Google has become synonymous with the cloud. Case in point, Google Cloud offers over 90 products that businesses can leverage to expand their offerings, gain more flexibility, and enjoy strategic advantages over other companies.
To get an idea of how big Google Cloud is, consider their 2021 global revenue. At over 145 billion dollars, it doesn’t get much bigger than that—and that’s just for their Software as a Service platform. You can also factor into that 80 billion for Public Cloud as a Service, and 92 billion for Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service. The total so far for 2021 comes in at 317 billion dollars.
As of 2020, the biggest companies using Google Cloud (and their expenditures) were:
- Verizon: $79.9 million
- Twitch Interactive: $63.8 million
- CenturyLink: $61.8 million
- LinkedIn Corp: $41.1 million
- NewsCorp: $40.9 million
- SAP: $40.1 million
- Facebook, Inc: $ 39.4 million
- Intel: $39.2 million
- Yahoo: $46.6 million
- Marriott International: $35.9 million
There’s no denying that Google Cloud has become the biggest fish in an already big pond. And given their competition, Amazon AWS and Azure, are also doing quite well, the cloud-native picture becomes quite clear.
It’s the present and future of technology.
What is Google Cloud?
When most think of Google Cloud, services like Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Calendar come to mind. That’s a completely different product. What we’re talking about is the Google Cloud Platform, which is a suite of cloud-based computing services that run on the very same infrastructure as those end-user projects.
The Google Cloud Platform was launched April 7, 2008, and was developed using the Python, Java, Go, C++, and Ruby languages. Google Cloud is composed of physical assets (such as computers and hard disk drives), and virtual resources (such as virtual machines and networks). All of this is housed in Google’s own data centers around the world. Each data center is located within a region, such as Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. Each region is separated into isolated zones. Each zone is identified by a letter.
Here’s a rundown of how Zones and Regions map out:
| Zone | Location |
|---|---|
|
us-west1-c
|
The Dalles, Oregon, North America
|
|
us-west2-a
|
Los Angeles, California, North America
|
|
us-west2-b
|
Los Angeles, California, North America
|
|
us-west2-c
|
Los Angeles, California, North America
|
When a user deploys a new project, they must associate it with a zone. These projects will also include the following:
- A project name (provided by the user).
- A project ID (provided by either the user or Google Cloud).
- A project number (provided by Google Cloud).
Google Cloud Platform provides everything you need to build and scale your projects, including:
- Compute Engine: virtual machines that run in the Google Cloud data center
- Cloud Storage
- Cloud SDK: the necessary command-line tools to work with Google Cloud
- Cloud SQL: MySQL and PostgreSQL database services
- Google Kubernetes Engine: container management and orchestration
- BigQuery: for data warehouses
- Cloud CDN: Content Delivery Network for delivering web and video
- DataFlow: streaming analytics
- Vision AI: custom and pre-trained AI modules
- Cloud Run: environment to run stateless containers
- Cloud Functions: event-driving compute platform for running services and apps
- Anthos: a platform for modernizing existing apps
What makes Google Cloud Platform such a viable platform for so many businesses is that it offers a best-in-class dashboard to help make managing all of these features and services incredibly simple. This removes a big hurdle from the process, so your developers can concentrate more on software engineering and less on platform and environment management.
What Can You Do With Google Cloud Platform?
With Google Cloud Platform, the sky’s the limit. You can do things like:
- App development
- Big Data analysis
- Containers
- DevOps
- Databases
- High-Performance Computing
- Hybrid and multi-cloud
- IoT
- Logging and monitoring
- ML/AI
- Serverless
- Storage
What Services Does Google Cloud Platform Offer
There are 3 primary services offered by Google Cloud. The first is IaaS, which is Infrastructure as a Service. This allows your company to run virtual machines on the Google Cloud Platform without having to invest in hardware to be deployed in an on-premise data center.
The next service is PaaS, which is Platform as a Service, which builds on IaaS and adds the operating systems and middleware (such as databases).
Finally, there’s SaaS, which is the software that is installed on the operating system.
These 3 services come together to create a complete environment for your business to run nearly anything you need to function. And considering all of this is running on Google’s exceptionally robust and reliable infrastructure, you can be certain it is dependable and capable of delivering the scale and power you require.
How Much Does Google Cloud Platform Cost?
As with all services of this nature, Google Cloud Platform is a pay-as-you-use service. Calculating how much you’d spend on Google Cloud Platform can be a bit tricky. However, Google does offer a handy pricing calculator that can assist you in getting a rough idea of how much your company would spend.
New users also get $300.00 in free credits, so it’s possible to “try before you buy.” But given Google Cloud Platform’s reputation, once you sign up for an account, chances are pretty good you’ll stick with it.
Conclusion
There are so many reasons why Google Cloud Platform is one of the most popular of its kind. Its vast, dependable, scalable, and user-friendly nature makes it possible for businesses of all types to leverage the platform to assist with digital transformation and growth beyond your wildest imagination.
