GCP – Accelerate digital transformation with business application platform

2020 has been among the most disruptive years business leaders have ever confronted, with many enterprises absorbing several years of digital transformation over just a few months. These ongoing efforts have not been easy, with numerous organizations finding their existing resources and workflows won’t scale and don’t allow them to move quickly or responsively enough. They need to rethink how transformation occurs and how different parts of the workforce can participate. 

To help businesses navigate this journey, build resilience, and accelerate innovation, we’re excited to introduce the category of Business Application Platform. Encompassing API management, no-code application development, automation and data insights capabilities, the Business Application Platform aims to:

• Provide a consistent way of consuming services, data, and functionality, via APIs, despite complex backends 

• Empower non-technical employees to quickly build data-driven applications without coding

• Simplify integration and extension of applications and the automation of business processes

• Arm users with the ability to extract insights from data via self-service tools, like Looker

The Business Application Platform builds on Google Cloud’s investments in Apigee API management and AppSheet no-code application development. We’ll be adding new features in these areas that leverage Google Cloud’s expertise in hybrid and multi cloud architectures, artificial intelligence and machine learning, lifecycle management, security, and productivity and collaboration. 

We’re starting this process today by introducing several new products and features to empower enterprises to quickly build applications, automate workflows, and derive insights: 

• The beta release of API Gateway, a fully-managed offering that lets developers build, secure, and monitor APIs for Google Cloud workloads and serverless backends. 

• General availability of Apigee data source for AppSheet, which lets AppSheet users harness Apigee APIs to build apps without coding 

• The early access release of AppSheet Automation, a solution that empowers non-technical users to automate processes at scale by leveraging various data sources

Managing Serverless APIs with API Gateway

Serverless workloads are becoming more popular with developers, who are increasingly packaging their serverless applications as APIs, both to share them with other teams and to expose them publicly over the web. API Gateway lets developers secure and manage their APIs built on Compute Engine, GKE, App Engine, and serverless backends (Cloud Functions and Cloud Run), all without having to write code for different endpoints or worry about any of the infrastructure configuration or scaling. 

Built on Envoy, API Gateway offers high-performance and scalability, with features that include authentication, key validation, and rate limiting. Now available in beta, this service uses consumption-based and tiered pricing for cost flexibility. Many of our early adopters have been enthusiastic, and we are excited to expand API Gateway to more users and help more developers build great apps. Click here to start using API Gateway in beta.

“We are using Google Cloud’s API Gateway to manage the APIs for our serverless applications running on Cloud Run, Cloud Functions and App Engine. The ease of set up and built-in security features make it a great fit for our applications,” said Guillaume Blaquiere, Lead Developer at Veolia.

Building richer no-code apps with new Apigee data source for AppSheet

No-code application development continues to gain momentum. In their October 2019 report titled “The future of apps must include citizen development ,” Gartner predicts, “By 2023, the number of active citizen developers at large enterprises will be at least four times the number of professional developers.” 

AppSheet already supports a variety of data sources, such as G Suite, mySQL, and Salesforce. Now, with general availability of Apigee data source for Appsheet, enterprises can make even more data available to citizen developers in their workforce. By enabling employees to build apps that leverage Apigee APIs and require no coding, enterprises can both empower line-of-business employees without technical experience to create innovative apps and reduce traditional IT backlog. To learn more about the Apigee data source for AppSheet, click here. 

“We have been building apps with AppSheet by using CRM-related data, Google Sheets, and a number of other sources.” said Matthew Brown, Principal Data Architect at EBSCO. “Apigee datasource for AppSheet should considerably increase our productivity and speed by making it easier to access existing data via APIs when building applications.” 

Automating manual processes faster with AppSheet Automation

When business processes rely on manual actions, valuable time is often wasted updating systems instead of focusing on work that drives the enterprise forward. Moreover, opportunities for mistakes or communication lapses are abundant. Line-of-business workers are closest to these challenges, so empowering them to optimize and automate processes is an important area of enterprise innovation. 

Powered by Google Cloud’s AI products and now available for early access, AppSheet Automation serves this need by helping businesses build and run automations faster, without having to write code. It is easily governed, ensuring data security across the entire organization, and can address a vast array of use cases, including human-centric processes, application integration, and document-based processes. Built around an intuitive interface that provides contextual suggestions based on natural language inputs, AppSheet Automation brings together the power of AI and no-code, letting users build both rich apps and powerful automations within the same unified platform. Click here to sign up for early access to AppSheet Automation. 

“AppSheet enables our team to build rich applications without coding.” said Raghudeep Madineni, Sr. Manager, Digital and IIOT at Ather Energy. “With the upcoming launch of AppSheet Automation, it will offer a unified solution for no-code application development and automation, effectively increasing the productivity of our developers and reducing the time required to get to market.”

Moving faster with the Business Application Platform

With these new releases, Google Cloud is focused on enabling enterprises to take innovation beyond the realms of IT and accelerate digital transformation. We are confident the new category of business application platforms will help empower both technical and line of business developers with the core ability to create and extend applications, build and automate workflows, and connect and modernize applications—we can’t wait to see what you build. 

To learn more, visit Business Application Platform