Google Cloud Digital Leader

Why Cloud Technology is Transforming Business including explaining why and how the cloud is revolutionizing businesses, defining terms (cloud, cloud technology, data, digital transformation, cloud-native, open source, open standard), describing differences between cloud technology and traditional or on-premises technology, explaining benefits of cloud technology to business digital transformation (scalable, flexible, agile, secure, cost-effective, strategic value), describing primary benefits of on-premises infrastructure, public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and multicloud and differentiating between them, describing main business transformation benefits of Google Cloud (intelligence, freedom, collaboration, trust, sustainability), describing implications and risks for organizations that do not adopt new technology, describing drivers and challenges that lead organizations to undergo digital transformation, and describing the transformation cloud and how it accelerates digital transformation through app and infrastructure modernization, data democratization, people connections, and trusted transactions. Fundamental Cloud Concepts including explaining general cloud concepts, describing how transitioning to cloud infrastructure affects flexibility, scalability, reliability, elasticity, agility, and total cost of ownership (TCO), applying these concepts to various business use cases, explaining how transition from on-premises to cloud shifts capital expenditures (CapEx) to operational expenditures (OpEx) and how that affects TCO, identifying when private, hybrid, or multicloud infrastructures best apply to different business use cases, defining basic network infrastructure terminology (IP address, ISP, DNS, regions, zones, fiber optics, subsea cables, network edge data centers, latency, bandwidth), and discussing how Google Cloud supports digital transformation with global infrastructure and data centers connected by fast, reliable network. Cloud Computing Models and Shared Responsibility including discussing benefits and tradeoffs of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, defining IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, comparing and contrasting benefits and tradeoffs of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS (TCO, flexibility, shared responsibilities, management level, necessary staffing and technical expertise), determining which computing model applies to various business scenarios and use cases, describing the cloud shared responsibility model, and comparing which responsibilities are the cloud provider's and which are the customer's for on-premises and cloud computing models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).

The Value of Data including describing the intrinsic role that data plays in an organization's digital transformation, explaining how data generates business insights, drives decision-making, and creates new value, differentiating between basic data management concepts (databases, data warehouses, data lakes), explaining how organizations can create value by using current data, collecting new data, and sourcing data externally, describing how the cloud unlocks business value from all types of data (structured and unstructured), discussing main data value chain concepts and terms, and explaining how data governance is essential to a successful data journey. Google Cloud Data Management Solutions including determining which Google Cloud data management products are applicable to different business use cases, differentiating between Google Cloud data management options including data type and common business use case (Cloud Storage, Cloud Spanner, Cloud SQL, Cloud Bigtable, BigQuery, Firestore), defining key data management concepts and terms (relational, non-relational, object storage, SQL, NoSQL), describing benefits of using BigQuery as a serverless, managed data warehouse and analytics engine that can be used in multicloud environment, differentiating between storage classes in Cloud Storage regarding cost and frequency of access (Standard, Nearline, Coldline, Archive), and describing ways that an organization can migrate or modernize their current database in the cloud. Making Data Useful and Accessible including discussing how smart analytics, business intelligence tools, and streaming analytics can add value in different business use cases, describing how Looker democratizes access to data by empowering individuals to self-serve business intelligence and create insights, discussing value of analyzing and visualizing data from BigQuery in Looker to create real-time reports, dashboards, and integrating data into workflows, describing how streaming analytics in real-time makes data more useful and generates business value, and describing main Google Cloud products that modernize data pipelines (Pub/Sub, Dataflow).

AI and ML Fundamentals including discussing main AI and ML concepts and explaining how ML can create business value, defining artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), differentiating capabilities of AI and ML from data analytics and business intelligence, discussing types of problems that ML can solve, explaining business value ML creates (ability to work with large datasets, scaling business decisions, unlocking unstructured data), explaining why high-quality, accurate data is essential for successful ML models, and discussing importance of explainable and responsible AI. Google Cloud's AI and ML Solutions including discussing range of Google Cloud AI and ML solutions and products available and how to select most appropriate solution for different business use cases, explaining which decisions and tradeoffs organizations need to consider when selecting Google Cloud AI/ML solutions and products (speed, effort, differentiation, required expertise), and discussing which Google Cloud AI and ML solutions and products might apply given different business use cases (pre-trained APIs, AutoML, build custom models). Building and Using Google Cloud AI and ML Solutions including explaining how Google Cloud's pre-trained API, AutoML, and custom AI/ML products can create business value, discussing how BigQuery ML lets users create and execute machine learning models in BigQuery by using standard SQL queries, selecting which Google Cloud pre-trained API best applies to different business use cases (Natural Language API, Vision API, Cloud Translation API, Speech-to-Text API, Text-to-Speech API), explaining how an organization can create business value by using their own data to train custom ML models with AutoML, discussing how building custom models by using Google Cloud's Vertex AI can create opportunities for business differentiation, and recognizing TensorFlow as an end-to-end open source set of tools for building and training machine learning models and that Cloud Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) is Google's proprietary hardware optimized for TensorFlow and ML performance.

