Google’s Cloud is available on premises to take on Microsoft, Amazon

Google’s Urs Hölzle
Google/Business Insider screen
capture

• Google is making a version of its cloud available for
  companies to run in their own data centers, otherwise known as
  “on premises” computing.
• On premises computing is the old-fashioned way of doing
  IT. It’s the thing that cloud computing was supposed to
  change.
• But because most companies are not ready to unplug
  their data centers and put all their IT in the cloud, cloud
  players are finding ways to bring their cloud tech to a
  company’s data center.
• This is a major head-bow by Google to do what it takes
  to win more big cloud customers.

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Google on Tuesday announced a new cloud product it is calling GKE
On-Prem. It is a version of Google’s cloud that will run in its
customers’ own private data centers and it is a major attempt by
Google to grab customers away from Microsoft and Amazon.

A company can sign up to use Google’s cloud for some of its IT
needs and can use this product for the tech that it won’t, or
can’t, move to the cloud. This kind of computing is known as
the “hybrid” cloud, in that it is a mix of cloud computing and
old fashioned “on premises” computing.

Hybrid is Microsoft’s specialty. And it is the one thing that
Amazon’s cloud, Amazon Web Services, isn’t known for, although
AWS does dabble in the area through its partnership with VMware
and other
less prominent projects, like  Amazon’s own version of
Linux.

“We’re ending the false dichotomy between on premises and cloud,”
said Google’s Urs Hölzle on stage to describe this new
product.

Hölzle is Google’s top infrastructure engineer. He’s Google
employee No. 8, the technical genius who built most of Google’s
infrastructure used for things like search and Gmail and is now
involved in turning Google’s data centers into cloud products and
services.

Google
demonstrates its new GKE On Premise product at the Google Next
2018 conference
Google/Business
Insider screen capture

He has also historically preached that companies, eventually,
won’t need their data centers at all but will do everything in
the cloud. That is, they will rent the computers and software
they need from cloud vendors and won’t manage it themselves at
all anymore.

He’s right, too. A growing number of companies are choosing to do
exactly that but they are doing so with Google’s competitor
Amazon Web Services. This thanks to AWS’s massive lead in the
number of features it offers.

So this new Google on-premises product represents an
understanding that baby steps are needed for Google to really
compete neck-and-neck with Amazon.

Google believes it has superior technology in a number of
critical areas, including security, machine learning/artificial
intelligence, and area called containers which is a way to
fine-tune the cloud for the needs of different apps. (Google
invented a super popular container technology called Kubernetes).

Meanwhile, this product, GKE On-Prem, also lets Google compete
better with the acknowledged No. 2 cloud player, Microsoft.
Microsoft is known for doing hybrid computing. Microsoft grew up
on the era before cloud computing, when the whole IT world was
on-premises. Microsoft
has since shown that it is a master of cloud computing, too.
It’s cloud, Azure, has always been set up to do hybrid.

Google’s GKE On-Prem is expected to be released to
early customers for testing in the fall.