Tag: Google Cloud

Singapore – Global data and AI company Databricks has expanded its availability on Google Cloud for customers across APAC, with availability on Google Cloud’s Singapore and Sydney. 

The move aims to help organisations across SEA to leverage Databricks on Google Cloud, creating a lakehouse capable of data engineering, data science, machine learning, and analytics on Google Cloud’s network.

The SEA expansion is a reflection of growing demand from customers looking to adopt an open, modern lakehouse architecture and accelerate their cloud data strategy. Databricks on Google Cloud in Singapore enables greater flexibility and data locality choices for customers, and delivers enhanced performance and scalability while guaranteeing local data residency requirements. It is tightly integrated with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Google Big Query, Looker, and Google Cloud Storage, as well as Pub/Sub, giving customers the freedom of flexibility and access to their choice of data analytics services. 

Moreover, the expansion allows businesses across SEA and Australia to extend their existing Databricks lakehouse capabilities and can cross-leverage Google BigQuery for analytics, simplifying their data investments with an open, modern data platform for all of their analytics use cases.

Andrew Martin, Databrick’s head of South Asia, shared that they will continue to make significant investments in building their local capabilities in Singapore to meet the future needs of SEA’s rapidly growing data and AI communities.

“From fast-growing digital natives to large global enterprises, we continue to see incredible demand across the region. We are excited to work with Google to help accelerate our customers’ data and AI journey in this region together,” said Martin.

Meanwhile, Amitabh Jacob, Google Cloud’s head of technology, ISV, and solutions partnerships for APAC, noted that cloud-driven transformation will underpin SEA’s growing internet economy that is expected to be at US$1t by the end of the decade.

“Our strategic collaboration with Databricks to deliver lakehouse architecture on Google Cloud’s regional, scalable platform, and combined expertise in data engineering and AI-driven analytics, will enable companies to harness the power of data and tap into evolving digital models,” said Jacob.

In addition, the partnership also has a comprehensive ecosystem of joint partners that deliver seamless integrations and expertise across the platforms, including Accenture, Cognizant, Deloitte, Informatica, Qlik, and Tableau, as well as TCS, and Trifacta, amongst others.

Singapore —  Digital experience platform Optimizely has entered into a strategic partnership with cloud services provider Google Cloud. In addition to Optimizely moving its market-leading experimentation solutions to the cloud platform, the multi-year agreement signifies a commitment by the two companies to co-innovate digital offerings and develop digital-first marketing solutions to market.

Through the new partnership, customers can benefit from working with Optimizely’s content experimentation for enterprise companies and Google Cloud’s secure infrastructure and capabilities in AI, ML and analytics. In addition, Google Cloud and Optimizely will also coordinate a joint go-to-market and sales execution strategy to seamlessly deliver experimentation solutions to customers around the world.

A notable part of the multi-year agreement of the two companies is their intent to collaborate closely on co-innovation, developing new and expanded digital offerings that bring the best experience possible to new and existing customers. As marketing continues to evolve, success depends on the data-driven decision-making and optimised customer experiences that Optimizely’s end-to-end, scalable experimentation solutions will deliver on Google Cloud.

Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely, said that he couldn’t think of two tech companies that are more relevant for the data-driven growth marketer than Google Cloud and Optimizely.

“We share the same philosophy on leveraging data, AI and experimentation to replace guesswork with certainty. By entering into this strategic partnership with Google Cloud, we’re empowering marketers to unlock their digital potential, create exceptional customer experiences and deliver strong business outcomes all on a trusted, secure platform. It’s a true win-win-win situation for Optimizely, Google Cloud and the marketing industry overall,” Atzberger said.

Optimizely’s Web Experimentation and Full Stack Experimentation allow marketers to take the guesswork out of delivering personalised, meaningful engagements. Optimizely will continue to enhance its in-class experiences for its customers as they move to Google Cloud.

Rob Enslin, president at Google Cloud, commented, “Through this partnership, Google Cloud infrastructure will underpin Optimizely’s fast-growing and widely-adopted customer experience platform. It’s critical that businesses deliver exceptional products and services to consumers, and this partnership will enhance their ability to do so, driven by the Optimizely platform, data and Google Cloud’s capabilities in AI and ML.”

Hanoi, Vietnam – The Southeast Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank, also known as SeABank, has tapped cloud services provider Google Cloud to enhance the service quality and customer experiences delivered on its SeAMobile/SeANet digital banking platform. 

Through Google Cloud’s enterprise-grade technologies, SeABank can optimize costs, strengthen security and accelerate innovation. In addition, SeABank will use Google Cloud’s secure, flexible and scalable infrastructure solutions, such as Migrate for Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine, to migrate critical workloads from its on-premises data center to the cloud and build and deploy cloud-native applications. 

More importantly, SeABank will lean on Google Cloud’s capabilities in AI, machine learning and data analytics to acquire better understanding of its customers and create valuable new services to meet their future needs.

Le Thu Thuy, general director at SeABank, said, “The cooperation with Google Cloud is one of the crucial steps taken by SeABank to leverage industry-leading infrastructure and AI capabilities at speed and scale, to optimize our capacity to deploy customer-centric products and services, and enhance the overall digital and mobile banking experience.”

Having integrated AI into digital banking services on SeAMobile, as well as across its IT systems for customer service, operations, financial management and risk management, the core pillars of SeABank’s digital transformation strategy for the next five years will include end-to-end digitalization and providing hyper personalized customer experiences.

