Josh Gwyther, the west coast’s Head of Customer Engineering for Google Cloud, spoke to students about their developing database platform.

Gwyther has worked for Google over two years, approaching clients to run applications on the platform. According to Gwyther, Google Cloud is a data center that people and companies can rent. Rather than building a database, the service provides a storage unit for data from other companies and allows applications to operate through Google.

“What you’re doing is putting everything that’s your company and putting it in another company’s infrastructure,” said Gwyther. “It should be looked at more as a partnership. You’re going to business with Google. All your assets will rely on our cloud to do its job.”

On top of providing data storage, Google Cloud provides services for data analytics, security and networking for developers. Applications such as Snapchat and Spotify operate their platforms through Google Cloud according to Gwyther. However, Gwyther imagines the platform growing more in the next few years.

“I know for a fact that in the future when I’m ready to take advantage of this, Google’s gonna have 10 times the kind of tools to help me,” said Gwyther.

The event was organized by the Marketing Information Systems Association, a campus organization integrating business, technological and professional development.