What are the Google Cloud Platform Services

Recent years have witnessed rapid expansion in the Cloud Computing market. Cloud providers such as VMWare, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Cloud are all increasingly popular choices on the market today. According to one report, the global public cloud service market was worth an estimated $178 Billion worldwide by 2018, growing at an annual compound growth rate of 22% from $146 billion in 2017.

In this blog post, we'll take a closer look at all the Google Cloud Development Services that comprise the Google Cloud Platform. Though Google offers numerous other services and APIs, only those listed below fall under its terms of service, service level agreements (if applicable), and support coverage.

What Is Google Cloud Platform (GCP)?

GCP (Google Cloud Platform) is a collection of Google's computing resources made accessible via services to the general public as a public cloud offering.

Google Cloud Platform resources consist of physical hardware infrastructure such as computers, hard disk drives, solid-state drives, and networking components contained within its globally dispersed data centers, where any components custom-designed using similar patterns to those available in Open Compute Project are housed.

These physical resources are made available to customers via virtualized resources, such as virtual machines (VMs), as an alternative to them constructing and maintaining their physical infrastructure.

GCP provides integrated services that integrate software and hardware products, offering access to their respective resources. GCP currently provides over 50 IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS offerings ranging from computing, Storage, and databases Networking, Big Data Machine Learning, Identity Security Management, and Developer Tools Management and Developer tools, among others.

GCP services can be utilized independently or combined for developers and IT professionals to create custom cloud infrastructures hosted on Google's same infrastructure that powers products like Search and YouTube.

Difference Between Google Cloud and Cloud Platform

Google Cloud is an array of services provided via the internet that help organizations transition into digital. Public cloud infrastructure used for hosting web-based applications forms part of this umbrella service offering, while individual providers make up Google Cloud.

Other services provided by Google Cloud include:

• Google Workspace was previously known as G Suite or Google Apps. This product provides identity management for organizations as well as Gmail and collaboration tools.

• Enterprise versions of Android and Chrome OS provide users with access to web-based applications.

• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for machine learning services provide software-to-software communication between applications.

GCP provides the foundation of Google Workplace, but we mean more by talking about its Google Cloud Consulting Services when discussing GCP.

Google Cloud Platform Services

Google Cloud Platform offers various services across its different regions. Some services may only be available within certain areas. Major Google Cloud Platform offerings include:

Service 1: Compute

Google Cloud Platform offers flexible computing options that you can tailor to fit your requirements, with virtual machines offering unprecedented customization potential and containers providing direct deployment of code directly or through containers.

• Google Compute Engine: Google Compute Engine is the Infrastructure-as-a-Service component of its Cloud Platform that powers Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, and other services. Users can utilize this component of Cloud Platform to launch virtual machines on demand using this infrastructure service.

• Google App Engine: This allows users to build and host applications on Google systems.

• Google Kubernetes Engine: It provides an environment for deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications using Google infrastructure.

• Google Cloud Container Registry: This service allows private container images to be stored safely within Google Cloud, offering some features from Artifact Registry's universal repository manager - a recommended service for managing container images and artifacts on Google Cloud.

• Cloud Functions: On-demand availability of computing system resources such as data storage and processing power without direct management by users.

Service 2: Networking

This category covers services related to networking, including those found within the Storage domain, for example:

• Google Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): Compute Engine virtual machine instances, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters, and App Engine flexible environments are all managed by VPC for global, flexible, and scalable access to cloud resources and services.

• Google Cloud Load Balancing: Load Balancing on Cloud is a fully distributed software-defined managed service built upon Google App Engine's frontend-serving infrastructure.

• Content Delivery Network: Google Cloud CDN caches HTTP(S) load-balanced content close to users using its globally distributed edge points.

• What is Google Cloud Connect: This free plug-in enables users to automatically save and sync any Microsoft Office document, PowerPoint presentation, or Excel spreadsheet to Google Docs (using either Google Docs formats or Microsoft Office formats available on Windows 2003, 2007, and 2010).

• Google Cloud DNS: High-performance, global, and fully managed DNS service offering RESTful API to publish and manage DNS records for applications and services.

Service 3: Storage and Databases

This domain provides services related to data storage, such as:

• Google Cloud Storage: Google Cloud Storage provides a RESTful online file storage web service accessing Google's Cloud Platform infrastructure for data storage and retrieval.

• Cloud SQL: Cloud SQL provides fully managed database services that allow you to easily administer, maintain, and monitor relational databases.

• Cloud Bigtable: With support for thousands of commodity servers and petabyte-scale storage capability, Cloud Bigtable manages structured data across petabytes of storage capacity with precision and speed.

• Google Cloud Datastore: On Google Cloud Platform, Google Cloud Datastore is an easily scalable, fully managed NoSQL database service.

