Cloud technology is transforming the future of business. A growing number of companies are finding new ways to leverage the cloud to improve their operations. Gartner conducted a survey of nearly 270 tech company leaders, which showed that cloud technology was the biggest investment for innovation in 2021.
The number of companies migrating to the cloud will continue to grow. We shared a blog post on seven well-known companies that shifted to the cloud, but many small businesses are using cloud computing as well.
If you want to take advantage of cloud technology, you need to consider the different options available to you. One of the best known options is Amazon Web Services (AWS).
What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
AWS is a collection of remote computing services (or web services). This collection constitutes a cloud computing platform.
AWS Cloud is a suite of hosting products used by such services as Dropbox, Reddit, and others. However, Amazon Web Services can be used by startups just as much as enterprises.
AWS is a cloud computing service. You can use it instead of a private hosting (or dedicated hosting). That comes in handy when starting or developing a business. We talked about the benefits of using AWS for SaaS business models, but it can help with many other businesses too.
AWS Pros
As a service, Amazon provides several benefits that made them widely popular.
Free Trial
EC2 is not a traditional hosting solution. It is designed to provide servers online and offline in the fastest way possible. You don’t need specific knowledge to run it. Because of that, many IT professionals were suspicious of EC2 and AWS in general.
Their main concern is that you need to play around with the platform in order to figure out how it works.
A one-month free trial period allows you to run a micro instance 24/7.
The package includes:
S3 storage,
EC2 compute hours,
Elastic Load Balancer time,
and more.
All of the above lets the developer fully test Amazon API web services for their software. This works both ways – the coders can improve the software. And Amazon introduces AWS to the potential users. That benefits in the long run.
Only Necessary Payments
Amazon implemented an innovative pricing model for their hosting. Every service is a-la carte – you only pay for the components you use.
This is extremely handy for server infrastructure. The site grows and traffic volume can rise and drop , since traffic volume can jump up and down pretty drastically, especially with the growth of the site.
Unlike traditional servers AWS doesn’t charge you for the downtime periods.
A Lot Of Available Services
Amazon Web provides quite an amount of available features. Most important of them are listed below.
Compute
AWS Lambda. This service allows you to run code in the cloud without managing servers. This is very cost-effective because you only pay when using the cloud for computing;
Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud).It is a virtual machine in the cloud, which makes it possible to run a cloud server at any time;
AWS Elastic Beanstalk. An automated deployment and provisioning tool.
Networking
Amazon VPC. A networking environment in the cloud. It allows you to create a private environment in the cloud that uses the same concept and design as a local area network;
Amazon Route 53. This is a highly scalable and affordable Cloud DNS (Domain Name System). Route 53 aims at developers and businesses. It is a reliable and cost-effective way to distribute users across Internet applications.
Migration
The Database Migration Service (DMS). A migration tool. You can use it to migrate local databases to AWS. And from one database to another;
The Server Migration Service (SMS). This migration tool transfers from local servers to AWS;
Snowball. A tiny piece of software for data migration. Tb of data can be seamlessly transferred within and outside the AWS environment.
Database
Amazon RDS. This tool allows developers to easily customize and simplify relational database management and scaling. Plus – perform it in the cloud as openly as possible;
Amazon DynamoDB. This is a fully managed database with a high degree of flexibility and speed. It provides high, reliable performance and scalability.
Storage
Amazon Glacier. A very low-cost storage service. The storage is secure and fast. You can archive your data for long-term storage;
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). An object storage that provides infinite storage with a simple interface. Typically used as primary storage for data backup and restore.
High Performance and Reliability
AWS has fairly high speed. The Elastic Block Storage is nearly as fast as C3 but provides other features. EC2 Compute Units provide hourly Xeon-class performance. Unlike most private data centers, this one remains online but reduces its capacity in case of an issue. Chaos Monkey App successfully tested this feature. It randomly shuts down any cloud environment components and then analyzes whether the app is running or has completely stopped. In the case of AWS, when the database and web server went offline, the database (RDS service) switched to another database using the Multi AZ function. When the web server went offline, another one was activated using the autoscale function. This shows how efficient Amazon Web Services really are.
The strength of AWS performance lies in its storage. The EBS distributed nature provides massive I / O operations per second for all of its instances.
Fast Deployment
Traditionally, providers need two to four days to prepare a server. Then they need a few more hours to configure and test it. AWS Deployment time is reduced to minutes. By using Amazon Machine Images, it is possible to deploy the machine and prepare it for connection in a very short period of time. This feature is handy if the site receives a large amount of traffic at certain time intervals. Else,it needs demand-based flexibility when launching a new product.
AWS also provides free Cloudformation Templates. These let you deploy and shut down multiple environments in one click.
Outstanding Security
You can restrict AWS resources access. Identity and Access Management (IAM) allows you to apply role assignment. This helps determine the actions that a particular role can perform. This results in malpractice likelihood reduction. Plus, the safety is increased. Also, AWS provides VPC, which can be used to host services in private networks inaccessible from the Internet, but can exchange data with the resources in the same network. You can access these private network resources via Amazon VPN or other open-source services.
Great Location
Another major AWS advantage: availability in over 40 time zones and 25 regions. That allows you to access servers from almost any country in the world.
Multi-Region Backups
You can create data backup copies in different regions. This is possible due to AWS Cloud decentralization. The platform offers AMIs and EBS snapshots mode for file back-upiles. This allows backups to remain intact even if the main operating environment fails. Even more, you can schedule backup time.
Great Flexibility
One of the most important AWS features of AWS. All the available services continuously work and interact with your application. They estimate and process your traffic demand automatically. APIs variety, coupled with the Amazon Machine Images gives you a fully customizable solution that provides a 100% ready server instance in less than 10 minutes. Instances can be closed quickly when need be.
Conclusion
Now that on-demand cloud services are on the rise, Amazon Web Services have become a viable solution for enterprises looking for reliable, scalable, and affordable cloud computing services. AWS helps companies manage a variety of services. And its notable advantage is that your business gets access to EC2, which, in turn, provides you with a virtual cluster of computers over the Internet. Thus, hardware resource handling is simulated by server farms located worldwide. AWS is a great solution not only for startups, but also for large and medium-sized enterprises. It is your choice for developing new software or in case of application modernization.
