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For organizations looking to improve performance across a broad range of activities, the cloud is often a game-changer. A move to the public cloud can advance an organization’s operational resiliency, improve its staff productivity, increase regulatory compliance and enhance business model innovation.
To help more organizations achieve these improvements, we have scaled up our efforts to increase their adoption of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). From increased publicity, new training sessions, and collaborations, to bringing product innovations to the market, here are a few highlights we’d like to share.
Upskilling Teams Through Authorized GCP Training
Most organizations today are limited by the huge shortage of skilled cloud professionals available to them. As Max Driessen, head of Xebia Cloud’s training division, elaborated:
“Everybody is hiring, but who is training? That is the question I ask CTOs and CIOs when they are looking to expand the Google Cloud teams.”
As an Authorized Google Cloud training partner, Xebia is home to a group of passionate trainers who share knowledge for a living. So we increased our efforts to upskill teams through additional, authorized training sessions.
Driessen continued, “Official Google Cloud learning paths are an ideal way to upskill teams effectively and efficiently.”
Xebia regularly delivers in-company training sessions for leading enterprises and institutions, including ASML, SURF, Godai, and many more. In the last twelve months, we have also facilitated three, free Google Cloud Platform training events (Core Infra and Big Data / ML Fundamentals) for nearly 80,000 individual registrants.
“If you say Xebia, you also say quality without compromise, so we made sure to take the level of production to another level by building our own in-house recording studio,” said Walter van der Scheer, chief of marketing at Xebia Cloud & Data.
Recruiting, Training, and Coaching DevOps Specialists for GCP Clients
To help clients, such as ASML, overcome a shortage of technically-skilled people, Xebia developed a GCP DevOps Traineeship. With this traineeship, Xebia recruits, trains, and coaches talented professionals to become senior DevOps specialists, ultimately joining the client’s own team.
Developing Course Material for Google
We don’t just deliver training, we also develop it. In fact, Google recently asked us to develop the official GCP training course for Application Development on Cloud Run.
“Needless to say, we did not hesitate to accept the request and developed and delivered the course materials in time and on budget,” said Driessen, who was “humbled and honored” by the request. “This is truly bucket list material,” he added.
Google also selected Xebia to be among the first partners to deliver pilot sessions of the Cloud Hero program in the Benelux.
Cloud Support and Optimization
Although most organizations strive toward self-sufficiency with Google Cloud, it is reassuring for many to know that support is available when they need it. With our latest service, Xebia Cloud Control, we offer organizations support, reviews and FinOps capabilities at no additional cost. Since its introduction, well-known brands like CM.com, VanMoof, The Sting, ASML, Topicus, Flowtraders, YourSurprise, Felyx, Ibood recognized the advantages and onboarded with Xebia Cloud Control.
Turn-Key Data Platforms on Top of GCP
Based on decades of experience in developing data platforms, Xebia introduced a solution on GCP that can be deployed in a matter of days instead of months. The platform leverages cloud-native services and is deployed using in-house development connectors and modules.
“Our GCP Cloud Data Platform really stands out because of the unrivaled ease of implementation. It is no wonder that organizations like Felyx, Mollie, and Flowtraders run their data and analytics on a GCP platform implemented by Xebia,” said Diederik Greveling, CTO at Xebia Data and AI Solutions.
Building a Community
At Xebia, we owe a lot to communities of developers and engineers and actively give back. At the beginning of 2021, Googlers Fahd Ekadioin and André Pronk, together with Xebia, initiated the Google Cloud Platform User Group Benelux. The group held eight Meetups in 2021 and will continue to meet throughout 2022. Meetups throughout 2021, and ongoing for 2022. (What a joy to host in-person events once again!)
On June 21, Google’s Amsterdam office turned “a little purple” for a very special edition of the BinxKE — a special branded “Xebia Knowledge Exchange by Binx.io. The evening was full of in-depth sessions, best practices, good food, and friendly folks who enjoyed the opportunity to bump brains together.
Working Closely With the Google Partner Team
All of this would not have been possible without close collaboration with the Google Cloud team. Xebia works closely together with a host of Googlers on a daily basis to create value for clients and win in new industries.
”It is a delight to work with Googlers, be it sales representatives, customer engineers and PSO. We would not have been able to demonstrate the same growth without the relentless efforts of the Google Cloud team,” said Maarten Koster, sales manager at Xebia Cloud. He added, “The Google team, Xebia team, and our clients really work together as one team. In fact, we recently visited Felyx to hand out swag and gifts to their team and thank them for the collaboration.”
And the partnership goes both ways. Xebia regularly hosts events for Googlers at its offices, such as Google BNL leadership sessions, a Google Cloud Next viewing party, and more.
10x More GCP
So, what’s next in our continuing efforts to increase adoption of the Google Cloud Platform?
We’ll continue our already successful best practices and put more energy into our current initiatives. We’ll also start working more closely with our clients on infrastructure optimization, support and FinOps, sustainability, and implementing the latest GCP services.
And, since we’re also expanding into new territories in Europe, Middle East, and the US, we’ll be busy exchanging best practices and exploring joint opportunities, as we recently did with our US sales team at the Google Cloud office in New York.
Looking forward to sharing 10x more!