In line with the growing trend of cloud adoption, GCP (Google Cloud Platform) has witnessed remarkable growth, with its market share almost doubling from 6% in 2017 to 11% in 2022. It has emerged as a prominent player, garnering increased usage and popularity.
Businesses worldwide can now use the same technology and infrastructure Google uses to serve its end users, like Gmail, Youtube, and Google Search. With GCP, businesses no longer have to worry about building and maintaining data centers.
In this blog, we will outline the different services that Google Cloud platform offers, and how they can best benefit your business.
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What Is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of computing resources of computers such as data storage, web servers, computing power, and databases over the internet without the need for direct active management by the user. It allows you to access and use IT resources remotely without owning and maintaining any physical infrastructure. You can leverage a shared pool of computing resources provided by cloud service providers like AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure, and many more. With cloud computing, you can quickly scale your computing resources up or down based on your needs without investing in hardware upgrades. This flexibility allows your business to adapt quickly to its changing demands and handle peak workloads efficiently. Cloud computing is grouped based on the services provided. These include:- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
What Is Google Cloud Platform?
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services launched on April 7, 2008, by Google. It offers various tools and platform services for building, deploying, and managing applications and services. It runs on the same infrastructure that powers Google’s widely used products like Youtube, Google Search, and Gmail—ensuring reliability, scalability, and performance. GCP provides various services, including computing power, storage, databases, networking, machine learning, and analytics. It also supports serverless computing through its Cloud Functions and App Engine, which allows developers to focus on writing good code without worrying about infrastructure management. GCP has a global infrastructure that spans multiple regions and availability zones. With GCP, you can deploy your applications and data in various locations to improve performance and availability. Let’s examine how the Google Cloud platform stands out among other cloud service providers.Why use the Google Cloud Platform?
Competitive Pricing and Deals
Google Cloud Platform has much cheaper, more flexible, transparent, and predictable pricing plans for their cloud services than other providers. You are required to do this only for the time you have used the platform. You also get extra discounts if you decide to be a long-time customer.Live Migration
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) provides live migration, which allows for seamless and uninterrupted virtual machines (VMs) migration between physical hosts without any noticeable downtime. It ensures high availability and minimizes disruptions for applications running on GCP.Speed
Google Cloud offers its Google Cloud and Google App customers network speeds of up to 10Tbs. The network has connections in major centers across Asia, Europe, Japan’s largest cities, and many other parts of the world. High customer satisfaction is a result of the low-latency network’s quick data processing,Big Data Analytics
GCP has a strong focus on data analytics and machine learning capabilities. It offers services like BigQuery for data warehousing and analysis, Cloud Dataflow for stream and batch processing, and TensorFlow for building and deploying machine learning models.Redundant Backup
Google Cloud Platform has redundant backups. So, if the data you stored is lost, rest assured that Google will have created a backup for it. Our experts at Foghorn Consulting also provide GCP Disaster Recovery to prevent or recover any lost data.Google Cloud Platform Services
Google Cloud Platform provides its customers with a wide range of services with unique features that cater to various cloud computing needs. Here are some GCP service categories:- Compute
- Storage
- Databases
- Network
- Big Data
Compute
Computing is a key category on which Google Cloud Services depend upon. This category includes services for running and managing virtual machines (VMs) in the cloud. The primary service in this category is Google Compute Engine, which offers scalable and flexible VM instances. Some of the services under computing are:- Google App Engine
- Google Container Engine
- Google Cloud Functions
- Kubernetes Engine
Storage and Database
Google Cloud provides various storage and database options for different use cases. These services category makes it easy to store and query data, media files, backups, or other file-like objects. Google Cloud Storage offers scalable object storage for storing and retrieving large amounts of unstructured data. Cloud SQL provides managed relational databases, while Cloud Spanner offers a globally distributed relational database with solid consistency. Other services include:- Persistent Disk
- Cloud Memorystore
- Cloud Firestore
- Cloud Bigtable
- Cloud Spanner
- Cloud Datastore
- Firebase Realtime Database
Network
Google Cloud networking services are built to help you manage and optimize your network architectures in the cloud. With Google Cloud networking services, you can achieve high-performance, secure, and scalable network solutions. Some Google Cloud Network services include:- VPC – Virtual Private Cloud
- Cloud Load Balancing
- Cloud Armor
- Cloud CDN
- Cloud Interconnect
- Cloud DNS
- Network Service Tiers
Big Data
Google Cloud provides various big data services that enable businesses to process, analyze, and derive insights from large and complex datasets. These services are designed to handle big data challenges like scalability, performance, and ease of use. Here are some popular Google Cloud Big data services:- BigQuery
- Cloud Dataproc
- Cloud Datalab
- Cloud Data Studio
Advantages of GCP
- GCP has good documentation with a detailed API Reference guide and a hands-on section that guides you through implementing a google cloud service.
- GCP can easily integrate with other open-source software.
- Google Cloud Platform has different storage classes for each necessity – Regional (frequent use), Nearline (infrequent use), and Coldline (long-term storage).
- GCP has high durability, which means that your data can survive even when two disks are lost simultaneously.
- There are many regions around the world available that you can use to store your data.