• Persistent Disk: These durable network storage devices allow instances to access like physical disks.

Service 4: Big Data

Storage Domain offers services related to big data, including Google BigQuery:

• Google BigQuery: BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless data warehouse designed for petabyte-scale analytics with query support using ANSI SQL queries.

• Google Cloud Dataproc: Dataproc is a fully managed, highly scalable service for running Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, Apache Flink, and Presto—also over 30 open-source tools and frameworks. With Dataproc's easy integration into Google Cloud, modernizing data lakes with ETL or secure data science at scale is now within reach at an unbeatable low price point.

• Google Cloud DataLab: Google Cloud DataLab is an outstanding BI tool that integrates easily with Cloud Storage and Big Query for exploratory research data analysis; discover patterns using various package techniques via Python programming language.

• Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Provide messaging between applications using reliable asynchronous messaging technology. Cloud Pub/Sub is optimized for seamless synchronization between services.

Service 5: Identity and Security

The storage domain offers services related to identity and security, including:

• Cloud Resource Manager: Cloud Resource Manager allows users to efficiently organize GCP resources by grouping and hierarchically structuring them into Organizations, Folders, and Projects.

• Cloud IAM: Administrators can use IAM to determine who can perform actions on certain resources, providing greater control and visibility into how Google Cloud Implementation resources are managed centrally.

• Cloud Security Scanner: The Security Scanner is designed to identify any security vulnerabilities present in App Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), and Compute Engine web applications.

• Cloud Platform Security: Cloud security encompasses practices and technologies designed to protect enterprise security from external and internal threats.

Service 6: Management tools

The Storage domain contains services dedicated to monitoring and management. These include services like the following.

• Stackdriver: Google Stackdriver is a free cloud computing management service provided by Google that requires a credit card payment to access. Includes performance and diagnostic data (in the form of monitoring, logging, tracking, error reporting, and alerts) for public cloud users.

• Monitoring: Monitoring refers to a means of controlling, tracking, and managing operational workflows within an IT cloud infrastructure.

• Logging: Cloud Logging is a fully managed service from Google that lets you store, search, analyze, monitor, and alert on logged data and events from Google Cloud in context with other Telemetry Data so that you can spend less time troubleshooting applications and more time creating and improving them.

• Error Reporting: Error reporting can help you quickly spot problems by continuously analyzing exceptions and grouping them intelligently into meaningful groups tailored specifically for your programming language and framework.

• Trace: Cloud Trace is a distributed tracing system that collects latency data from applications and displays it in Google Cloud Console.

• Cloud Console: Google Cloud Console can be described as a web interface that enables administrators to track breakdown costs, manage issues and resources efficiently, and more.

Benefits of Google Cloud Platform Services

Following is a list of benefits associated with using Google Cloud platform services:

Benefit 1: First-rate Security Level

As hacking and dark web activities increase and cybercriminals use increasingly sophisticated tactics to reach their goals, an increasing number of web surfers have started placing greater importance on protecting themselves while surfing online. Studies conducted have demonstrated that Google makes every effort to secure customer data as effectively as possible.

An outstanding feature of Google Cloud Platform is their commitment to continuous updates, upgrades, and staff education - boasting more than 500 staff in just their security department alone! So, when choosing this cloud service, you can rest easy knowing your data will remain safe through regular check-ups.

If there's ever a data breach, Google Cloud provides immediate notification and managed accesses that allow you to track every revision made and identify who made them as well as review logs of activities taken by employees of the cloud provider. Minimizing attacker damage while preventing further incidents will be tangible benefits of the cloud for those concerned about their online security.

Benefit 2: Affordable Price in Comparison to Alternative Solutions

One of Google Cloud's main attractions is its cost-effective pricing compared to alternative solutions like Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, or Microsoft Azure solutions. Compared with these competing offerings, GCP stands out by not charging extra money for services you don't use - rather making payments only when they get consumed - through per-second billing, which is of immense help for consumers who used to pay hourly charges even when only needing its services for minutes at a time.

Benefit 3: Achieving High Availability and Minimizing Downtime of Websites

One of the key determinants of website effectiveness and success is availability. Without access, even stunning content won't matter, with visitors leaving quickly due to site failure, resulting in search engine rankings slipping down even more rapidly than anticipated by you alone. Unfortunately for you, your web hosting provider can drastically affect the uptime of your site!

GCP provides access to an expansive global network that is protected against downtime by shifting to redundancy systems when server outages occur, offering its users peace of mind.

Given Google's commitment to provide 99.99% uptime for every customer as stipulated by its Compute Engine Service Level Agreement, an increasing number of users recognize this feature of its Cloud Platform as an attractive feature.

