An increasing number of businesses and organizations turn to cloud computing for a cost-effective, scalable, and hassle-free solution to their IT needs and challenges. Cloud computing helps small to medium enterprises keep up with larger companies because it makes powerful data processing resources available to all at a fraction of the cost of building and maintaining an in-house data center.
According to data provided by Canalys.com, Google Cloud was the third-largest cloud service provider in Q4 2020, commanding a share of 7% and enjoying a 58% growth. Amazon Web Services (AWS) led in Q4 2020 with a 33% market share, and Microsoft’s Azure captured second place with 20% of the share.
But today, we’re focusing on the Google Cloud Platform, sorting through the many services to show you the ones your business can most benefit from in 2021. These services will help your company achieve and maintain a competitive edge so that it can thrive in today’s IT-dominated marketplace.
If you’re interested in what tools Amazon Web Services offers, you can read about them here.
Google App Engine People want apps. Now you can quickly build and manage highly scalable applications on a serverless platform.
The rising number of online users today has fostered a correspondingly increased demand for new applications, so it’s essential to have a resource that makes developing and managing apps easier. That’s where Google’s App Engine comes in. Google’s App Engine is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) resource that gives software developers the advantages of Google’s scalable hosting.
Rather than create an app in-house, the App Engine lets developers create awesome apps directly on the cloud. This process is called “cloud-native” development, where programmers and developers can build, evolve, and deploy their applications remotely. So, not only can you create apps directly on the cloud, but you can manage them on the cloud as well. No need to take up in-house resources!
All in all, the App Engine allows programmers and developers to leverage the processing power of Google’s systems, providing rapid development and deployment, easy administration, convenient scalability, and the peace of mind from not having to worry about backups or hardware issues.
The App Engine is a popular service, reportedly used by organizations such as the New York Times, Stack, Snapchat, YouTube, and Delivery Hero.
If you want your company to keep up with the demand for newer and better applications, you need the App Engine.
Google Compute Engine Why bother buying your own servers when you can use a virtual machine?
Google Compute Engine is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) that offers cloud-based flexible and scalable virtual machines. This service allows organizations to bring Google’s formidable computing, storage, and network infrastructure to solve large-scale processing and analytic problems.
Compute Engine is one of Google Cloud’s most significant services, and it competes directly with Amazon Web Services since the latter gained much of its popularity by providing virtual computing.
The way this works is that Google’s virtual machines and servers exist wholly as software. This setup, in turn, provides customers with scalable hosting options designed to handle any workload your company may have. You can even design, build, and customize your own virtual infrastructure.
Instead of investing in the hardware, floor space, utilities, and personnel required to operate and maintain your servers and other computing resources, you can turn to Compute Engine and have the whole thing run remotely and cost-effectively. Google does all the heavy lifting.
Compute Engine grants even the smallest companies access to best-in-class computing power, just like the big boys. Call it the Great Equalizer, leveling the playing field enough for the smaller organizations to compete.
Companies like Dynanet Corporation, Campus Management Corporation, and ServiceSource International use Google’s Compute Engine, and it’s in heavy use in the restaurant, health care, and retail industries.
So, if your company doesn’t want to commit the resources to an in-house computer center, Compute Engine is a great alternative that’s powerful, flexible, and comparatively inexpensive. Whether your workloads are large or modest, Compute Engine will give you what your organization needs.
Google Cloud Storage When you need a secure place for all that critical data but don’t want to bother with data storage chores.
Data dominates twenty-first-century life, and there’s more of it than ever. There is so much information floating around about each of us, our finances, spending habits, credit histories, employment, health records, browser histories, and a whole lot more. Companies have even more data to contend with, so storage is such a critical IT function.
Fortunately, the cloud offers excellent data storage opportunities, and Google’s Cloud Storage ranks right up there as an important service for businesses of all sizes. Cloud Storage makes it easy to store and access your data while offering Google’s enhanced sharing and security capabilities. Google provides a localized location for data storage, improving its availability.
