Cloud Pro: Google Cloud Integration: Choose, Compare and Launch

What's inside

1. Level 1: The Integration Map: Every Service on One PageFree
   Learners place each Google Cloud integration service into its group (queues, publish-subscribe, event routing, workflow and orchestration, API management, connectors) and learn its current and former names, so they can read old docs, Terraform and job adverts without confusion.
2. Level 2: The Standard Integration ProfileFree
   Learners build the integration profile used to score every service later: sync or async, commands or events, ordering, delivery guarantees and duplicates, message size and volume, latency, fan-out, long-running processes, partners and SaaS, API consumers and security, team skills and cost model.
3. Level 3: Pub/Sub for Application Messaging
   A nine-part lesson on Pub/Sub as the backbone between applications, covering ordering keys, dead-letter topics, retry policy, exactly-once delivery, dated limits, cost levers and a gcloud and Terraform quick start with clean-up.
4. Level 4: Eventarc Standard and Eventarc Advanced
   A nine-part lesson on event routing: Eventarc Standard triggers for Google sources and direct events, versus Eventarc Advanced buses, enrollments and pipelines that filter, transform and fan events out to Cloud Run, Workflows and VPC-hosted HTTP endpoints.
5. Level 5: Workflows for Orchestration
   A nine-part lesson on Workflows as a serverless orchestrator: YAML steps, connectors, callbacks, retries and parallel branches, with the step and state-transition limits, the internal vs external step pricing model and a deployable quick start.
6. Level 6: Cloud Tasks for Controlled Dispatch
   A nine-part lesson on Cloud Tasks as an explicit queue of commands to HTTP targets, covering rate and concurrency controls, scheduled delivery, task deduplication by name, retry configuration, limits, pricing and a quick start.
7. Level 7: Cloud Scheduler for Timed Triggers
   A nine-part lesson on Cloud Scheduler as managed cron that targets HTTP, Pub/Sub and Workflows, covering time zones, retries, authentication, per-job pricing and the trade-offs of time-based integration.
8. Level 8: Apigee X: Full API Management
   A nine-part lesson on Apigee X: proxies, policies, products, developer portals, analytics and monetization, with environment and proxy limits, the subscription and pay-as-you-go pricing models, and a provisioning quick start.
9. Level 9: Apigee Hybrid: Runtime You Operate
   A nine-part lesson on Apigee hybrid, where Google runs the management plane and you run the runtime on Kubernetes, covering what you operate, version support windows, sizing, licensing and when data-residency or on-premises needs justify it.
10. Level 10: API Gateway: Lightweight Front Door
    A nine-part lesson on API Gateway for fronting Cloud Run and Cloud Run functions with an OpenAPI spec, covering authentication options, quotas, per-call pricing, feature limits and its gap with Apigee.
11. Level 11: Application Integration and Connectors
    A nine-part lesson on Application Integration as low-code iPaaS and Integration Connectors as managed links to SaaS and databases, covering triggers, data mapping, connector node pricing, execution limits and a quick start.
12. Level 12: Deprecations, Renames and Retiring Features
    Learners use the official deprecation pages and release notes to track which integration features, UIs and versions are retiring, with dates, and build a habit of checking them before committing a design.
13. Level 13: Queues, Topics and Events
    Learners separate commands sent to a queue, messages published to a topic and facts emitted as events, and map each style onto Cloud Tasks, Pub/Sub and Eventarc with the coupling each one brings.
14. Level 14: Idempotent Consumers and Dead Letters
    Learners make consumers safe under at-least-once delivery with idempotency keys and dedup stores, and handle poison messages with dead-letter topics and queues plus a tested redrive process.
15. Level 15: The Transactional Outbox
    Learners fix the dual-write problem by writing business data and an outbox row in one database transaction, then relaying to Pub/Sub through polling or change data capture.
16. Level 16: Sagas and Compensation
    Learners coordinate multi-service business transactions without distributed locks by using sagas, designing compensating actions, timeouts and visible saga state.
17. Level 17: Workflow Versus Choreography
    Learners weigh central orchestration against event choreography on visibility, coupling, change cost, failure handling and price, and learn hybrid designs that use both.
18. Level 18: API Design and Versioning
    Learners design consumer-friendly integration APIs: resource modelling, pagination, error formats, idempotency keys on POST, and versioning and deprecation strategies enforced at the gateway.
19. Level 19: Securing Integrations End to End
    Learners secure both service-to-service and external API traffic with service accounts, OIDC tokens, OAuth, API keys, mTLS, VPC Service Controls and secret handling, choosing controls by consumer type.
20. Level 20: Observability and Tracing Across Services
    Learners make asynchronous flows visible by propagating trace context through messages, events and workflows, and use Cloud Trace, Logging, Monitoring and service-level metrics to find where a message got stuck.
21. Level 21: Migrating Existing Integrations onto Google Cloud
    Move queues, scheduled jobs, ESB flows and API gateways from on-premises or another cloud onto Google Cloud services without losing messages or breaking consumers.
22. Level 22: Worked Cost: Two Integrations End to End
    Price two realistic integrations line by line from dated list prices: an event-driven order flow and a partner-facing API with orchestration. See which cost levers actually move the monthly bill.
23. Level 23: Building the Weighted Selection Scorecard
    Turn the standard integration profile from Level 2 into a weighted scorecard with knock-out criteria, a clear 1–5 scale for each criterion and weights that come from the job's own needs.
24. Level 24: Scoring Asynchronous Messaging and Event Jobs
    Apply the scorecard to sample asynchronous jobs and choose between Pub/Sub, Eventarc Standard or Advanced, Cloud Tasks and Cloud Scheduler for each one, with written reasons.
25. Level 25: Scoring Orchestration, API and Connector Jobs
    Apply the scorecard to orchestration and API jobs: Workflows versus Application Integration versus choreography, Apigee X or hybrid versus API Gateway, and when Integration Connectors justify their cost.
26. Level 26: Sensitivity, Ties and Team Fit
    Stress-test scorecard results by changing weights, volumes and team skills. Learn when a narrow win is real and when it is noise, and break ties honestly.
27. Level 27: Mapping Services to Another Cloud
    Map each Google Cloud integration service to its nearest equivalent on another cloud, such as AWS or Azure, and note where the match is only partial.
28. Level 28: Collecting Dated Cross-Cloud Evidence
    Gather evidence you can defend, with dates and sources, on limits, prices, SLAs and the work you operate yourself on both clouds, so that the comparison holds up in review.
29. Level 29: Scoring Google Cloud Against Another Cloud
    Run the weighted scorecard across both clouds for the same integration jobs, include portability and lock-in, and reach a cross-cloud conclusion that the evidence supports.
30. Level 30: Final Challenge: Decision Workshop and Selection Record Exam
    Run a full decision workshop on a new integration brief. Use the whole course, from map and profile through service fit, patterns, observability, cost and the cross-cloud score, and finish with a one-page selection record you can defend.

Access

The first 2 levels are free with a free account. Every level, the podcast edition and the AI tutor come with All Access at £4.99/month or any Creator plan — see pricing.

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