Thomas Kurian (CEO - Google Cloud)
Google Cloud has delivered a portfolio of solutions consisting of hardware and software designed to extend the vendor’s infrastructure to the edge and into users’ own data centres.
Dubbed Google Distributed Cloud, the new offering can be used to migrate or modernise applications and process data locally with Google Cloud services, including databases, machine learning, data analytics and container management.
The product can be deployed in a range of environments, such as customer-owned edge or remote locations like retail stores, factory floors or branch offices, which require localised compute and processing directly in the edge locations.
It can also support customer-owned data centres and colocation facilities to help address strict data security and privacy requirements, and to modernise on-premises deployments while meeting regulatory compliance.
Additionally, the offering can be run across multiple locations, letting customers leverage over 140 Google network edge locations around the world.
Users can also take advantage of an operator’s edge network and tap into 5G/LTE services offered by the cloud vendor’s communication service provider (CSP) partners.
Google Distributed Cloud Edge, one of the offerings under the new portfolio of solutions, is designed to be a fully managed product that brings Google Cloud’s infrastructure and services closer to where users’ data is being generated and consumed.
According to the vendor, Google Distributed Cloud Edge, which has been launched in preview, gives organisations the ability to run 5G Core and radio access network (RAN) functions at the edge, alongside enterprise applications, to support mission-critical use cases such as computer vision and Google AI edge inferencing.
Announced as part of this year’s Google Cloud Next event this week, Google Distributed Cloud occupies the same space in the market as Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Outposts and Microsoft’s Azure Stack offerings, both of which give users the ability to deploy the cloud vendors’ services and capabilities in various environments.
As such, the launch of Google Distributed Cloud sees the vendor take another step in its efforts to compete against its top two rivals, AWS and Microsoft, in terms of hybrid cloud capability, although Google Cloud’s open source-based platform Anthos already provides some capabilities in this area.
Indeed, the Google Distributed Cloud product is built on Anthos, which can help to unify the management of infrastructure and applications across on-premises, edge and in multiple public clouds, while also offering consistent operation at scale.
Google Cloud has touted the new offering’s ability to tap into its global infrastructure that delivers performance, availability and security, while Anthos running on Google-managed hardware at the customer or edge location provides a services platform upon which to run applications securely and remotely.
Organisations can also leverage third-party services from vendors in their own dedicated environment. At launch, a diverse portfolio of partners, including Cisco, Dell, HPE and NetApp, are supporting the service, according to Google Cloud.
The launch of Google Distributed Cloud comes as the vendor announces the formation of its new Google Cybersecurity Action Team, also revealed as part of this week’s Next event.
The Google Cybersecurity Action Team draws upon experts from across Google to form what the company believes will be the world’s “premier security advisory team”.
Google Cloud claims the new Team has a singular mission to support the security and digital transformation of governments, critical infrastructure, enterprises and small businesses.
On the security front, the vendor has also announced the launch of its Google Work Safer offering, designed to help organisations, their employees and partners collaborate and communicate securely and privately in the hybrid work environment.
According to Google Cloud, Work Safer brings together the cloud-native, zero-trust solutions of Google Workspace with BeyondCorp Enterprise for secure access with integrated threat and data protection, providing companies with access to best-in-class security for email, meetings, messages, documents and more.
Work Safer extends to Pixel phones managed with Android Enterprise, Chrome Enterprise Upgrade and HP Chromebooks.
Organisations can also leverage Google’s Titan Security Keys for account protection, reCAPTCHA Enterprise for website fraud prevention, Chronicle for security analytics and a variety of migration services for a seamless transition.