Benefit 4: Global Presence of Data Centers, Networks, and Cloud Services

One key advantage that Google Cloud offers over its main competitors is its expansive global network, one of the largest worldwide. This is not simply boasting; this advantage genuinely improves users' experiences when choosing vendors - this large internet hosting provider even offers global coverage with data centers located in remote regions around the world!

This is precisely what leads to faster speeds and improved performance when visiting websites: proximity between the hosting location and users allows them to experience fast-loading websites that reduce bounce rate while increasing conversion. Google Cloud Platform places great emphasis on this aspect and can deliver speeds of 10 Tbps or greater - considerably faster than competitors' offerings.

Benefit 5: Ongoing Network Expansion

While Google's infrastructure is already impressive and, for some, a key reason for their selection of this vendor, they continue to improve it by expanding coverage in new areas to run additional network edge points.

Scaling provides the opportunity to delight customers by decreasing connection latency and improving performance across a larger number of regions around the globe. Enhancements don't just involve reaching new locations; rather, they focus on expanding connectivity through maritime connectivity infrastructure and its global cloud infrastructure.

Google Cloud Platform's mission to maximize network bandwidth, speed up data flow, and ensure more robust cloud operations by redirecting traffic during outages is clear: they have invested millions in laying undersea cables to optimize network capacity. This undisputed benefit helps maximize network capacity.

Benefit 6: An Easy and User-Friendly Cloud Provider

Building your website or app from scratch requires many difficult decisions that could lead to disagreements later on. From choosing a domain registrar and selecting one of their available names to selecting which content management system platform will best meet your needs, server specifications needed, and space needs analysis, along with linking databases directly to websites. These all must be taken into consideration before beginning work on anything tangible. Choosing a cloud provider with simple yet easy use may help ease the stresses of building websites or applications from the beginning.

GCP can come to the rescue when it comes to web server deployment, offering the easiest method of deployment and saving users from having to find answers to every question they might have about setting up web-serving stacks. Users are provided solutions with predefined settings for everything necessary for start-up, including storage disk, database, virtual machine, etc.

Google Cloud offers additional benefits, such as getting Google-managed SSL certificates that automatically renew domain names and top-of-the-line DDoS protection with Cloud Armor. In comparison to similar vendors, GCP was much easier to set up. Amazon Web Service's LightSail solution offers identical benefits but is more complicated, taking longer and requiring much more effort to set up than GCP does.

Benefit 7: Differing Levels of Customer Support

It should come as no surprise that on-time support service is essential in creating a positive experience for customers. Yet even though website hosting setup may appear easy enough, a high percentage of users still need help with setting up their websites.

At such a crucial juncture, they must receive an extensive answer that allows them to move on without needing help day and night. Google Cloud Platform stands out by consistently offering excellent customer service that comes in three options.

1. Full-Scale Paid Support

When users select one of the paid plans from Standard, Enhanced, or Premium plans, they gain access to expanded support for Google cloud computing services ranging from Standard (response time, communication channels used, languages supported, and options available to address urgent problems).

A premium plan guarantees customers a 15-minute response time 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Furthermore, this support comes complete with an assigned technical manager to be used as your main point of contact for all tech inquiries and the option to adapt support according to each product need.

2. Support from Google Cloud Community

While all this sounds appealing, not everyone can afford to pay to receive answers to their question. Luckily, another option exists that offers free access to an active industry peer community and knowledgeable users that serve almost like customer support members for Google Cloud.

Around 20,000 tech enthusiasts in this community are available to assist users with solving their issues and finding answers to their inquiries. Furthermore, Google Groups offer customers an avenue for posting any queries they wish and engaging in discussions.

3. Comprehensive Support Knowledge Base

GCP's documentation can ease customer support burden while making decisions easier and reducing company costs for customer support teams. Suppose you consider yourself an adept techie who enjoys dealing with this field directly. In that case, GCP will enable faster resolution times, easier decision-making processes, and increased company profitability for all those working on customer support teams.

Cloud vendors such as Google Cloud provide tutorials, a selection of code samples, release notes, and much more to assist customers with setup issues - and much of this assistance comes at no cost to users!

Conclusion

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) stands out in the world of cloud computing services as a powerful force, offering innovative solutions for businesses and developers alike. Boasting robust infrastructure, cutting-edge tools, and commitment to sustainability, GCP has established itself among the premier cloud service providers.

GCP provides organizations with everything from compute and storage options, machine learning and analytics, global network, and low latency access and is ensured by Google data center technology, a comprehensive suite of services to enable scaling, innovating and optimizing operations.

Google Cloud Platform remains at the forefront of cloud services, empowering businesses to harness its power to accelerate innovation, boost efficiency, and meet digital transformation goals. GCP remains an invaluable partner for organizations looking to thrive in today's digital economy.

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