On Neo4j and Google Cloud Partnership. Q&A with Lance Walter
Q1. What are the main benefits for customers in having Neo4j Graph Database to be offered on Google Cloud Platform as a managed service?
The offering we announced at Google Next ‘19 is called Neo4j for Google Cloud. Essentially it will be the Neo4j graph database delivered as a seamless, first-class experience integrated with the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) console, with integrated identity and access management, billing, and more. Customers can simply create a graph in the cloud and it works.
Neo4j on GCP will help developers to harness connected data and avoid the complex queries and slow JOINs that can make SQL databases difficult to work with. For developers, this means simplified data modeling, avoiding any translation between data model and code. And from a developer productivity perspective, making all of that instantly-accessible on a cloud platform is a big win.
Q2. What are the Highlights of Neo4j for Google Cloud?
Neo4j for Google Cloud is built from the ground up to be tightly integrated, cloud-optimized managed service. The integration is not limited to billing and support. The service is being built on Google’s Kubernetes technology, native to GCP to enable businesses to get up and running fast and to scale according to enterprise needs. Businesses will have access to a highly-available, secure and fully-managed graph database service that scales elastically in response to changing needs.
Q3. How does Neo4j and Google Cloud work together?
Developers will be able to seamlessly add the leading graph database (which many are familiar with because of Neo4j’s open source offering) to their Google Cloud services to solve connected data problems. From a business perspective, we already share multiple joint customers with Google Cloud – ranging from startups like Zenoss and Quander to Enterprises like eBay, and Telia.
Neo4j and Google have worked together before (Neo4j was a launch partner for Google’s Kubernetes Cloud Marketplace and has been available in the marketplace since last July), and it has been simple to get started on an offering for Google Cloud Platform to deliver a first-class equivalent navigation in the GCP marketplace. But it’s not yet a fully-managed service, which is why Neo4j Engineering has been working with Google Engineering since Summer 2018 and continues to work closely with Google to deliver this offering as well as Neo4j’s own DBaaS offering.
Q4. Anything else you wish to add?
Graphs and Google have past, present and future together. When Google was a fledgling search company, it won the market using the power of graph technology via PageRank, which many may not know is a commonly-used graph algorithm. That was the key to understanding “relevance,” the concept by which Google ranks search results.
Now Google, as part of their cloud business, is making the world’s leading graph database available on GCP with Neo4j for Google Cloud. In the future, we see a lot of synergy between deploying graphs on the cloud and using them to enrich AI and machine learning applications, another area where Google has deep expertise as well as technology.
Lance Walter, CMO, Neo4j Inc.
Lance Walter serves as Neo4j’s CMO and has more than two decades of Enterprise Product Management and Marketing experience. Lance started his career in technical roles at Oracle Corporation supporting enterprise relational database deployments. Since then, Lance has worked at industry leaders like Siebel Systems and Business Objects, as well as successful startups including Onlink (acquired by Siebel Systems), Pentaho (acquired by Hitachi Data Systems), Aria Systems, Capriza. Lance’s first experience with alternative database platforms was at Arbor Software, the pioneer of the multi-dimensional database / OLAP market. Twitter: @lancewalter
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Press Release: Neo4j and Google Cloud Announce Strategic Partnership