Google's Hybrid Cloud Push: New Edge & On-Prem Solutions

Google Expands Cloud Offerings with New Hybrid Solutions

At Google Cloud Next, the company’s yearly customer event, Google unveiled a comprehensive range of hybrid cloud services. These services aim to deliver computing capabilities at the network edge, within partner facilities, or directly within a customer’s own data center.

Addressing Customer Needs for Specialized Workloads

Sachin Gupta, Google’s General Manager and VP of Product for IaaS, explained that the core strategy behind this announcement is to support customers with specialized workloads. These workloads may not be ideally suited for a purely public cloud environment – a need consistently voiced by prospective clients.

This necessitates offering viable alternatives. Gupta highlighted that several factors can hinder a customer’s immediate transition to the public cloud.

Factors Influencing Hybrid Cloud Adoption

• Low latency requirements can make data transfer inefficient.
• Large data volumes may be costly to move to and from the public cloud.
• Security, privacy, data residency, and compliance regulations may pose challenges.

These considerations prompted Google to develop a suite of solutions adaptable to diverse scenarios beyond the traditional public cloud model.

Deployment Options and Partner Collaboration

Solutions can be deployed at the edge within Google’s global data centers, at partner data centers like those of telcos or colo facilities such as Equinix, or as a managed server within a company’s private infrastructure.

Notably, these servers are provided by partners like Dell and HPE, differing from Amazon’s Outposts, which utilizes Google-manufactured and managed servers.

These machines will not have a direct connection to the Google cloud, but Google will maintain complete software management and provide unified management of both cloud and on-premise resources.

Consistent Computing with Containers and Virtual Machines

The hosted solution focuses on delivering a consistent and modern computing experience, utilizing either containers and Kubernetes or virtual machines.

Google delivers updates through a secure download portal, allowing customers to manage these updates themselves or delegate the task to a third-party vendor.

Anthos: The Central Management Platform

Anthos serves as the unifying element, providing control and management of software regardless of its location. This includes on-premise environments, data centers, and even public clouds from competitors like Microsoft and Amazon.

Google's Strategy in the Hybrid Cloud Market

This comprehensive approach signifies Google’s intent to establish a strong position in the expanding hybrid cloud market. While Microsoft and IBM are also actively pursuing this sector, Google’s platform-centric strategy, powered by Anthos, could provide a competitive advantage.

This is particularly relevant for organizations with specific requirements that prevent full migration to the cloud.

Market Share and Growth Momentum

Google recently achieved a 10% market share in the cloud infrastructure market, as reported in August, demonstrating a robust growth rate of 54%. This indicates increasing momentum, although Google still trails behind Amazon (33% market share) and Microsoft (20%).