Cloud Platform at Google I/O - new Big Data, Mobile and Monitoring products

Greg DeMichillie, Google Cloud Platform team
5 min readintermediate
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Overview

The article discusses new services introduced at Google I/O 2014 that enhance the Google Cloud Platform, focusing on Big Data, mobile application development, and monitoring tools. Key highlights include the launch of Google Cloud Dataflow, Google Cloud Monitoring, and new features for mobile development.

What You'll Learn

1

How to create data pipelines using Google Cloud Dataflow

2

Why Google Cloud Monitoring is essential for diagnosing application performance issues

3

How to utilize Google Cloud Save for mobile app data synchronization

Key Questions Answered

What is Google Cloud Dataflow and how does it improve data processing?
Google Cloud Dataflow is a fully managed service for creating data pipelines that allow developers to ingest, transform, and analyze data in both batch and streaming modes. It simplifies the process of building analytics pipelines while optimizing operational costs and eliminating the need for manual infrastructure management.
How can Google Cloud Monitoring help in application performance management?
Google Cloud Monitoring helps developers identify and fix unusual behavior across their application stack by providing rich metrics, dashboards, and alerting. It integrates with various open-source applications and allows for troubleshooting issues like increased error rates or slow query times with minimal configuration.
What features does Google Cloud Save offer for mobile app development?
Google Cloud Save provides a simple API for saving, retrieving, and synchronizing user data across devices without needing to code a backend. It stores data in Google Cloud Datastore, making it easily accessible from Google App Engine or Google Compute Engine using the Datastore API.

Technologies & Tools

Backend
Google Cloud Dataflow
Used for creating data pipelines for batch and streaming data processing.
Monitoring
Google Cloud Monitoring
Helps in diagnosing and improving application performance.
Mobile
Google Cloud Save
Facilitates data synchronization for mobile applications.
Database
Google Cloud Datastore
Stores user data for mobile applications.

Key Actionable Insights

1
Implement Google Cloud Dataflow to streamline your data processing tasks.
Using Cloud Dataflow can significantly reduce the complexity of managing data pipelines, allowing you to focus on deriving insights rather than infrastructure management.
2
Leverage Google Cloud Monitoring to proactively manage application performance.
By utilizing monitoring tools, you can quickly identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, enhancing user experience and application reliability.
3
Use Google Cloud Save to simplify data synchronization in mobile applications.
This tool allows developers to focus on app functionality rather than backend development, speeding up the development process and improving user data management.

Common Pitfalls

1
Failing to monitor application performance can lead to undetected issues.
Without proper monitoring tools like Google Cloud Monitoring, developers may struggle to identify performance bottlenecks, resulting in poor user experiences.