Cloud technology is changing the state of many different industries. The financial sector is one of those most heavily influenced by cloud technology.
Finance companies are projected to spend $68.8 billion on cloud services by 2028. The market is growing at a rate of 20.5% a year. A number of different sub-sectors of the financial industry are driving demand for cloud technology.
One of the financial verticals most affected by cloud technology is online financial securities trading. A number of trading platforms rely on cloud technology to operate more efficiently and cut costs.
Trading on the financial and stock markets has become progressively easier over the last couple of decades, mainly thanks to the rapid integration of the internet into our daily lives. More than 10 million people are actively engaged in Forex trading as of today, something which would have likely been unimaginable in the era before the internet was so ubiquitous.
We have previously talked about the benefits of using AI for financial trading. Cloud technology has helped traders make better trading decisions. Some of the benefits of cloud technology for financial trading are listed below:
The cloud makes it a lot easier to place quick trades. This enables traders to take advantage of trading opportunities in real-time, which is crucial in a world where new updates can change the direction of financial markets in a matter of minutes.
Cloud-based trading platforms are less likely to crash, so traders can take advantage of opportunities without delays.
Cloud-trading platforms tend to be more cost-effective, so traders don’t have to pay as high trading fees.
There are loads of benefits of using the cloud to make trading decisions. However, there is still going to be a learning curve for new traders. Getting started with trading is not that complicated, as long as you take the time to research the market, figure out what tools are available, and have the patience to develop a viable long-term strategy.
Advantages of Web-Based Trading Platforms Using the Cloud
Web-based trading platforms have been growing in popularity. Online trading platforms are enjoying an annual growth rate of 6.4%, with expectations that the total value of the market will go over $13 billion by 2026. As stated above, the cloud has made these trading platforms even more valuable. These solutions offer many advantages over traditional platforms, making them a prime candidate for a beginner who’s just starting to explore the field.
Some of the benefits of using cloud-based trading platforms over traditional solutions include:
Platform independence: you can access the platform on any device and are not bound to a specific operating system or app store;
Constant updates: developers don’t have to spread their resources across multiple fronts and can concentrate on improving one centralized solution instead;
Easy integration with auxiliary tools: many web-based platforms offer API access for developers interested in taking full advantage of their potential.
The cloud is completely changing the future of trading. Savvy traders will leverage cloud-based trading platforms to their advantage.
Figure Out What You Want to Trade
It’s important to settle on a particular market before going any further. There are several main options to pick from stocks, ETFs, and currencies. Trading currencies on Forex is an easy way to get introduced to the overall concept of trading and is widely available through many brokers.
Stocks are also an option worth considering, but you should build up some experience before going in that direction. Otherwise, they can be a risky investment if you don’t understand the market in enough detail. ETFs are a safer alternative to stocks, as they bundle different stocks in a manner that distributes the risk more evenly. The lower risk associated with ETFs comes at a price though – your earning potential is also more limited for the most part.
The tool offers an approach balanced between convenience and depth, displaying data in a condensed manner while still providing you with access to features that can help you make the most of your trades. It runs entirely in your browser, and thanks to its adaptive design, you can take advantage of its functionality on any device.
Using the MetaTrader 5 Web Terminal is also a reasonable choice for those concerned about security. Since the terminal runs exclusively on your broker’s server and not on a centralized one shared with other users, you will have more control over your trading data.
On top of that, there’s no fee required to use the service. If you’re looking for a relatively easy way to get started with trading through a web platform, this is an option worth exploring.
Use a Practice Account First
Many cloud-based trading platforms offer the option of setting up a demo account with fake money. Take full advantage of that option and don’t let go of your practice account until you’re truly comfortable with what you’re doing. It will take a while to learn the ins and outs of the market, and practicing in a safe, controlled environment with no risk involved is a good way to prepare for what you’re about to experience.
Whenever you run into a problem or don’t understand why a situation developed the way it did, make sure to talk to other traders online and ask for assistance. The community is generally welcoming to newcomers and you’ll get plenty of valuable insights from people who’ve likely experienced the same problems as you.
Understand the Tax Implications
Don’t forget taxes! You may be able to connect to financial markets all over the world via the cloud, but you still have to pay taxes in your jurisdiction of residence. Depending on where you live, trading can have some serious tax implications and may even require the services of an accountant. It’s better to sort this out at the very beginning while you’re still starting out, rather than scrambling to find someone on short notice once you realize that your tax return is going to be much more complicated than you anticipated.
Hiring an accountant is not even as expensive as most people think – you can get one for as little as $300 if your trading has been relatively uncomplicated through the year. There are also tools that can allow you to handle your taxes yourself, which will cost you around $100 – $200 per year, depending on the set of features you’re interested in.
Moving on to More Advanced Strategies
Once you’re comfortable performing simple trades and have managed to stabilize your position on the market, it’s time to move on to exploring more advanced trading strategies. Things like Forex scalping and positional trading require some underlying experience with the market, so don’t attempt to jump on those until you’ve mastered the basics.
At this point, you should also have a good understanding of the cloud-based platform(s) you’ve chosen. Understand the full toolset you’re working with and how it can benefit you in every situation. Know how to reach out to the company behind the platform for support if you run into any problems. And take the time to experiment with automation solutions. Even if you don’t consider yourself good at programming, you can still learn how to automate some basic tasks.
Whether you do it full-time or part-time, online trading can be a good way to earn a steady income once you overcome the initial learning barrier. Web-based trading platforms are probably the best way to approach this right now, given their convenience and availability. You must enter this field with the strong intention to learn more over time. There is a lot of ground to cover already, and new solutions keep coming out on a regular basis, requiring you to stay on top of your learning.
AI technology is changing many fields that were expected to be immune to its touch. The creative design fields were among those that many people assumed would be unaffected by AI.
However, AI is clearly changing the artistic profession. The market for NFTs was worth over $41 billion last year. Of course, artists are finding other ways to utilize AI in their designs as well.
If you are looking to hire a designer, you will want to find out if they have a knowledge of AI-based design practices. This can help you get a higher quality design at a better rate.