Google Cloud Storage is ideal for storing large, unstructured data sets. Unstructured data includes media and entertainment data, weather data, surveillance information, rich media, and audio data. Additionally, you can choose from several database storage options such as Cloud SQL for MySQL fully relational storage, Cloud Datastore for NoSQL non-relational storage, and Google's own Cloud Bigtable database.
Your company’s data is everything, and you need to not only have it stored and protected, but you also need to ensure it’s easily accessible and shareable to the right people. It’s a balancing act because you can’t have the data so protected that not even your people can access it! There’s such a thing as overkill. Fortunately, if you rely on Cloud Storage, you don’t have to devote any mindshare to those issues. Google handles that.
There’s also something to be said about having redundant backups. For instance, you may store data on your premises in your own data center. However, if there is an accident or disaster such as a fire or flood, that data is at risk. It’s best to have an offsite storage option just in case you can’t access your physical servers. Cloud storage to the rescue!
Companies such as Deutsche Bank and Twitter use Google Cloud Storage, so we’re talking about some heavy hitters. Your company can enjoy the same benefits if you opt for Cloud Storage, placing your structured and unstructured data in a safe, secure, yet easily accessible place. Additionally, you will avoid the costs and effort needed to create and maintain your own on-site data storage system.
BigQuery A reliable way to get the most out of Big Data and improve your business.
Big Data is commonly defined as vast volumes of structured and unstructured data, characterized by its size, volume, and diverse sources. Although companies need data to make sound decisions, Big Data in its raw form is too huge to be useful; it’s like drinking from a fire hose! Professionals use Big Data Analytics to help them refine, clean up, edit, and deliver that data into a useful form.
BigQuery is Google’s Big Data analytics web service, used to process massive, read-only datasets. Data analysts use BigQuery to analyze Big Data, perform ad hoc queries across multiple datasets of different structure levels, and share insights through the web.
This data warehousing system makes dealing with Big Data more manageable and helps businesses get the maximum benefit from the information glut. In an age where everyone and everything seems to be creating increasingly larger dataflows, BigQuery is a very useful tool to have on hand.
By analyzing Big Data, businesses can spot trends, predict shopping habits, and figure out where to direct their resources such as advertising, promotions, and actual production of goods and services. When you consider factors like pandemics, financial volatility, rapidly changing technology, and increasing competition, it makes sense that today’s businesses must deal with slimmer margins for error. Big Data, properly analyzed, helps improve the odds.
PayPal, Twitter, and Salesforce are just a few of the companies using BigQuery. Now your business can analyze data like the big guys and reap the benefits.
AutoML Time to serve our robot overlords. 😲
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are hot concepts in today’s IT landscape. We’re making machines smarter and able to learn more, thereby decreasing the human element. More companies turn to Machine Learning, using it for tasks like email filtering, image and speech recognition, making predictions, and even performing medical diagnoses.
Google’s AutoML is a suite of a half-dozen ML services bundled together and designed to help developers who aren’t familiar with Machine Learning to train high-quality models customized to their business needs. Developers can build their own models in minutes.
Bottom line, AutoML gives you all the tools you need to create your Machine Learning resources and leverage your data into something useful for your company. And even though robots won’t be completely replacing us anytime soon, Machine Learning can help you create resources that can handle mundane data tasks, filter out useless information, spot patterns, make predictions, and save your team's time.
Companies such as Imagia, California Design Den, and Meredith Digital use AutoML. Your business can use AutoML to make personalized recommendations on your website, filter out spam, and detect unusual transactions.
Wrapping It All Up Although Google Cloud Services offers so many more services, these five are the most relevant this year, embracing trends such as Machine Learning, Big Data, data storage and security, cloud processing, and developing applications.
However, every business is different, and you need to decide which services are most useful for your organization. There are loads of resources out there to help you make that call. Get the best resources in your toolbox and make cloud computing work for you and your organization!