While Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure continue to lead the pack, Google Cloud Platform had a good 2019, generating $10 billion of revenue and firmly positioning them as a viable alternative for large and small businesses.
Google Cloud is working hard to market its unique benefits, hoping to capture a share of current and future digital transformation projects.
One of their newer innovations is Anthos, an enterprise hybrid and multi-cloud platform launched in April 2019, which lets users run applications from anywhere. Anthos is an attractive proposition that can help you accelerate application development and enable consistency across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. It is built on open source technologies, including Kubernetes, Istio, and Knative.
Multi-cloud Options
Percona’s 2019 Open Source Data Management Software Survey indicates that the future is multi-cloud as many businesses look at reducing the risk of vendor lock-in and downtime by spreading their data, applications, and technology across multiple providers.
About a third of survey respondents used multiple clouds for their databases, including 41% of larger companies. AWS dominated as the primary provider, but according to our data, smaller companies surveyed are more likely to use Google than Microsoft.
If you want to follow a multi-cloud strategy, but don’t just want to rely on the top two players, Google Cloud represents a great alternative.
Google also has some big names in its portfolio. Salesforce has an expanding partnership with Google and recently announced that they are working with them to simplify how organizations connect data across platforms, to help speed digital transformation.
Open Source and Open Cloud
Image courtesy https://cloud.google.com/open-cloud
Google believes cloud openness matters more than ever, as this leads to faster innovation, tighter security, and freedom from vendor lock-in.
Open Cloud is the idea that you should be able to use a common development and operations approach to deliver your applications to different clouds. Open source in the cloud gives your control over where you deploy your IT investments. For example, customers can use Kubernetes to manage containers and TensorFlow to build machine learning models on-premises and on multiple clouds.
Google also encourages its employees to engage with open source. According to data analyzed from the GHarchive.org dataset on BigQuery, in 2017, over 5,500 Google individuals submitted code to nearly 26,000 repositories, created over 215,000 pull requests, and engaged with countless communities through almost 450,000 comments. Googlers are active contributors to popular projects such as Linux, LLVM, Samba, and Git.
Security and Pricing
Google Cloud capitalizes on the same technology that underlies Google’s private global network. As a result, Google states that your data is protected and that it also meets rigorous industry-specific compliance standards.
Google Cloud also offers a range of pricing innovations aimed at giving customers increased flexibility. These innovations, such as per-second billing and sustained-use discounts, are intended to offer users a range of options that don’t lock them into potentially obsolete technologies.
Google Cloud Solutions
Google Cloud aims to help companies find solutions that modernize their IT, unlock business value, and enable them to participate fully in the digital economy.
Google Cloud’s technology and partners offer a range of flexible infrastructure modernization approaches. Once you’ve built your framework, you can leverage their technological innovation via a number of solutions:
- Virtual Machine (VM) Migration
- SAP on Google Cloud
- VMware as a Service
- High-Performance Computing
- Bare Metal Solution
- Windows on Google Cloud
- Data Center Migration
- Marketing Technology
Conclusion
Although Google Cloud might not be the leading cloud provider in the market, it has an impressive history of technological innovation, and a strong sense of market direction and future requirements.
Enterprises across multiple industries are taking advantage of Google’s technological advances, from embedded Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Digital Assistant, Search, Maps, Voice, and more. All of these are seamlessly integrated into Google Cloud.
Additionally, to avoid vendor lock-in and minimize potential downtime, many customers are looking at strategies where their data is shared across multiple clouds. Google’s commitment to open source and open cloud may well prove an advantage in this environment.
As a proud Google Cloud partner, Percona is committed to providing innovative solutions that help you make the most of your Google Cloud investment. Our Managed Services team provides world-class expertise to help you manage this high-performance database in this environment.
Credit: Google Cloud information obtained from https://cloud.google.com/
Want to learn more?
Read more of our blog series:
The Benefits of Amazon RDS for MySQL
When Should I Use Amazon Aurora and When Should I use RDS MySQL?
Embrace the Cloud with Microsoft Azure