Finding an Illustrator that Understands AI Design Practices Can Help Significantly
An illustration is a form of art that uses drawings, sketches, and other images to create pictures. Illustrations have been around since ancient times but they haven’t lost their popularity even today. From creating simple line drawings to creating complex virtual reality simulations, illustrators have mastered their craft over centuries.
Today, AI technology helps them create even better designs. You may be amazed by some of the huge benefits of using AI to come up with better graphics.
The use of illustration is widespread in many industries, including advertising and design. For example, an advertisement for a product may be illustrated with a drawing of the product or its key features. It’s also used in movies and video games to create visual effects that can’t be achieved by other means.
Today, you can hire an illustrator to create just about anything. Whether you want a simple illustration of your favorite character or a complex one inspired by your favorite story, many professional services are available to help you out.
Many illustrators are using AI to offer better services for their clients, such as creating better web designs. Here are some ways they can create better designs with AI:
They can use old vintage photos as a basis for their designs. AI tools such as the Colorize filter in Photoshop enable them to turn them into color photos.
They can use AI to remove the backgrounds of images and turn them into beautiful silhouettes that can be used in their designs.
They can use AI to automate many of their designs, so they can create numerous designs more quickly.
If you want to get the best value for your budget, it can be a good idea to hire an illustrator with a knowledge of AI. If you’re looking for professional illustration services, here are some tips to help you find the best one:
Know your requirements
Before you start looking for the best illustrator services, it’s important that you know about your requirements. AI technology can help them create great designs, but they need to know what you need first. This will make you feel more confident and deliberate about your search to weed out options, shortlisting the best of the best talent to hire.
Are you looking for a simple black-and-white line drawing or an elaborate full-color digital illustration?
Do you need vector art, or do you want raster graphics?
Do you need a logo, a website design, or both?
Are you looking for a specific style?
What is your budget range?
These are some basic questions to ask yourself before contacting any illustrator. Even the best AI tools in the world won’t help them if you haven’t communicated your needs first. There are many types of illustrations, and each one has its own requirements. For example, if you want to create a comic strip or a children’s storybook, then you’ll need an illustrator who can work in those genres.
Define your budget
Once you’ve settled on what type of illustration you want, the next step is determining how much money you’re willing to spend on it. That’s because two main factors determine how much an illustrator will charge: their experience and your needs.
Experienced and well-known artists will likely charge more than newbies, as they have a proven track record and can be more selective about who they work with. If you only want a quick sketch done in pen or pencil, then a rookie artist may be fine for your purposes. But if you need something more professional-looking or if your project has a lot of detail that needs to be captured exactly right (like an infographic), then hiring an experienced pro will probably end up being worth the investment.
The other major factor is the complexity of your project. If you need to draw an entire scene with multiple characters, that will take more time than a simple portrait or logo. And if you want to include lots of small details (like the veins in leaves), then that will require even more time and care from your artist.
The good news is that you can usually get a better price by hiring an illustrator with a background in AI design. They can accomplish the same task with less work, which will save you money if they are charging you fairly.
Check their style
The next step is to check their style. As you’re browsing through portfolios, take note of the type of artwork being created. What does it look like? Is it colorful? Does it have a lot of detail or not? This will help you determine if the illustrator’s style matches up with what you are looking for and your project’s tone. The key here is finding someone with experience in creating illustrations similar to what you are going for so they can meet all the requirements within your budget and time frame.
It’s also important to note that the style of the work you choose should be consistent with what you’ve seen in their portfolio. If it’s not, it could be a red flag that they are not experienced enough or don’t have the skill set for what you need to be done.
If the artist’s style is not what you are looking for, the first thing to do is ask if they have any other examples of their work. If there are other pieces that you like better than what they have submitted, it could be worth asking them to make some changes before moving on with your search.
Check their portfolio
The next thing to do is check their portfolio. Look for examples of their work, particularly the illustrations they would provide you with.
How many projects have they done?
How long have they been doing these types of illustrations?
Are these similar to what you need, or are you looking for something different?
This can also help you see if the illustrator has experience in your industry or with similar companies, clients, and industries as yourself.
Ask for a free trial
A free trial is a great opportunity to test the artist’s ability to communicate and deliver. The more you know about the person you’re hiring, the better it will be for your business.
If you ask for a free trial, ensure you get one. This can also give you time to evaluate whether or not your illustrator is a good fit for your project based on their speed and ability to communicate with clients.
If an artist agrees to provide a trial but doesn’t follow through with it (or takes too long), this might mean that they’re not very serious about working with clients, so don’t hire them.
Bonus Tip: If you are planning to hire an illustrator for the first time, start with a small project. This will help you get a feel for how they work and whether or not they’re a good fit for your business.
AI Helps Illustrators Create Great Designs but You Still Need to Ask the Right Questions
AI technology has significantly changed the state of the graphic design profession. It offers many benefits, but you still have to do your research when finding a professional.
The bottom line is that if you’re going to hire illustration services, do your research and be prepared. When hiring an illustrator, it’s important to establish clear expectations for the project so everyone is on the same page. Finding the right illustration service for your business can be challenging, especially if you don’t know what to look for. We hope that these pointers will help make your search easier and more efficient.
Editor’s note: Today, we’re hearing from TELUS Insights about how Google BigQuery has helped them deliver on-demand, real-world insights to customers.
Collecting reliable, de-identifiable data on population movement patterns and markets has never been easy, particularly for industries that operate in the physical world like transit and traffic management, finance , public health, and emergency response. Unlike online businesses, these metrics might be collected manually or limited by smaller sample sizes during a relatively short time.
But imagine the positive impact this data could have if organizations had access to mass movement patterns and trends to solve complicated problems and mitigate pressing challenges such as traffic accidents, economic leakage, and more.
As one of Canada’s leading telecommunications providers, TELUS is in a unique position to provide powerful data insights about mass movement patterns. At TELUS, we recognize that the potential created by big data comes with a huge responsibility to our customers. We have always been committed to respecting our customers’ privacy and safeguarding their personal information, which is why we have implemented industry-leading Privacy by Design standards to ensure that their privacy is protected every step of the way. All the data used by TELUS Insights is fully de-identified, meaning it cannot be traced back to an individual. It is also aggregated into large data pools, ensuring privacy is fully protected at all times.
