At Supercloud 4, theCUBE is exploring the transformative impact generative artificial intelligence can have on industries. For those involved in the sector, it’s been a fascinating time to watch as enterprises have been going through a generational shift.
That’s the case for Karen Dahut (pictured), chief executive officer of Google Public Sector at Google LLC, who is almost exactly one year into her new role. During the past year, Dahut has spoken with people worldwide about their desires for digital transformation.
Those individuals say three things, according to Dahut. The first is that legacy IT is a huge issue, and they haven’t been able to take advantage of the transformative effects of AI because they still have legacy IT in their platforms and in their organizations.
“The second thing they talk about is they really need choice, they need flexibility, they need the opportunity to really leverage best-of-breed technologies, and they want to do that more rapidly than they do today,” Dahut said. “Then the last thing is, they can’t do it alone.”
Dahut spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Dave Vellante at Supercloud 4, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed moving away from legacy IT and making people confident that the cloud is a safe place.
Flipping the switch
In business, administrations and edicts change, and one can’t simply flip a switch overnight. But can technology help solve the problem? It’s important to sometimes take a step back from that question and look back over the past 20 or 30 years and how technology platforms have shifted, according to Dahut.
“You start from mainframe. You move from mainframe to the personal computer, the personal computer to mobile, mobile to cloud. And, now, the most advanced technology shift probably in our lifetime is the shift to AI,” Dahut said. “The challenge with the public sector has been, they have not been able to keep pace, funding pace as well as talent pace, with all those technological shifts.”
That’s where the power of AI can be leveraged, and the digital transformation can be accelerated, according to Dahut. Of course, there is a lot of innovation at Google right now, and the company has long focused on AI.
“The reality is, we’ve been serving up AI in our products and to our customers for a long time now, and I’ll just give you a couple of examples,” Dahut said. “During the pandemic, states turned to Google to help them be able to deliver information to citizens about the pandemic, about vaccine safety, in a fast, safe, accelerated way.”
They turned to a generative AI tool called Contact Center AI, which enables virtual agents to address questions of citizens effectively and efficiently, according to Dahut. Another example is the company’s Document AI.
“That allows people to have self-input into documents and for the input on those documents to be able to be leveraged into a large data set and for AI to be applied,” she said. “These are simple ways that people can get started today, that organizations can get started today with the power of AI and generative AI.”
Making the cloud safe
In the early days of the cloud, one might frequently hear from certain organizations, such as financial services organizations, that they would never be in the cloud. Things have changed, and so much innovation is now happening in that space.
But what about the public sector and concerns around IP leakage? From Google’s perspective, the company’s cloud is the most secure for a couple of reasons, according to Dahut.
“First of all, Google was born in the cloud. We were never an on-prem operation. So, when you’re born in the cloud, security is foundational to everything that you do,” Dahut said. “There are no seams in the way that when you move something from on-prem into the cloud.”
When it comes to getting people comfortable with the cloud, one has to prove to them that the platform is more secure than what they have today, according to Dahut. That involves showing them how the company ensures security through the lifecycle of a mission and the lifecycle of an application.
“We are pioneers in zero trust — zero-trust architecture, zero-trust security — and that notion of how to embed zero trust into an organization and an agency’s applications, into their cloud, their cloud security,” Dahut said. “Super important. And we tell that story.”
Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Supercloud 4:
VIDEO
Photo: SiliconANGLE
A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:
Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.
One-click below supports our mission to provide free, deep and relevant content.
Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and many more luminaries and experts.
“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy
THANK YOU
{Categories} _Category: Inspiration,*ALL*{/Categories}
{URL}https://siliconangle.com/2023/10/26/google-public-sector-ceo-weighs-in-on-how-to-manage-the-massive-shift-to-ai-supercloud4/{/URL}
{Author}Ryan Stevens{/Author}
{Image}https://d15shllkswkct0.cloudfront.net/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2023/10/Karen-Dahut-Supercloud-4-Oct-13.jpg{/Image}
{Keywords}AI,Cube Event Coverage,NEWS,The-Latest,#Supercloud4,#theCube,AI-driven future,artificial intelligence,cloud analytics,cloud computing workflows,Contact Center AI,Dave Vellante,Document AI,foundational model use cases,genaisr2023,generative AI,google,harmonized data,IT automation,Karen Dahut,modern computing architectures,supercloud abstraction layer,Supercloud4AI23eventpage,video exclusive{/Keywords}