true enterprise-class platform validated with Anthos to reliably deploy and run their applications.

With NetApp Trident, a fully supported open source project, organizations can orchestrate a complex hybrid cloud environment that ties together Google Cloud, Anthos, and NetApp HCI on the premises. Enterprises can scale on demand and add compute or capacity as needed to meet business requirements, and choose from a range of application platforms, including Anthos, Kubernetes, VMware, and NetApp Kubernetes Service.

Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes boosts production-ready infrastructure as code for developers

Pulumi announced availability of Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes, an open source collection of frameworks, tools and user guides that help developers and operators work better together delivering production workloads using Kubernetes. It supports managing Kubernetes infrastructure across public clouds including AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Google Cloud Platform Kubernetes Engine (GKE), in addition to application delivery to those environments using built-in best practices. 

Pulumi is a modern infrastructure as code platform that lets developers author infrastructure and application configuration, using general-purpose programming languages. This approach unlocks access to ecosystems of tools such as IDEs, test frameworks and package managers, helping teams to share and reuse patterns and practices. Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes extends Pulumi’s core infrastructure as code capabilities by providing support for production Kubernetes architectures.

“Pulumi enables our teams to deploy, scale and manage Kubernetes clusters in a fraction of the time that it took them previously, by giving them the ability to work with the languages they already know, bypassing YAML and unwieldy DSLs,” said Fernando Carletti, head of DevOps at Credijusto. “It helps bring together application and infrastructure developers by eliminating silos and reducing friction in their workflows and interactions. We're excited that Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes will simplify our infrastructure provisioning even further, advancing application lifecycle management throughout our organization.”

Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes lets teams provision infrastructure for any platform -- public, private, or hybrid -- across many clouds and deploy Kubernetes application consistently, use the entire Kubernetes API across all versions, objects, CRDs and Helm charts, with new feature support on the same day that Kubernetes releases new versions, and provides author infrastructure and application configuration in TypeScript, JavaScript, or Python, using infrastructure as code techniques. 

The solution also leverages the new library, Kx, to streamline authoring and help developers and infrastructure engineers innovate faster together; deploys continuously using one of a dozen integrations, including GitLab, Jenkins, CodeFresh, Octopus, Azure DevOps Pipelines, GitHub Actions and more; gains key insights using a collection of new operations tools, Kq, that extend the core Pulumi engine to query live Kubernetes resources in realtime; and utilizes user guides that capture industry best practices based on tried-and-true experience with dozens of real customers going to production with Kubernetes.

Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes is open source and available on GitHub. Pulumi also offers premium editions for enterprises wanting advanced policies and controls, including integrating deployments with identity providers such as Azure ActiveDirectory, Okta and GitLab. 

It allows users to enforce security and compliance requirements, self-host on-premises or in their own cloud accounts and implement advanced automation with webhooks, among other features. Pulumi also offers support and training.

“Our customers tell us that the hardest thing about Kubernetes is getting from the initial decision to use it, to having production- and team-ready infrastructure,” said Joe Duffy, Pulumi co-founder and CEO. “We’ve learned a lot by helping dozens of customers get up and running over the past year and have taken an approach of empowering developers and operators to work better together. Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes captures those learnings in a reusable and open source form that benefits the entire Kubernetes community. We look forward to seeing where customers and end users take us from here.”

AES partners with Google to develop and implement solutions that enable broader adoption of renewable energy

The AES Corp. announced that it is entering into a ten-year strategic alliance with Google to accelerate the growth and adoption of clean energy by leveraging Google Cloud technology to pioneer innovation in the sector. This alliance builds on the recent agreement between Google and AES to provide long-term renewable power to Google’s data center in Chile.

As part of this alliance, AES will use Google Cloud technology to help create the grid of the future and improve the experience for energy customers. AES innovation partner, Uplight, will also utilize Google Cloud technology to enhance its end-to-end energy action system, to increase customer satisfaction and reduce carbon emissions. 

Google Cloud’s platform, tools and technology will help redefine and improve AES and Uplight’s delivery of customer solutions through advanced cloud computing, data analytics, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).

The two companies will work together to improve the experience for corporate energy customers and to develop and implement solutions that enable broad adoption of clean energy. 

AES will collaborate with Google Cloud on energy management and opportunities to sponsor clean energy projects in targeted markets in the United States and Latin America that have the potential to help Google meet its clean energy objectives.

“AES has been working with its customers to accelerate the transformation of the electric sector through energy storage, renewables and energy efficiency. Today, we are one of the largest renewables solutions providers and developers in the world,” said Andrés Gluski, AES president and CEO. “We’re proud to have been selected by Google to form this strategic alliance. By combining the capabilities, footprint and experience of both companies, we will be able to provide better and more efficient energy solutions.”

“Cloud technology is an enabler for forward-leaning organizations seeking to put customers at the center of their business strategies,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “Together, AES and Google Cloud will leverage the cloud, AI/ML and data analytics to help transform the energy industry’s infrastructure, while driving wider adoption of renewable energy around the world.”