GOOGLE CLOUD: TOOLS FOR DATA CENTER PLANNERS

PROBLEM

Google Cloud Planners in the Energy, Land and Strategy manage the expenditure of billions of dollars for the build out of Google Cloud Data Centers, across the world. The decisions around building data centers- location, capacity, etc- are enormously complex, and are based on multiple factors including regional demand, latency, the availability of green power and other utilities, local governmental process and tax incentives, and environmental regulatory frameworks, The tools simply did not exist to help Planners make informed, timely decisions about Data Center strategy, and the resulting delays and duplication of effort incurred costs both financial and in terms of executing long range strategy

SOLUTION

Working with the key internal stakeholders, with the Data Center planners, and with incredible group of engineers, I designed a robust set of Data Management & Data Visualization tools. These tools assisted the Planners in considering a huge volume of complex information crucial to planning. The tools helped Planners mitigate risk, drive the selection of appropriate datacenter implementations, and more easily advance data center projects through a long, multi-phase project plans with complex concurrencies and dependencies.

RESULTS

Google Cloud planners now have a robust set of Data Visualization and Data Management tools, constructed on a platform built full stack of native Google technologies. Those tools include Dashboard and dynamic monthly and quarterly reports, easily digestible custom reporting on the output of complex algorithms used to optimize Data Center placement. The platform leverages Google SSID to provide robust role-based access control for multiple internal and external user types, including admin controls. Authoring tools let users customize and generate their own reports, giving them power and autonomy they did not previously enjoy with the pre-existing environment. These tools are in daily use by Google Cloud Managers and Planners to inform financial decisions measured in billions of dollars.