Google Cloud Platform (GCP): What is it and what products and services it offers

Because of the rapid evolution, tremendous growth has been seen in Cloud Computing. Because of the various Cloud players (like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, etc.), choosing one perfect one has become quite challenging.

This article will discuss what Google Cloud Platform for developers is and what makes it distinguishable and unique from the rest. Read further to find out. 

Google Cloud Platform – What is it?

Before diving into the details, it is crucial to figure out Google Cloud Platform and what services it offers. 

Well, we’ve already learned that it is a Cloud Platform that offers an array of services in storage, networking, computing, big data, machine learning, etc. The Cloud infrastructure is almost the same that Google uses for end-user products, for instance, Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube, etc.

The first Google cloud tool was introduced back in 2008 as Google App Engine, continuously growing and introducing various new features. 

In terms of revenue, Google Cloud Platform is considered the third largest cloud provider after AWS and Microsoft Azure. 

What Makes It Different?

There is a reason why Google Cloud Platform is so distinctive and versatile. Here are some things which make it different from others.

Per-second billing was first introduced by Google for its infrastructure-as-a-service compute offering, Google Compute Engine. This service is offered for people using open-source Big Data System, App Engine flexible environment, and Cloud Dataproc. 

Besides, Google Compute Engine also offers spontaneously applied sustained-use concessions. These are automatic discounts that a user gets for running a virtual machine instance for a certain period in the billing month.

Products and Services Offered by GCP

Here we have categorized the Google Cloud Platform Services and Products. Have a look.

1. Computing and hosting
2. Storage
3. Databases
4. Networking
5. Big data
6. Machine learning

Computing and Hosting

Computing and hosting are further classified into the following categories.

Cloud Functions

With the help of cloud functions, you can develop single-purpose procedures. These functions are the ones connected with events raised by the app, services, or infrastructure. 

App Engine

This platform helps in forming and hosting the applications in a data-centered center managed by Google. With this, you can develop your Apps in two distinctive environments, flexible and standard, that support languages like Java, Python, Go, Node, etc.

Compute Engine

By using instances (the virtual machines), you can create your applications just like you could do with your hardware infrastructure.

Google Kubernetes Engine

This gives you the flexibility to use the hybrid clouds and on-premises to manage, deploy and scale the apps. 

Storage Services

Multiple types of storage services are provided by Google to easily backup your applications, media, and files. It offers a large and scalable data capacity. The different varieties it comes in include:

• Regional provides localized storage location and high availability.
• Multi-regional provides geo-redundancy and maximum availability. 
• Coldline gives you the lowest cost storage for instant disaster recovery and backup. 

Database services

Google Cloud Services support NoSQL and SQL both. This consists of:

Cloud SQL

It is a fully managed service that offers PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and MySQL. 

Cloud Spanner

It is an assembled RDBMS (Regional database management system used by Google for its services. It provides easy transactional consistency, SQL, schemas, and querying.

Networking Services

It provides an array of networking services like Virtual Private Cloud used by your compute engine. Other than this, it also uses firewall rules which govern the traffic entering your network. Cloud DNS is also used to maintain and publish the DNS records. 

Big Data Services

This includes Big Query, which is a data analytics web service used to process large read-only documents. Moreover, it also consists of Google Cloud Dataflow that delivers series for real-time data and batch data to stream applications. 

Machine Learning

This includes cloud video intelligence, speech-to-text, cloud natural language, cloud translation, cloud vision, and Dialogflow. All of which combine to give you convenience at work. 

Bottom-Line

The good thing about GCP is that you can easily avail the Google Cloud Platform free version and save lots of data, including your pictures, applications, and important office files. GCP comes with tons of versatile features, all of which are listed above. Thus, if you are still confused about which Cloud Service to use, trust me, GCP is the one.

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