{"id":657668,"date":"2013-05-13T14:15:16","date_gmt":"2013-05-13T18:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=644471"},"modified":"2013-05-13T14:15:16","modified_gmt":"2013-05-13T18:15:16","slug":"google-io-arming-for-the-battle-of-the-public-cloud-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/657668","title":{"rendered":"Google I\/O: Arming for the battle of the public cloud stars"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Google I\/O <\/a>this week, the elephant in the room cloud-wise, will be whether the company announces \u201cgeneral availability\u201d of the Google Compute Engine (GCE), the Amazon Web Services competitor\u00a0announced at last year\u2019s event. A month ago, Google cracked open access to GCE<\/a> by making what had been an invite-only service \u00a0available to any customers who pay $400 a month for Google Gold support. It\u2019s unclear how many customers took advantage of that offer \u2014 or even how many customers have Gold support. \"Google<\/a> My money\u2019s on Google taking the GA plunge but then again the company is known for fielding \u201cpreview\u201d products for years. Still, Urs\u00a0H\u00f6lzle, SVP of technical infrastructure for the Google and Greg DeMichillie, director of product management for Google\u2019s Cloud Platform, will host a session Wednesday afternoon <\/a>on the next-generation of cloud computing which will feature \u201cannouncements and demo important new features of the Platform.\u201d Hmmm,\u00a0smells like a GA announcement to me. A Google spokeswoman said she had nothing to share at this time but referred users to the above-mentioned session. One of the things Google is expected to do is drive use of its cloud platform via its Google Drive and Apps franchises and right on cue, Google on Monday said\u00a0<\/a>customers will get 15 GB of unified storage across Google Apps, Drive and Google +. According to the Google Drive blog post:<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo, instead of\u00a0\u00a0having 10 GB for Gmail and another 5 GB for Drive and Google+ Photos, you\u2019ll now get 15 GB of unified storage for free to use as you like between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While that\u2019s not really tripling the amount of storage for Google users, as some have reported \u2014 it actually spreads it across Google properties. But 15GB is still more than what competitive free services offer. Dropbox<\/a> offers 2GB for free; Microsoft SkyDrive <\/a>starts users at 7GB for free while Apple iCloud <\/a>and\u00a0Amazon Cloud Storage<\/a> provide 5GB before charges apply.<\/p>\n

GA or not, here it comes<\/h2>\n

But getting back to GCE, here\u2019s the thing: \u00a0even some AWS cronies say that GCE is the cloud infrastructure to watch in the upcoming year given Google\u2019s experience in scale-out computing. It would also make sense for Google to roll out a for-real load balancer service, which one AWS partner said is a huge hole in Google\u2019s platform strategy compared to both AWS and Rackspace. Google has also been working to beef up Google App Engine capabilities<\/a>, something that Snapchat co-founder Bobby Murphy will doubtless address at GigaOM\u2019s Structure event<\/a> next month. The popular Snapchat photo sharing service runs on GAE.<\/a>\u00a0Google telegraphed (by virtue of its Google I\/O agenda<\/a>) that will add a new language to the fold for its Google App Engine Platform as a Service (PaaS). GAE now supports\u00a0Java<\/a>,\u00a0Python<\/a>, and\u00a0Go<\/a>. Speculation at Reddit is that\u00a0PHP will get the nod\u00a0<\/a>. Thomas Clayburn over at InformationWeek <\/a><\/em>would prefer to see Google add Node.js or JavaScript first, so we\u2019ll see. Some also say Google needs better integrate its\u00a0Cloud SQL database service\u00a0<\/a>into its\u00a0cloud platform<\/p>\n

Battle for public cloud workloads ratchets up<\/h2>\n

Whatever Google\u2019s official roll-out plans, GCE is already considered a contender in a hard-fought battle for public cloud infrastructure dominance by virtue of Google\u2019s size and expertise. \u00a0AWS, launched in 2006, has a prodigious head start, but now with Microsoft\u2019s Windows Azure<\/a> \u00a0and GCE coming on line, AWS faces two extremely well-funded and tech-savvy rivals, both of which seem \u00a0determined to carve out a healthy chunk of this market. And then there are all the OpenStack-based public cloud options from Rackspace, HP and others. It\u2019s still very early on in the cloud deployment game so things should get very interest in the race to add services \u2014 and cut prices. <\/a>It could be a very good time to be a buyer of cloud services over the next few years.<\/p>\n

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