At GC Innovate we orchestrate a unique ecosystem of driven specialists, providing a broad range of knowledge and expertise on all things related to Google. In this series we’d like to introduce you to our experts. Next up is Bryan De Smaele, Managing Partner & Cloud Architect at Cymo, expert in event-driven architecture.
When does your company use Google’s services?
Well, in fact Google underpins almost every service we offer! Our core speciality at Cymo is designing event-driven architectures. We help organisations cope with the pressure the ever-changing world has on their business processes. Organisations need to react fast and the IT department just has to follow that pace.
In our opinion, the only way to truly achieve that agility is to leverage real-time data processing to respond quickly to your customers’ behavior. That real-time data processing nearly always starts with an event-driven architecture. The basic idea behind event driven architectures is that real world ‘events’ are modeled and processed asynchronously by ‘subscribers’. These events could be everything, from a changing sensor value to an incoming mail, but basically constitute everything the business should be able to react to.
Most importantly: event-driven architectures are built to be both highly scalable and extendable. This means that our applications are cloud-native almost by default. Since we also offer supporting services for event driven applications, this means that we pretty much use the full range of Google Cloud services, from monitoring to security!
Why Google?
First, to be fair: event driven architecture is platform agnostic, which is also how we approach our role as purely advising architects. So why Google? Well, basically because we all have a very strong Google background. I come from a development background, and I’ve been messing around with Google Cloud since the App Engine was still a new thing!
So on one hand we use Google because it’s our area of expertise, but Google is also quite simply the most developer friendly cloud provider out there, especially when it comes to documentation. While this might sound like a minor detail, this allows us to design systems more quickly, which ultimately benefits our customers in both cost and agility.
What I personally admire about Google is how they are very much an engineering company. They get the technology right before the sales pitch, which is a rare sight in today’s technology landscape. Take Kubernetes for example, the de facto default tool for container management on any platform. Containers are developed and open sourced by Google before gaining almost universal adoption! Google tends to be ahead of the curve when it comes to technology, which makes them an ideal fit for companies looking to make innovation their priority.
What direction is Google evolving in according to you?
I believe I once heard Google use the catch phrase ‘unleash your developers’, which I think perfectly summarises the direction Google is moving further in the future. In my view, Google is all about allowing developers to build secure, compliant and scalable applications with high tech features like AI at a fraction of the cost and time you would need to build everything from scratch.
Which keywords would you use to Google your company?
Event driven architecture would probably be the most direct hit, but I don’t know how many people go looking for that directly! *laughs*
So to cover all my bases, I would also include all the keywords associated with cloud-native architecture. Things like foundations, landing zones, Kubernetes, containers would probably be on that list!
Tickled by this interview and curious to know more? Feel free to hit us up with any questions you may have; we’d love to help you. Let’s connect the dots together!