BigQuery checked all our boxes for building TELUS Insights
TELUS Insights is the result of our vision to help businesses of all sizes and governments at all levels make smarter decisions based on real-world facts. Using industry-leading privacy standards, we can strongly de-identify our network mobility data and then aggregate it so no one can trace back data to any individual.
We needed to build an architecture that would provide the performance necessary to run very complex queries, many of which were location-based and benefited from dedicated geospatial querying. TELUS is recognized as the fastest mobile operator and ranked first for network quality performance in Canada, and we wanted to deliver the same level of performance for our new data insights business.
We tested out a number of products, from data appliances to an on-premise data lake, but it was BigQuery, Google Cloud’s serverless, highly scalable, and fully managed enterprise data warehouse, that eventually came out ahead of the pack. Not only did BigQuery deliver fast performance that enabled us to easily and quickly analyze large amounts of data at infinity scale, it also offered support for geospatial queries, a key requirement for the TELUS Insights business.
Originally, the model for TELUS Insights was consultative in nature: we would meet with customers to understand their requirements and our data science team would develop algorithms to provide the needed insights from the available data sets.
However, performance from our data warehouse proved challenging. It would take us six weeks of query runtime to extract insights from a month of data. To best serve our customers, we began investigating the development of an API that, with simple inputs, would provide a consistent output so that customers could start using the data in a self-serve and secure manner.
BigQuery proved itself able to meet our needs by combining high performance for complex queries, support for geospatial queries, and ease of implementing a customer-facing API.
High performance enabled new models of customer service
With support for ANSI SQL, our data scientists found the environment very easy to use.
The performance boost was immediately apparent with project queries taking a fraction of the time compared to previous experiences – and that was before performing any optimization.
BigQuery’s high performance was also one of the main reasons we were able to successfully launch an API that can be consumed directly and securely by our customers. Our customers were no longer limited on the size of their queries and would now get their data back in minutes. In the original consulting model, customers were dependent on our team and had little direct control over their queries, but BigQuery has allowed us to put the power of our data directly in our customers’ hands, while maintaining our commitment to privacy.
Using BigQuery to power our data platform means we also benefit from the entire ecosystem of Google Cloud services and solutions, opening up new doors and opportunities for us to deepen the value of our data through advanced analytics and AI-based techniques, such as machine learning.
Cloud architecture enabled a quick pivot to meet COVID challenges
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we realized there was a huge value in de-identified and aggregated network mobility data for health authorities and academic researchers in helping reduce COVID-19 transmission without compromising the personal privacy of Canadians.
As our TELUS Insights API was already in place, we were able to immediately shift focus and meet this public health need. Our API allowed us to provide supervised and guided access to government organizations and academic institutions to our de-identified and aggregated data, after which they were able to build their own algorithms, specific to the needs of epidemiology. BigQuery also enabled us to build federated access environments where we could safelist these organizations and, with appropriate supervision, allow them to securely access views they needed to build their reporting.
COVID-19 Use Case: The image above shows de-identified and aggregated mass movement patterns in the City of Toronto into outlying regions in May 2020 when stay-at-home orders were issued by the City and residents started traveling to cottage country. Public Health authorities were able to use this data to inform local hospitals of the surge in population in their surrounding geographic location and to attempt to provision extra capacity at nearby hospitals, including the provisioning of equipment such as much needed ventilators.
Ready to unleash the power of our data with Google Cloud
BigQuery is a key enabler of TELUS Insights, enabling us to shift from a slow, consultative approach to a more adaptive data-as-a-service model that makes our platform and valuable data more accessible to our customers.
Moving to BigQuery led to major improvements in performance, reducing some of our initial queries from months of runtime to hours. Switching to a cloud-based solution with exceptionally high performance also made it easier for us to create an API to serve our commercial customers and enabled us to offer a key service, in a time of crisis, to the community with our Data for Good program.
To learn more about TELUS Insights, or to book a consultation about our products and services, visit our website.
When we built our TELUS Insights platform, we worked with leading industry experts in de-identification. In addition, TELUS has taken a leadership role in de-identification and is a founding member of the Canadian Anonymization Network, whose mission is to help establish strong industry standards for de-identification. The TELUS de-identification methodology and, in fact, our whole Insights service, has been tested through re-identification attacks[1] [2] , stress-tested and, importantly, it has been Privacy by Design Certified. Privacy by Design certification was achieved in early 2017 for our Custom Studies product, and in early 2018 for our GeoIntelligence product.
In April, we announced the private preview of our integration between Looker and Looker Studio (previously known as Data Studio). At Next in October, to further unify our business intelligence under the Looker umbrella, we announced that Data Studio has been renamed Looker Studio. The products are now both part of the Looker family with Looker Studio remaining free of charge. At Next we also announce that the integration between these two products is now available in public preview with additional functionality.
How does the integration work?
Customers using the Looker connector will have access to governed data from Looker within Looker Studio. The Looker connector for Looker Studio makes both self-serve and governed BI available to users in the same tool/environment. When connecting to Looker, Looker Studio customers are able to leverage its semantic data modelwhich enables complex data to be simplified for end users with a curated catalog of business data, pre-defined business metrics, and built-in transformations. This helps users make calculations and business logic consistent within a central model and promotes a single source of truth for their organization.
Access to Looker-modeled datawithin Looker Studio reports allows people to use the same tool to create reports that rely on both ad-hoc and governed data. They can use LookML to create Looker data models by centrally defining and managing business rules and definitions in one Git, version-controlled data model..
Users can analyze and rapidly prototype ungoverned data (from spreadsheets, csv files, or other cloud sources) within Looker Studio and blend governed data from Looker with data available from over 800 data sources in Looker Studio to rapidly generate new insights. They can turn their Looker-governed data into informative, highly customizable dashboards and reports in Looker Studio and collaborate in real-time to build dashboards with teammates or people outside the company.
What’s new in the public preview version?
