Today, we are excited to announce the public preview of search indexes and related SQL SEARCH functions in BigQuery. This is a new capability in BigQuery that allows you to use standard BigQuery SQL to easily find unique data elements buried in unstructured text and semi-structured JSON, without having to know the table schemas in advance. By making row lookups in BigQuery efficient, you now have a powerful columnar store and text search in a single data platform.

A global leader in pharmaceuticals found themselves faced with a unique spin on a common challenge: Their biopharmaceutical division — responsible for producing vaccines and generating over $1 billion in annual sales — was struggling to turn raw data into trusted insights. Data underlies everything the global pharmaceutical company does, however, without data they can trust, they would be at risk of taking longer to get vaccines to market and incurring higher expenses along the way.

Greek philosopher Heraclitus wasn’t talking about the challenge of today’s enterprise IT landscape but the quote certainly fits. From the advent of the first digital computer in the 1940s to the emergence of first public cloud in 2004, the rate of change has only accelerated. In fact, over 60% of corporate data resides in the cloud in 2022, up from 50% last year.