The cloud computing industry was worth around $483 billion in 2022, and it's still growing rapidly. There are many companies offering access to cloud services. Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure are the market leaders, but Google is eager to compete in this space, and Google Cloud is slowly gaining popularity, having an 11% market share, according to a recent report by Statista.
Whatever cloud services you choose to use, it's crucial to have a robust backup and recovery system in place. The Veeam Google Cloud Backup solution offers secure backups for Google Cloud instances, as well as hybrid/multi-cloud deployments, helping systems administrators better protect the data they have stored in the cloud.
Google Cloud is a service that includes the Google Workspace, along with some other cloud services running on Google's infrastructure. There are more than 100 products under the Google Cloud umbrella, covering areas, such as:
Compute
Storage/databases
Networking
Big data
Machine learning/AI
Identity & security
IoT
API platforms
Enterprise versions of Android and Chrome OS
Google Workspace products
Users can rent resources in different parts of the world, depending on their needs. The Google Cloud is divided into 37 different regions, each of which is then divided into multiple zones. Most regions have at least three zones. Offering a variety of zone options allows organizations to choose a server near their users to improve performance.
Google Cloud covers a variety of cloud features. Users can take advantage of App Engine, the Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering to quickly deploy apps. Alternatively, they can use compute engine to spin up virtual machines and tailor the network and the services they take advantage of to suit their needs.
Google Cloud offers a variety of choices, including:
Compute services: Spin up virtual machines or use the App Engine to run applications written in Ruby, Python and other popular languages.
Storage and databases: Use the Database as a Service offering to create MySQL, Postgres or MS SQL databases, use object storage for large volumes of unstructured data or take advantage of NoSQL databases or high-performance SSD storage.
Networking solutions: Control your traffic with CDNs, load balancing and other networking features. Manage domains with Cloud DNS, and create secure software-defined networks with the Virtual Private Cloud offering.
Big data and analytics tools: Use highly performant, scalable tools for data warehousing, processing and analytics. Options include BigQuery, Looker and Cloud Dataflow.
Machine learning (ML) and AI capabilities: Take advantage of APIs for text-to-speech and translation, image analysis, and more. Use the Cloud Machine Learning Engine for training and building powerful ML models.
The Google Cloud service has a lot to offer developers and organizations. As with other cloud hosting platforms, it offers scalability and flexibility. You pay only for the resources you use, making it a cost-effective way to run services that may have fluctuating demand.
When you run your own on-premises or colocated servers, you're limited to the capabilities of that hardware. This means either over-provisioning and having services that are underutilized a lot of the time or accepting downtime/poor performance during periods of peak load. Cloud services can scale based on your computing needs.
Google Cloud is a popular choice because it has a robust, global infrastructure. Whatever locales you need to serve, Google has a presence that can reach them. In addition, by choosing Google Cloud you're benefiting from the company's robust security and compliance with international privacy and security laws. You also benefit from the company's extensive experience in hosting high-demand applications.
Google Cloud provides the infrastructure required to run a variety of services and applications. If you're looking to deploy your own applications to Google Cloud, you'll be taking advantage of its offerings, such as compute resources, storage, networking, machine learning products and more.
Google Cloud aims to compete with Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS, offering high availability, the option to deploy to numerous regions, scalability and performance.
Google Cloud Services and Components
If you've used other cloud service providers, you'll be familiar with many of the offerings of Google Cloud. It offers everything you need to deploy and scale applications, including:
Compute Engine: Run virtual machines to deploy servers or applications.
App Engine: Quickly and easily build monolithic, server-side rendered websites in Python, Go, Node.js and other popular languages.
Kubernetes Engine: Manage containers quickly and easily, even for enterprise-scale workloads.
Cloud Storage: Take advantage of high-performance SSDs, enterprise-grade SQL databases, NoSQL storage and more.
BigQuery: Get BI insights and generate reports using data from multicloud deployments with this scalable, powerful data warehousing solution.
Why Choose Google Cloud?
Google Cloud is a logical choice if you're looking for a cost-effective way to deploy applications to the cloud. Because there are so many data centers and Google has such strong infrastructure, you'll benefit from global reach, low latency and high performance.
If you already use any Google services, it's easy to integrate them with Google Cloud. Google also provides powerful tools for analytics and data processing, as well as high-capacity storage options for those who require them.
Finally, between compute engine and app engine, you have the flexibility to use any programming language, framework or tools you desire. App Engine makes it easy to deploy web applications written in anything from Python to Node.js, and those who want more control over their server environments can simply spin up a virtual machine and deploy any OS, servers and other applications they wish to.
Google Cloud offers scalability, flexibility and control, along with convenient tools for monitoring and analytics. It also has good documentation and extensive training materials available, making it easy for developers who are used to monolithic architectures and bare metal hosting to get used to working with microservices and the cloud.
Use Cases for Google Cloud
There are many reasons an organization might choose to use Google Cloud instead of traditional hosting, including:
Web and mobile app development: Free yourself from the responsibility of configuring servers for websites/mobile apps. Take advantage of scalable hosting that can provide a good experience for your users, even during peak traffic times. Back up user data using Veeam Backup and Recovery to ensure business continuity at all times.
Data analysis and visualization (data backup and recovery): Process large amounts of data quickly and easily, and generate reports whenever you need them. Why purchase a server with sufficient memory/storage to handle the data you're working with if you run those reports only once or twice a year? Simply pay for the computing resources you use when you need them. Take advantage of cloud servers to back up your data securely, both on- and off-site.
Machine learning model deployment: Machine learning models must be trained on large datasets for best results. Google Cloud offers support for popular machine learning models, making it easy to get your own trained models up and running as quickly as possible.
Internet of Things (IoT) applications: Monitor and control IoT devices through the cloud. Google Cloud offers secure, private communication options for your IoT projects. From security to supply chain monitoring, Google Cloud helps you manage the data you're collecting.
Google Cloud may not yet have the market share of Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure, but it's still a major player in the cloud space. Many organizations have opted for Google Cloud, thanks to the ease of integration with their existing Google ecosystem.
If you're looking to get started with cloud services, Google Cloud could be a logical choice, thanks to its broad feature set, high performance and global presence.
While Google offers many powerful security features and manages the infrastructure you deploy your applications to, it's still important to have your own backup and recovery plan. Our Google Cloud Backup solution offers fast, reliable and secure backups for all the data you store in Google's Cloud, giving you peace of mind that if anything goes wrong, such as a ransomware attack, a hacking attack, a bug in your applications or some catastrophic outage, you'll be back up and running again as quickly as possible.
If you'd like to know more about our Google Cloud Backup services, contact us today to schedule a demo.