We are excited that we are now able to offer this preview to a broader reach of customers, many of whom have already asked for access to the Looker connector for Looker Studio. Additionally, with this Public Preview, additional capabilities have been added to more fully represent the Looker model in Looker Studio:
We are providing support for field hierarchies in the Looker Studio data panel, to keep fields organized when working with large Explores. The data panel will now show a folder structure, and you will be able to see your fields organized in the usual ways – for Views, Group Labels, and Dimension Groups.
We are providing greater visibility by exposing field descriptions in new ways to enable users to quickly check the description information specified in the Looker model. Field descriptions will be available within the data panel and within tables in the report.
Users will also see an option to “Open in Looker Studio” from Explores in Looker, enabling them to quickly create a Looker Studio report with a data source pointing back to that Explore.
And to ensure users are getting the most current data from the underlying data source, refreshing data in Looker Studio now also refreshes the data in the Looker cache.
Specifically, for this public preview, we’ve implemented enhanced restrictions on Looker data sources in Looker Studio, so admins can rest easy about testing out the functionality:
We’ve disabled owner’s credentials for Looker data sources in Looker Studio, so each and every viewer needs to supply their own credentials including for shared reports.
We’re also currently disabling data download and email scheduling for these data sources in Looker Studio. We’re planning to integrate with these permissions in Looker in the near future.
Calculated fields are disabled, so end users cannot define their own custom metrics and dimensions in Looker Studio, and need to rely on the fields defined in the Looker Explore.
How do I access the preview?
This integration encompasses the connector along with changes made to both Looker Studio and Looker to represent the Looker model and extend Looker governance in Looker Studio. There is much more to come as we continue our efforts to bring together a complete, unified platform balancing self-service and governed BI. We’re planning to continue adding functionality in Looker Studio to fully represent the Looker model, and want to ensure Looker admins have insight into API activity coming from Looker Studio – similar to the way they might use System Activity in Looker today. In extending governance, we want to expand the circle of trust from Looker to Looker Studio, and we’ll be looking for customers to help us plan the best way forward.
This integration is compatible with Google Cloud hosted instances with Looker version 22.16 or higher. To get access, an admin of a Looker instance can submit the sign-up form providing an instance URL and specifying which organizational domain to enable. For more information on how to get started go to the Looker Studio Help Center.
Tech companies are ramping up the search for highly skilled data analytics, AI and ML professionals, with the race to AI accelerating the crunch.1 They are looking for cloud experts who can successfully build, test, run, and manage complex tools and infrastructure, in roles such as data analysts, data engineers, data scientists, and ML engineers. This workforce takes vast amounts of data and puts it to work solving top business challenges, including customer satisfaction, production quality and operational efficiency.
Learn about the business impact of data analytics, ML and AI skills
Find out how Google Cloud ML, AI and data analytics training and certification can empower your team to positively impact operations in our latest IDC Business Value Paper, sponsored by Google. Key findings include:
69% improvement in staff competency levels
31% greater data accuracy in products developed
29% greater overall employee productivity
Download the latest IDC Business Value Paper, sponsored by Google, “The Business Value of Google Cloud ML, AI, Data Analytics Training and Certification.” (#US48988122, July 2022).
Google Cloud customers prioritize ML, AI and data training to meet strategic organizational needs
Our customers are seeing the importance and impact of data analytics, AI and ML training on their teams and business operations.
The Home Depot (THD) upskilled staff on BigQuery to derive business insights and meet customer demand, with 92% reporting that training was valuable, and 75% confirming that they used knowledge from their Google Cloud training on a weekly basis.2
THD was challenged with upskilling IT staff to extract data from the cloud in support of efficient business operations. Additionally, they were working on a very short timeline (weeks as opposed to years) to train staff to enable a multi-year cloud migration completion. This included thousands of employees and a diverse range of topics. Find out how they successfully executed this major undertaking by developing a strategic approach to their training program in this blog.
LG CNS wanted to grow cloud skills internally to provide a high level of innovation and technical expertise for their customers. They enjoyed the flexibility and ability to tailor content to meet their objectives, and have another cohort planned.3
Looking to drive digital transformation and solution delivery, LG CNS partnered with Google Cloud to develop a program that included six weeks of ML training through the Advanced Solutions Lab (ASL). Read the blog to learn more about their experience.
Gain the latest data analytics, ML and AI skills on Google Cloud Skills Boost
Discover the latest Google Cloud training in data analytics, ML and AI on Google Cloud Skills Boost. Explore the role based learning paths available today which include hands-on labs and courses. Take a look at the Data Engineer, ML Engineer, Database Engineer and Data Analystlearning paths today for you and your team to get started on your upskilling journey.
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1. Tech looks to analytics skills to bolster its workforce 2. THD executed a robust survey directly with associates to gauge the business gains of the training program. Over the course of two years, more than 300 associates completed the training delivered by ROI Training. 3. Google Cloud Learning services’ early involvement in the organizational stages of this training process, and agile response to LG CNS’s requirements, ensured LG CNS could add the extra week of MLOps training to their program as soon as they began the initial ASL ML course.
Big data technology is becoming a more pressing issue for companies around the world. However, many companies don’t understand enough about data to utilize it effectively. A recent survey found that a stunning 47% of companies have only a limited data strategy.
One of the biggest reasons that companies don’t have better data strategies is that employees aren’t educated about the merits of big data. Even skilled programmers and back end developers often lack the knowledge needed to implement data strategies effectively. As a data science professional, it is up to you to know your stuff and deliver great value to your company. Your employer will depend on you to create a data strategy that leads to results, so you will want to make sure you are up to date on the latest developments in big data.
The good news is that there are a number of courses that can help employees learn about data. You don’t necessarily need a data science degree to thrive in the big data field, but you do need to learn about the fundamentals. These courses can help.
One of the companies offering the best data science courses is 365 Data Science. They have recently started offering free courses for 21 days.
Consider Signing Up for 365 Data Science Courses This Year
365 Data Science is an online training platform to help people trying to learn more about data science. This platform has a ton of excellent courses that can help you create a promising data science career or bolster your company’s data strategy.
They have recently started offering free courses to interested attendees. The unlimited access initiative presents a risk-free way to break into data science.
The online educational platform 365 Data Science launches the #21DaysFREE campaign and provides 100% free unlimited access to all content for three weeks. From November 1 to 21, you can take courses from renowned instructors and earn industry-recognized certificates.
