8 statistically sound smart analytics sessions to attend at Next ’19

From tracking shared bike usage to analyzing a large blockchain, the ability to effectively analyze large datasets has proved essential to solving numerous interesting, large-scale problems. This year at Next ’19, we’re offering more than 50 breakout sessions and a spotlight session on topics ranging from data warehousing to business intelligence (BI). Leading enterprises and disruptive start-ups will share how they’re using Google Cloud data analytics solutions to achieve more with big data, so that you can too.

If you’re short on time, or you’re quickly pulling your conference schedule together, here are eight breakout sessions we recommend:

1. Data Processing in Google Cloud: Hadoop, Spark, and Dataflow – Register here
Google Cloud is committed to making your infrastructure as easy-to-use as possible, and “easy” means different things to different people and organizations. In data processing, sometimes simplicity means migrating your existing Hadoop and Spark environment to Cloud Dataproc, which gives you a familiar look and feel, but manages the underlying infrastructure for you. For others, easy will mean putting Cloud Dataflow’s serverless, unified batch and stream data processing into production. In this session, we’ll explore the ins and outs of making this decision, with real-world experience from Qubit, a company that uses both Dataproc and Dataflow in production.

2. Rethinking Business: Data Analytics With Google Cloud – Register here
Get a deep dive into our newest launches and announcements in our data analytics portfolio in this spotlight session. We’ll present live demos and share the latest in enterprise data warehousing, streaming analytics, managed Hadoop and Spark, modern BI, planet-scale data lakes, and more. Booking.com and ANZ Bank will be on-hand to share how our customers are leveraging GCP’s serverless data platforms to redefine data’s relationship with business.

3. Data Solutions for Change: Nonprofit Stories – Register here
Gartner defines “data for good” as a movement in which people and organizations transcend organizational boundaries to use data to improve society. From public datasets to citizen-generated data, cross-sectoral organizations are exploring collaborative methods to fill in data gaps, advance an inclusive data charter, and track progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Attend this session to learn how Google Cloud is empowering organizations and people around the world to address some of the greatest global challenges.

4. How Pandora is Migrating Its On-Premises BI & Analytics to GCP – Register here
Data is one of Pandora Media’s core differentiators. Since the launch of their music streaming service in 2005, Pandora listeners have created 13 billion stations and have liked their favorite songs with a thumbs up more than 90 billion times. Computation against large datasets is essential to how Pandora personalizes music for their users. This session explains how Pandora Media is building a more scalable, cost effective, and performant analytics platform by using GCP services like BigQuery, Cloud Dataproc, Cloud Composer, Cloud Storage, and others to replace their 2700+ node, 7PB+ on-premises Hadoop environment and gain access to new analytical engines, such as Dataflow, and hardware such as GPUs/TPUs.

5. The Migration Chronicles: CBSi Moves from Teradata and Hadoop to BigQuery – Register here
During this session, members of CBS Interactive’s data team will cover the journey of migrating a data warehouse from on-premises Teradata and Hadoop clusters to BigQuery using traditional ETL (extract, transform, load) and Google Cloud Platform tools. The CBSi team will cover some of the challenges they faced and how they overcame those challenges. The BigQuery product team will also present some of the strengths of BigQuery as a data warehouse.

6. A Technical Dive on Data Warehousing with BigQuery: Cruise Automation’s Stories – Register here
Director of BigQuery product management, Jordan Tigani, describes how organizations extract meaning from their data with capabilities that surpass traditional data warehousing. Enterprises have to contend with an accelerating onslaught of data, while employees want to make real-time decisions based on the very latest information. At the same time, they want to drill down into the most granular details. Cruise Automation will explain how they unlock answers to problems that they couldn’t solve with a traditional data warehouse. Jordan will also demonstrate some of the latest features of BigQuery that will make you rethink what a modern data warehouse can do for you.

7. Building and Securing a Data Lake on Google Cloud Platform – Register here
Having a data lake in the cloud gives you more than inexpensive storage. Join product manager Chris Crosbie and Cloudera’s Larry McCay for a session that presents how you can successfully ingest, store, secure, process, and analyze your data on Google Cloud Platform. Learn how Google Cloud already supports many of the open source technologies you may be using, and learn how you can achieve end-to-end authentication with your cloud data lake. Lastly, the presenters will discuss how Cloudera has partnered with Google Cloud to help customers extend their data lakes to the cloud with open source security tools like Apache Knox.

8. Streaming Analytics: Generating Real Value From Real Time – Register here
Data is often most valuable in the moments just after it’s created, so many types of analytics are best performed right after ingest. Real-time analytic solutions unlock time-sensitive value by driving data into real-time decision making and business processes. Join this session to learn how to learn how Cloud Pub/Sub, Cloud Dataflow, and other integrated GCP products can simplify your streaming pipeline and allow your teams to focus on insights–instead of operations.

Learn more about the event, or peruse hundreds of additional sessions, on the Next ’19 website. See you in San Francisco!