Cloud Workstations with Marcos Grappeggia and Antoine Castex

Google Cloud Platform Podcast

Max Saltonstall and Stephanie Wong welcome fellow Googler Marcos Grappeggia and Antoine Castex of L’Oreal to talk about Cloud Workstations, Google’s software that provides managed development environments.

Marcos elaborates on the power of Cloud Workstations and all the features and offerings this software provides. The preconfigured nature of Cloud Workstations means developers simply press a button and get an IDE so they’re ready to code quickly. Other teams benefit as well, with templates created by Cloud Workstations that specify options to be preinstalled. Marcos talks more about the benefits of Workstations over local environments, especially in the areas of security and productivity. L’Oreal chose Google Cloud years ago when they began their transition to the cloud, Antoine tells us, and we hear how L’Oreal offered Marcos suggestions and feedback as Workstations was developed. Working with Cloud Workstations today, L’Oreal’s teams spread across the globe are able to begin realizing the dream of creating environments with parameters specific to different regions and areas.

While Cloud Workstations and Cloud Shell are similar solutions in some ways, Marcos helps us understand the differences as well. For example, Cloud Shell is less flexible while Workstations is highly customizable. Antoine talks more about the adoption process of Workstations at L’Oreal and how they plan to continue using the software with more teams in the future. He offers advice for other companies looking to introduce it.

Workstations works with the Software Delivery Shield suite to build and maintain a secure software supply chain. Security features developers are used to in productions services are easily applied to development environments in Workstations as well. Marcos talks about the future of Cloud Workstations, including deeper security integration.

Marcos Grappeggia

Marcos is a Product Manager at Google Cloud, leading Cloud Workstations and Cloud Shell. Marcos is an engineer from University of Campinas (Brazil) and École Centrale Paris (France). Prior to joining Google, he led product at Appurify (acquired by Google, now Firebase Test Lab), enabling mobile test automation on real devices for mobile developers.

Antoine Castex

Antoine is a curious French man, a Serverless Guru multiple times GCP Certified and C2C French Club Co-President & Co-Founder.

Cool things of the week

• Introduction to custom org policy video
• How to configure rules and policies in Google Cloud Armor video
• • 1:03 - What this video covers
  • 2:03 - How to create a new rule from scratch
  • 4:54 - How to clone an existing out-of-the-box rule and modify it to create a new rule
  • 7:44 - How to copy a rule or policy and apply it to multiple backends / Rate limiting feature
  • 12:46 - How to use a Rule in Preview mode and test a new rule before enabling it / Threat intelligence feature
  • 17:35 - Wrap up

Interview

• Cloud Workstations site
• Cloud Shell site
• Software Delivery Shield site
• Cloud IDE site
• Google Cloud Console site
• C2C site
• How to increase developer productivity with Cloud Workstations video

What’s something cool you’re working on?

Max is teaching his cats to do silly tricks!

Stephanie is planning a vacation!

Hosts

Max Saltonstall and Stephanie Wong