Google Cloud expands its database portfolio with new AI features
Google is hosting a version of its Cloud Next conference in Tokyo this week, and it’s putting the focus squarely on tweaking its databases for AI workloads (because at this point in 2024, AI is the only thing these major tech companies want to talk about). These include updates to its Spanner SQL database, which now features graph and vector search support, as well as extended full-text search capabilities.
This wouldn’t be a Google announcement without some Gemini-powered features. These include Gemini in BigQuery and Looker to help users with data engineering and analysis, as well as governance and security tasks.
Google argues that while the vast majority of enterprises think that generative AI will be critical to the success of their business, they also know that much of their data remains unmanaged, leaving it outside the scope of their analytics and AI initiatives.
New AI Features in Spanner
Google Cloud's Spanner powers most of Google’s own products like Search, Gmail and YouTube. Spanner can handle a massive volume of data, but vector and graph databases are essential to bring enterprise data into GenAI applications and enrich existing foundation models.
Google has enhanced Spanner with new capabilities such as full-text search and vector search. With these improvements, Spanner has evolved into a multi-model database with intelligent capabilities that seamlessly interoperate for AI-enabled applications.
Updates to Spanner Pricing and Bigtable
In addition to AI-centric updates, Spanner now offers a new optional pricing structure called "Spanner editions," providing customers with more flexibility in choosing their preferred tier-based pricing model.
Google also announced a major update to Bigtable, its NoSQL database for unstructured data and latency-sensitive workloads. The latest enhancement includes SQL support, making it easier for developers to use the service with GoogleSQL, the company's own SQL dialect.
Support for Open Source Technologies
Google Cloud now supports open source Apache Spark and Kafka for data streaming and processing, along with real-time streaming from Analytics Hub, a service for securely sharing data between organizations.
By introducing these new AI features and enhancing its database offerings, Google Cloud is further solidifying its position in the cloud market for AI workloads and data analytics.
For more information on Google's latest updates and features, visit their official website.