About the Platform
365 Data Science has helped over 2 million students worldwide to learn data science and analytics and expand their job prospects.[GU1] [SC2] [DT3] [GU4].
The program offers an all-encompassing framework that caters to the needs of beginner and advanced data science professionals. They learn by doing with a myriad of exercises and real-world examples. Moreover, 365’s new gamified platform makes the learning journey engaging and motivating.
“Starting a career in data science requires devotion and determination. Our mission is to give everyone a chance to get familiar with the field and help them succeed professionally,” says Ned Krastev, CEO of 365 Data Science.
365’s learning platform provides the opportunity to get familiar with the industry through courses like Introduction to Data and Data Science, Data Strategy, and Product Management for Data Science.
Feel Free to Sign Up to Learn More About Data Science!
You should never stop educating yourself if you want to enjoy a thriving career in data science. Whether you are an experienced data scientist or someone recently entering the field, you will want to take courses to hone your skills. 365 Data Science has a ton of excellent resources to help you out.
Artificial intelligence has upended the digital marketing profession. A growing number of marketers are using AI to optimize and automate marketing campaigns in fantastic ways.
Jason Hall, Founder and CEO of FiveChannels described some of the phenomenal benefits of leveraging AI in digital marketing in a post in Forbes. Hall states that AI hasn’t removed the need for human input in marketing, but it has helped remove a lot of the monotonous tasks that humans used to participate in. This has significantly improved the overall performance of digital marketing.
One of the ways that AI has helped marketers is by improving conversions through advanced targeting. As AI technology is better able to understand the intended scope of demographic and keyword targeting in various campaigns, marketers should see conversions skyrocket.
AI Allows Marketers to Significantly Improve their Targeting Strategies
Having a quality, fun website that is easy-on-the-eye is vital for attracting visitors and then converting them into regular customers. It takes between two and four website visits for a user to convert to a customer, so it is critical to connect with your users and bring them back to your website at the precise moment when they are ready to become a customer.
Advanced targeting is the process by which paid messages and advertisements reach the right people at the right time with the right message. AI technology has significantly improved targeting capabilities.
Antonel Neculai wrote about the benefits of using AI to improve targeting in a LinkedIn pulse. Neculai talks about the benefits of using AI to create mirror audiences to improve segmentation and other elements of the marketing process.
There are a number of benefits of using AI for improved targeting. It can help increase sales, reach more interested prospects, gain insights, and strengthen customer relationships. If you’re an eCommerce owner who handles all of your store’s marketing or an agency marketer looking to gain loyal customers, you’ll need advanced targeting.
To get you started, here are five tips on how to increase user reach.
Reduced cost of client acquisition and conversion
When it comes to advertising, segmentation is very important. Using a social media platform is helpful in this case because when some platform notices that your ad is performing well, it will improve its placement and pricing at the right time for your target audience to notice. Facebook and other social media channels incorporate sophisticated AI algorithms into their advertising platforms to help advertisers improve targeting. It also contributes to the development of your reputation with the advertising platform, and future ads will perform better and at a lower cost. You’ll be able to target the right people, those who are more likely to convert.
Seeing an ad on social media convinces users to search for your website, sign up for it, and put the desired products in the shopping cart. However, midway, they decide to leave the page without making any purchases. This can happen due to some types of roadblocks, such as high shipping costs or requiring a lot of additional information before purchasing. Therefore, you need to discover why they abandon the cart and come up with strategies to reduce cart abandonment. This can be anything from providing them with an irresistible offer to simplifying the purchasing process.
Improve user experience
In the past, we talked about the benefits of using AI in modern web design. One of the most important ways to utilize AI is to improve the user experience.
The data you collect can be used to design the user experience in a variety of ways. For example, you can monitor what content people view and serve them different content based on their actions. You can follow what they visit on the website, what they want to read, or what products they are most interested in. This allows you to determine which approaches require improvement or additional funding in order to achieve better results.
Investigate existing data to determine who interacts with your website and why. Some people may want coupons, while others may want to get to know your brand better. Track the most common actions in your system and assign a lead score to users so that you can plan more strategic and effective flows and ads. You can create more precise audience segments by collecting and applying advanced filters based on information and behavior, which can influence future campaign goals, who you want to reach, and the message you want to convey to them.
Combine the audience and the context
Consider adding an audience and then double it down by adding some topic targeting. This means that not only were you targeting that audience, but that audience had to be on a website that shared their interests. AI technology is becoming more adept at drawing connections between different interests, so you can expand the scope of their interest and topic targeting without harming conversions.
The benefits of interest and topic targeting is that they add a greater level of stability. Not only is the audience your target audience, but they are actively reading about the product to which you are attempting to direct them. This will allow you to really refine your audience targeting and define the results to the best of your ability.
Implement CRM
By implementing customer relationship management, or CRM, you can easily collect user information to create detailed profiles of users’ interests, knowledge levels, actions, phone numbers, email addresses, and more. It gives you the opportunity to give something back to your customers for their loyalty.
You can send special gifts and discounts to your most active users. Additionally, you can send targeted paid messages to niche audiences. You can tailor your messaging to be more relevant based on previous interactions, whether you’re sending a broadcast or a sponsored message.
Use keywords
Although adding new keywords can be beneficial, doing so requires you to research new terminology that you are unfamiliar with. There are other approaches you could take. For example, you may already have phrases that visitors use based on limited match types, such as a phrase or keywords.
Search for your most frequently used phrases and keywords and see which ones attract your users the most. So, you can create new ad groups for these terms and create effective pop-ups for your users whenever they use one of these words.
AI Helps Improve Digital Marketing Conversions through Advanced Targeting
We have mentioned that AI is the unsung hero of modern digital marketing. There are many great ways to use AI in online marketing. One of the biggest benefits is that it can help with improving your targeting.
Audience targeting ensures that you are reaching a relevant audience and allows for greater precision in determining who sees your ads. It’s simple to target an audience with tailored ads to entice those users to return to your website and convert. You need to convince your visitors that you have the best offer on the market and make sure that they leave your website with a full cart of your products.
