Google Enters the Cloud Computing Game
For several years, analysts had wondered if Google would release a public cloud that would formally compete with Amazon AWS. Today, Google has decided to get into public cloud computing game and go head to head with players such as Amazon, Microsoft and IBM. Google has already permeated much of our everyday lives. The thing that Google hasn’t conquered is how to become a provider of services to corporate or government clients. By offering public and private cloud services, Google looks to take market share away the existing players in the emerging cloud market.
Google isn’t diving into this market without doing its research. In fact, several companies and start-ups have been chosen by Google to test drive their new cloud offerings. One company that has benefited greatly from Google’s platform as a service is SnapChat. SnapChat recently turned down a multi-billion dollar offer from Facebook. That’s incredible to think about when you consider the fact that SnapChat is around 2 years old and the company employs only 30 people. In a New York Times article, SnapChat technical officer Bobby Murphy was quoted as saying, “I’ve never owned a computer server.”
With any cloud computing model, the big upside is efficiency. With Google’s cloud, users are able to setup new servers in less than 60 seconds. An even bigger upside is the amount of raw computing intelligence Google provides to corporations. This allows big businesses as well as small to medium enterprises to use Google’s cloud to carry out number crunching computing tasks while utilizing big data analytics that weren’t previously available. Google has also promised to discount its online data storage options from 10%-60%, depending on which data storage service you select. Google aims to provide better than 99.95% availability on critical computing projects in its cloud. This service level agreement guarantee is often higher than what businesses can provide to their end users by utilizing in-house resources. Google has been quietly honing it’s cloud offerings and consumers can expect a plethora of offerings to be available soon that will directly compete with Amazon AWS.
