Google is a powerhouse in the technology industry, and their services are used by businesses all around the world. At GC Innovate, we orchestrate a unique ecosystem of driven specialists within The Cronos Group, 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. In this interview, Glenn Bryon, a DevOps engineer at FlowFactor, discusses Google’s services and how they are used by his company. He also offers his thoughts on Google’s direction in the industry and the keywords that would best describe his company.
When does your company use Google’s services?
Glenn: FlowFactor is a DevOps service company, which means that we provide our clients with the tools and services they need to streamline their development and operations processes. Google is a big part of that, because they offer a lot of great tools and services that can help our clients improve their workflow. The cloud is an important tool in our belt, meaning we are also often involved when companies are considering cloud migration or cloud native development.
As a cloud agnostic company, we use Google’s services when it is the best tool for the job at hand. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has a lot of great features and tools that help us with our DevOps workflows. For instance, we use Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to run our containerized applications in the cloud.
For me the most important indicator that Google is doing something right is that GCP has become almost the de-facto choice for all our internal POC projects. While our client projects are usually bound by the existing infrastructure, Google being the default choice when we have free reign is a pretty good sign in my opinion.
Why Google?
Glenn: So in general Google is leading when it comes to data and AI, and we notice that is becoming an important decision driver when making a choice for a new cloud platform.
Google is also quite strong in the hybrid cloud story. More and more of our clients have some legacy applications that can’t just be migrated to the cloud overnight. Google offers a lot of features that help us move those apps to the cloud in a gradual and controlled manner. Additionally, Google’s open nature avoids vendor lock-in, which is always a concern for our clients.
A big part of that strategy is how Google is investing heavily in containerisation. Kubernetes was originally developed by Google before they open sourced it and today it’s one of the most used tools in the world of containerisation. And true to their open commitment they have now released Anthos, a tool which makes it even easier to manage containers across multiple clouds.
Finally, on a personal note, I find that Google Cloud is just easy to work with. The documentation is excellent, their components are clearly differentiated and have clear functions, it’s just way easier to get something running on GCP compared to other cloud platforms.
What direction is Google evolving in according to you?
Glenn: I think Google is headed in a very exciting direction. They’re constantly innovating and expanding their services, which is great for businesses like ours. Additionally, I think Google is really focusing on data and machine learning, two areas that have a lot of potential in my opinion. We’ve even noticed that AI and machine learning have found their way to our DevOps world as well. AIOps uses data and machine learning to automate some of our most repetitive tasks.
Which keywords would you use to Google your company?
Glenn: From a professional point of view, I would probably use queries like ‘DevOps’, ‘Cloud native’ & ‘Automation’, because that’s pretty much what we do at FlowFactor. However, as an employee I think ‘challenge’ and ‘family atmosphere’ would be more fitting. FlowFactor provides a lot of opportunities to learn new things and grow as an engineer. Additionally, the company culture is really great and I feel like I’m part of a family here.
If you’re looking for more information on Google’s services or want to hear about how another business is using them, we’d be happy to chat with you. Our team of experts have years of experience working with Google’s products and can help your business get the most out of them.