Meanwhile, Ruma Balasubramanian, managing director for Southeast Asia at Google Cloud, commented, “SeABank’s choice of Google Cloud as its primary cloud provider reinforces the Bank’s commitment toward using technology to advance how it interacts with and serves its customers – from anywhere and at any time. The bank can now amplify its abilities to build new capabilities and services, quickly deliver a predictive customer experience, and leapfrog into becoming the bank of the future.”

Texas, USA – Global mobile growth and monetization platform Digital Turbine has renewed its with tech giant Google to accelerate its product and growth strategy to support the Android ecosystem by enabling nearly a billion devices with intelligent app discovery.

Said multi-year partnership with Google will entail working with Google Cloud’s premier partner SADA to implement Google’s enterprise and cloud solutions to rapidly enhance and expand globally while broadening growth and monetization solutions for its partners.

Speaking about the partnership, Rob Enslin, president of Google Cloud, said that they are excited to partner with Digital Turbine to support the expansion and scale of its products and services globally.

“Digital Turbine has been a longtime supporter of the Android ecosystem, and with this new partnership, it will utilize our advanced cloud and enterprise infrastructure to expand support of its value-added mobile experiences to end users around the globe,” Enslin said.

Meanwhile, Bill Stone, CEO of Digital Turbine, commented that for the past 10 years, Digital Turbine has helped expand the Android ecosystem with their intelligent app discovery, growth and monetization products supporting many of the Android app developers in the market today.

“We are thrilled to further deepen and expand our partnership with Google. By partnering with Google we are efficiently powering app discovery for nearly a billion Android devices globally while simultaneously expanding our footprint across the Android ecosystem including mobile, TV and connected devices,” Stone added.

Singapore – Google Cloud, the cloud computing services suite of tech giant Google, has announced the appointment of ex-Microsoft general manager of public sector for Asia-Pacific Sherie Ng as the new country director for Google Cloud in Malaysia and Singapore. Through her role, she will be responsible for leading revenue and go-to-market strategy and operations for Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace.

In addition, Ng will be also working with teams across Google to help customers in all industries reimagine their business through data-powered innovation.

During her previous role at Microsoft, she spearheaded business engagements and partnerships with public sector institutions – government agencies, state-owned enterprises, healthcare and education institutions.

With 25 years worth of career in her technology leadership, Ng has also served as managing director for Southeast Asia at NICE Systems and held management roles with Invensys Operations Management, Singtel, Comverse Technologies, CSG Systems and Lucent Technologies.

Speaking regarding her appointment, Ng told MARKETECH APAC, “I’m excited to join Google Cloud ahead of the new year, and continue my passion of empowering enterprises to reimagine their businesses. I look forward to working closely with our customers and partners in Singapore and Malaysia, as we strategically navigate the next digital decade and build lasting change across companies, communities, countries.”

Ng will be reporting to Ruma Balasubramanian, managing director for Southeast Asia at Google Cloud. Balasubramanian told MARKETECH APAC that Ng’s appointment coincides with Google Cloud’s continuous growth in SEA, where they have seen companies of all sizes pursuing an unprecedented level of digitization to solve their most complex challenges.

“Sherie’s rich experience and passion for serving local communities will undoubtedly help us continue to build on our strong foundation in Singapore and Malaysia, and take our industry leadership to the next level,” she stated.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Axiata Enterprise, the business-to-business (B2B) arm of Malaysia-based telecommunications group Axiata, has announced a partnership with Google Cloud in order to help accelerate digital adoption across companies and small-medium businesses (SMBs) across Asia.

The implementation will come in the form of offering Google Workspace as part of their integrated ICT portfolio and solution bundles to small and medium businesses (SMBs). Telecoms across Axiata’s group will spearhead the implementation, with Dialog in Sri Lanka leading the initiative, and with implementation scheduled for Q2 this year.

This will be followed by Celcom in Malaysia, XL in Indonesia, Robi in Bangladesh, Ncell in Nepal, and Smart in Cambodia by the second half of the year.

Axiata’s digital telcos will also continue to leverage Google Cloud’s core compute, storage, and networking capabilities to modernize their infrastructure and drive their digital transformation initiatives. 

Said initiative comes in retrospect to the fact that Asia is home to over one million SMBs all looking for the best possible way to tap the immense opportunities in some of the world’s fastest growing Internet economies. Axiata’s controlling interests in six mobile operators cover over 157 million mobile subscribers across its footprint. 

“Axiata and Google Cloud have a shared vision of helping businesses digitize and grow as they build greater resilience for the long haul. With nations increasingly stepping up on digitalization for economic recovery and growth, we stand at a critical juncture to support businesses, especially small and medium players in their efforts to adjust and adapt to new digital norms for survival,” said Gopi Kurup, CEO at Axiata Enterprise.

He also added that the power of Google Cloud’s advanced technologies combined with Axiata’s market intelligence enables companies to access advanced tools to boost their collaboration and productivity and generate data-based insights to strengthen their evolving customer engagement strategies.

Celcom, which is under the Axiata Group, is leveraging Google Cloud’s infrastructure and solutions as well to run its payment gateway and advance its modern digital customer journey. The Malaysian telco also has plans to use Google Cloud’s AI tools to build personalization and recommendation models to further enhance customer experience. 

Ruma Balasubramanian, managing director of Google Cloud in Southeast Asia, said, “To resource-strapped SMBs, cloud technology is a game-changer that enables them to compete with larger players in the market. We’re thrilled to partner with Axiata to accelerate the digital transformation of millions of companies in the region, and help them solve their complex business and technology challenges.”