{"id":650594,"date":"2013-04-04T13:00:33","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T17:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=627488"},"modified":"2013-04-04T13:00:33","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T17:00:33","slug":"google-cracks-open-access-to-its-compute-cloud-a-little-bit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/650594","title":{"rendered":"Google cracks open access to its compute cloud \u2014 a little bit"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Google Compute Engine<\/a> — the company’s response to Amazon’s EC2 service — is starting to open the floodgates to new users. While technically still in preview — frankly what at Google is not<\/em>\u00a0in preview? — customers willing to plunk down $400 a month for Google Gold customer support <\/a>can get access to GCE.<\/p>\n

Previously GCE was sort of an invite-only sort of thing, which made it analogous to a swank nightclub. If you can make it past the velvet rope and the surly bouncer — perhaps with a wad of cash — you’re in. Now you just need a couple hundred dollars a month. You could also sign up online for an account — but my nightclub analogy falls apart there. As a sweetener, Google also said it cut prices of its instances on average by 4 percent. It’s all outlined on the company’s blog.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Google<\/a>As GigaOM has reported here<\/a> and here<\/a>, many see GCE — which debuted last June — as perhaps\u00a0the only real competitor to AWS <\/a>on the compute side. Third parties are starting to support its APIs and some businesses who want either an alternative to AWS or a supplement to it want to try it out.<\/p>\n

In February, RightScale, which helps customers monitor and manage their multi-cloud implementations, said it will resell and support GCE<\/a>. That was right about the same time it started rolling out more comprehensive, tiered support options<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a0GCE, Google App Engine and other parts of its cloud empire.<\/p>\n

Of course, Amazon has ramped up its customer support options<\/a> — especially for businesses — over the past year and rolled out better management tools<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

Google won’t divulge the number of current GCE users or talk about the wait list, but a third party with knowledge of the situation, said there is a huge backlog of would-be users — tens of thousands of them — waiting to get in.<\/p>\n

That’s some kind of rope line.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:<\/strong>
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial<\/a>.<\/p>\n