Google Cloud announced a new enterprise subscription for Chrome and a variety of generative AI add-ons for Google Workspace during the Cloud Next ‘24 conference, held in Las Vegas from April 9 – 11. Overall, Google Cloud is implementing its Gemini generative AI as much as possible; for example, the company is focusing on offering Vertex AI infrastructure for other companies’ AI and hardware such as the new Axion CPU.
We participated in a pre-briefing for an early look at the new features and tools, including a generative AI video service for marketing and internal communications use. Here’s a summary of what we believe to be the most impactful enterprise news from Google Cloud Next.
Chrome Enterprise Premium adds security controls
Enterprise browsers may be a growing trend. Last year, Gartner predicted that browsers designed specifically with enterprise-level security and support in mind would see widespread adoption by 2030. Google is contributing to the proliferation of enterprise browsers with Chrome Enterprise Premium. This enterprise tier adds an extra layer of security to Chrome, enhancing it with:
Enterprise controls for policy enforcement, software updates and extensions management.
Event and device reporting.
Forensic security reporting.
Context-aware access controls.
Threat and data protection.
Chrome Enterprise Premium is available today, April 9, wherever Chrome is offered. It costs $6 per user per month.
Axion is Google’s first Arm-based CPU
Some Google Cloud services, like BigQuery, will soon run on Google Axion Processors, Google’s first custom Arm-based CPU for data centers. Google Cloud stated that Axion demonstrates 50% better performance than comparable current-generation x86-based virtual machines. Instances on Google Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Dataproc, Dataflow, Cloud Batch, and more will be available later in 2024.
Vertex AI will ground itself in Google Search
Starting April 9, models trained in Vertex AI will be grounded in Google Search. This could potentially be controversial depending on the data used for training.
Grounding AI is part of the trend of Retrieval Augmented Generation, which helps avoid “hallucinations” by verifying the AI against accurate information. Google Cloud mentioned that grounding will provide models built on Vertex AI with “fresh, high-quality information.”
Source link