Cloud Modernization and Migration including explaining why modernization and migration to the cloud are important steps in an organization's transformation journey and how each application might have a different path, discussing benefits of infrastructure modernization and application modernization by using Google Cloud, and defining main cloud migration terms (workload, retire, retain, rehost, lift and shift, replatform, move and improve, refactor, reimagine). Computing in the Cloud including discussing options for and advantages of running compute workloads in the cloud, defining main cloud compute terms (virtual machines/VMs, containerization, containers, microservices, serverless computing, preemptible VMs, Kubernetes, autoscaling, load balancing), describing benefits and business value of running compute workloads in the cloud, explaining choices and constraints between different compute options, discussing business value of using Compute Engine to create and run virtual machines on Google's infrastructure, and discussing business value of choosing a rehost migration path for specialized legacy applications. Serverless Computing including discussing advantages of serverless computing in application modernization, explaining benefits of serverless computing, and discussing business value of using serverless computing Google Cloud products (Cloud Run, App Engine, Cloud Functions). Containers in the Cloud including discussing advantages of using containers in application modernization, discussing advantages of modern cloud application development, differentiating between virtual machines and containers, discussing main benefits of containers and microservices for application modernization, and discussing business value of using Google Cloud products to deploy containers (Google Kubernetes Engine/GKE, Cloud Run). The Value of APIs including explaining business value of application programming interfaces (APIs), defining application programming interface (API), explaining how organizations can create new business opportunities by exposing and monetizing public-facing APIs, and discussing business value of using Apigee API Management. Hybrid and Multi-cloud including discussing business reasons for choosing hybrid or multi-cloud strategies and how GKE Enterprise enables these strategies, discussing reasons and use cases for why organizations choose a hybrid cloud or multi-cloud strategy, and describing business value of using GKE Enterprise as a single control panel for management of hybrid or multicloud infrastructure.

Trust and Security in the Cloud including discussing fundamental cloud security concepts, describing today's top cybersecurity threats and business implications, differentiating between cloud security and traditional on-premises security, describing importance of control, compliance, confidentiality, integrity, and availability in a cloud security model, and defining key security terms and concepts. Google's Trusted Infrastructure including explaining business value of Google's defense-in-depth multilayered approach to infrastructure security, describing benefits of Google designing and building its own data centers, using purpose-built servers, networking, and custom security hardware/software, describing role of encryption in securing an organization's data and ways that it can protect data exposed to risks in different states, differentiating between authentication, authorization, and auditing, describing benefits of using two-step verification (2SV) and IAM, describing how an organization can protect against network attacks using Google products (distributed denial-of-service/DDoS using Google Cloud Armor), and defining Security Operations (SecOps) in the cloud and describing its business benefits. Google Cloud's Trust Principles and Compliance including describing how Google Cloud earns and maintains customer trust in the cloud, discussing how Google Cloud's trust principles are a commitment to shared responsibility for protecting and managing an organization's data in the cloud, describing how sharing transparency reports and undergoing independent third-party audits support customer trust in Google, describing why data sovereignty and data residency may be requirements and how Google Cloud offers organizations ability to control where their data is stored, and describing how Google Cloud compliance resource center and Compliance Reports Manager support industry and regional compliance needs.

Financial Governance and Managing Cloud Costs including discussing how Google Cloud supports an organization's financial governance and ability to control their cloud costs, discussing how using cloud financial governance best practices provides predictability and control for cloud resources, defining important cloud cost-management terms and concepts, discussing benefits of using resource hierarchy to control access, describing benefit of controlling cloud consumption using resource quota policies and budget threshold rules, and discussing how organizations can visualize their cost data by using Cloud Billing Reports. Operational Excellence and Reliability at Scale including discussing fundamental concepts of modern operations, reliability, and resilience in the cloud, describing benefits of modernizing operations by using Google Cloud, defining important cloud operations terms, describing importance of designing resilient, fault-tolerant, and scalable infrastructure and processes for high availability and disaster recovery, defining key cloud reliability, DevOps, and SRE terms, describing how organizations benefit from using Google Cloud Customer Care to support their cloud adoption, and describing life of a support case during the Google Cloud Customer Care process. Sustainability with Google Cloud including discussing how Google Cloud helps organizations meet sustainability goals and reduce environmental impact, describing Google Cloud's commitment to sustainability and reducing environmental impact, and discussing how Google Cloud provides products to support organizations' sustainability goals.