Big data technology has changed the future of marketing in a multitude of ways. A growing number of organizations are leveraging big data to get higher ROIs from their organic and paid marketing campaigns. As a result, companies around the world spent over $52 billion on data-driven marketing solutions in 2021.
The Fintech sector is among those most reliant on data-driven marketing. The industry has access to massive amounts of data, so it should leverage them to make the most of their customer outreach and support strategies.
Martech author Allen Martinez talks about the benefits of big data in Fintech marketing. He cited an interview with Chris Orlob which showed that Fintech deals are closed with discovery techniques rather than talented sales tactics. These companies need to employ detailed data strategies to find the right prospects.
Therefore, if you intend to hire a Fintech marketing company, you need to make sure that they use data to their advantage.
Find a Fintech Marketing Company that Makes the Most of Big Data
Fintech, or financial technology, uses innovative solutions to improve the financial services industry. Fintech marketing is a special type of marketing that focuses on promoting fintech products and services. These marketing agencies can help you create campaigns to expand your business, increase revenue, and grow your market share. The best Fintech marketers know how to leverage AI and data analytics technology to improve their outreach and branding efforts.
In this post, we’ll walk you through a few tips for hiring a fintech marketing agency to ensure you’re getting the best results from your partnership with them. We will start with some of the basics, but delve into the importance of vetting them for their knowledge of big data technology later.
Identify Your Needs
Before you begin to search for a reliable agency for marketing for fintech, there are some things that you need to do. You need to ask yourself these questions:
What is your business goal?
How much does your Fintech company depend on big data?
What are your challenges?
What are the challenges of your customers?
What are the challenges of your competitors?
What are the challenges of your industry?
And finally, what are the challenges of your market?
Decide Your Budget
The first thing you need to do is decide your budget. How much can you afford to spend? What’s the maximum amount of money you would be willing to lose if things don’t work out? And finally, what kind of return on investment are you expecting from your marketing efforts?
The hard reality is that data-driven marketing strategies can be costly. You will need to pay for quality.
Start by making a list of all the things that you want to achieve with your marketing.
Do you want more sales?
More traffic?
Better brand awareness?
Once you’ve made this list, start thinking about the resources needed to accomplish each goal. For example, if your goal is to increase sales by 5% over the next 12 months, then you will need to determine how much time and money each marketing activity requires to reach this goal.
Services Offered
The second most important thing you should do is find out about the agency’s services. This includes the ones they offer and those they don’t, and how much they charge for each service.
Asking about the agency’s services is a great way to see if their offerings align with your needs. If you want a full-service marketing team and an agency that only does social media marketing, then that might not be the best fit for you. But it might work out just fine if you’re looking for something else entirely—like PPC management or video production.
Similarly, if an agency has extra services like SEO or SEM that aren’t included in the base package but are available as add-ons (for an extra cost), that’s good news too. It means they’re flexible enough to adapt their packages based on client needs.
You will want to make sure that the company incorporates data analytics into its service model. The best marketing strategies use data to optimize their campaigns. You will get much better results if you find a company that knows how to integrate data technology into its solutions.
Pricing
Pricing is a complex subject, but it’s important to understand the basics before you start talking with agencies.
Here are some factors that will affect the price:
Agency size and industry experience
The type of services you need (e.g., website design or content strategy)
The type of campaign you want to run (e.g., email marketing or social media management)
Case Studies
Case studies are a great way to see how an agency works with other clients. You can get a sense of their process and the results they typically achieve. This can be an especially helpful resource if you need a new marketing strategy or want to know more about how they handle specific challenges your company faces.
This is one of the best ways to determine if a company has a data-driven service approach. Better case studies will be based off of data collected from previous customers. The data will make it easier to create quality projections.
If you find case studies that look interesting, it’s important to take some time to read them through before making any decisions. While some agencies will publish case studies online, others may require you to request one directly from them so they can explain more about creating that particular piece of content and why it worked so well for their clientele.
Work Process
In addition to the above questions and answers, the work process is an important consideration when looking for a fintech marketing agency. While it may seem minor, your marketing team’s work can tell you a lot about how well they will fit into your organization. You should choose a partner with processes consistent with your own. Again, you should make sure that the company shows that it is using big data in its work processes. They want to use big data in the Fintech customer service model if they will be handling your customer service for you.
This doesn’t mean they have to be identical or even similar; rather, you want them to align with how things are done at your company. If they’re completely different from what you’re used to, this could lead to confusion and friction between departments (and therefore slow down progress).
Look Into Their Referrals
As with any agency, it’s important to look into their referrals. The quality of their work should speak for itself, but if it doesn’t, you can always ask for references and check out the sites they’ve worked on. If you’re interested in a specific type of work (such as PPC or copywriting), ask them if they have case studies to show off their capabilities in that area.
Availability
Another important factor to consider is the availability of the agency. You want to make sure that they are available when you need them, both in terms of responding to questions and meeting times. The best way to determine this is by asking them about their responsiveness. What is the average time it takes for someone from your team to respond to emails? How quickly do they respond on a normal day, during peak hours?
Look for a team that’s adaptive and creative
When it comes to your fintech marketing agency, look for an adaptive and creative team. You want to find an agency that is willing to go above and beyond for you. Ideally, they will be highly adaptable and able to respond quickly with new ideas when times are changing or if strategies need adjusting.
Getting this right can make all the difference in terms of success—especially considering how competitive the financial services industry is these days.
Find a Fintech Marketing Company that Uses Big Data to Serve Customers
If you’re looking for a marketing agency, ensure they have the experience and skill to get the job done. You want to make sure that the company will know how to use big data to do the job effectively. You want a team that’s adaptive and creative so they can learn what works best for your business and apply it accordingly. Look at their past work, read their testimonials, and talk to past clients—this will help you find someone who fits your vision perfectly.
Editor’s note: The post is part of a series highlighting our awesome partners, and their solutions, that are Built with BigQuery.
“True Fit is in a unique position where we help shoppers find the right sizes of apparel and footwear through near real time, adaptable ML models thereby rendering a great shopping experience while also enabling retailers with higher conversion, revenue potential and more importantly access to actionable key business metrics. Our ability to process volumes of data, adapt our core ML models, reduce complex & slower ecosystems, exchange data easily with our customers etc, have been propelled multi-fold via BigQuery and Analytics Hub” – says Raj Chandrasekaran, CTO, True Fit
True Fit has built the world’s largest dataset for apparel and footwear retailers over the last twelve years, connecting purchasing and preference information for more than 80 million active shoppers to data for 17,000 brands across its global network of retail partners. This dataset powers fit personalization for shoppers as they buy apparel and footwear online and connects retailers with powerful data and insight to inform marketing, merchandising, product development and ecommerce strategy.
Gathering data, correlating and analyzing it are the underlying foundation to making smart business decisions to grow and scale a retailer’s business. This is especially important for retailers that are utilizing data packages to target which consumers to market their brands and products to. Deriving meaningful insights from data has become a larger focus for retailers as the market grows digitally, competition for share of wallet increases and consumer expectations for more personalized shopping experiences continues to rise.
But, how do companies share datasets regardless of the magnitude amongst each other in a scalable manner by optimizing infrastructure costs and securely sharing data? How can companies access and use the data into their own environment without needing a complicated / time consuming process to physically move the data? How would a company know how to utilize this data to suit their own business needs? True Fit partnered with Google and the Built with BigQuery initiative to solve these questions.
Google Cloud services such as BigQuery and Analytics Hub have become vital to how True Fit optimizes the entire lifecycle of data from ingestion to distribution of data packages with its retail partners. BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless and limitless scale data warehousing solution with tighter integration with several Google Cloud products. Analytics Hub, powered by BigQuery, allows easy creation of data exchanges for producers and simplifies the discovery and consumption of the data for the consumers. Data shared via the exchanges can further be enriched with more datasets available in the Analytics Hub marketplace.
Using the above diagram, let us take a look at how the process works across different stages:
Event Ingestion – True Fit leverages Cloud Logging with Fluentd to stream logging events into BigQuery as datasets. BigQuery’s unique capability in real time streaming allows for real time debugging and analysis of all activity across the True Fit ecosystem.
Denormalization – Scheduled queries are set up to take the normalized data in the event logs and convert them into denormalized core tables. These tables are easy to query and contain all information needed to assist BI analysts and data scientists with their research without the need for complicated table joins.
Aggregations – Aggregations are created and updated on the fly as data is ingested using a mix of scheduled queries and direct BigQuery table updates. Reports are always fresh and can be delivered without ever having to worry about stale data.
Alerting – Alerts are set up all across the True Fit architecture which leverage the real-time aggregations. These alerts not only inform True Fit when there are data discrepancies or missing data but have also been configured to inform our partners when the data they provide contains errors. For example, True Fit will notify a retailer if the product catalog provided drops below specific thresholds we’ve previously seen from them. Alerts range from anything like an email, SMS message, or even a real-time toast message in a True Fit UI that a retailer is using to provide their data.
Secure Distribution – Exchange’s are created in the Analytics Hub. The datasets are published as one or more listings into the Exchange. Partners subscribe to the listing as a linked dataset to get instant access to data and act upon it accordingly. This unlocks use cases that range from everywhere from marketing; to shopper chat bots; and even real-time product recommendations based on a shopper’s browsing behavior. Analytics Hub allows True Fit to expose only the data they intend to share to specific partners using simple to understand IAM roles. Adding the built-in Analytics Hub Subscriber role to a partner’s service account on a specific listing of dataset created just for them makes it so that they are the only one to get access to that data. Gone are the days of dealing with API keys or credential management!
True Fit’s original data lake was built using Apache Hive prior to switching to BigQuery. At roughly 450TiB, extracting data from this data lake became quite a challenge to do in real-time. It took approximately 24 hours before data packages would become available to core retail partners which impacted our ability to produce reports and data packages at scale. Even after the data packages were available, partners had difficulty downloading these data packages and importing them into their own data warehouses to utilize due to the size and formats. The usefulness of the data packages would occasionally get put into question due to the data becoming stale and it was difficult to alert on any data discrepancies because of the time delay before these data packages would be available.
BigQuery has allowed True Fit to produce these same data packages in real time as events occur; unlocking new marketing opportunities. Retail partners have also praised how easily consumable Analytics Hub has made the process because the data “just appears” alongside their existing data warehouse as linked datasets.
True Fit publishes a number of BigQuery data packages for its retail partners via Analytics Hub which allows them to generate personalized onsite and email campaigns for their own shoppers in a manner far beyond the capabilities not available in the past.
Below are just a sample of ways in which True Fit partners personalize their campaigns utilizing the True Fit data packages. Partners have the ability to:
Find the True Fit shoppers of a desired category near real-time who’ve been browsing extra specific products in the last couple weeks
Enhance their understanding of their shopper demographic data and category affinities
Retrieve size and fit recommendations for specific in-stock products for a provided set of shoppers or have True Fit determine what the ideal set of shoppers for those products would be
Match their in-stock, limited run styles and sizes to applicable True Fit shoppers
Enhance emails and on-site triggers based on products the shopper has recently viewed or purchased across the True Fit network
If you’re a retailer looking to unlock your own growth using real-world data in real-time, be sure to check out the data packages offered by True Fit!
Through the Built with BigQuery Program launched in April ‘22 as part of the Google Data Cloud Summit, Google is helping data-driven companies like True Fit build innovative applications on Google’s data cloud with simplified access to technology, helpful and dedicated engineering support, and joint go-to-market programs. Participating companies can:
Get started fast with a Google-funded, pre-configured sandbox.
Accelerate product design and architecture through access to designated experts from the ISV Center of Excellence who can provide insight into key use cases, architectural patterns, and best practices.
Amplify success with joint marketing programs to drive awareness, generate demand, and increase adoption.
BigQuery gives ISVs the advantage of a powerful, highly scalable data warehouse that’s integrated with Google Cloud’s open, secure, sustainable platform. And with a huge partner ecosystem and support for multi-cloud, open source tools, and APIs, Google provides technology companies the portability and extensibility they need to avoid data lock-in.
We thank the many Google Cloud and True Fit team members who contributed to this ongoing collaboration and review, especially Raj Chandrasekaran, CTO True Fit and Sujit Khasnis, Cloud Partner Engineering
