Google Cloud Targeting Enterprise Cloud Users with Google Next ‘18 Announcements Date: August 2018 Author: Edwin Yuen, Senior Analyst

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ESG Brief Google Cloud Targeting Enterprise Cloud Users with Google Next ‘18 Announcements Date: August 2018 Author: Edwin Yuen, Senior Analyst

Abstract: At the recent Google Next ‘18 conference, Google made several significant announcements about Google Cloud and the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The new GCP services and programs were a clear sign that Google is focused on meeting the needs of enterprise cloud users. Google discussed new programs and offers to support enterprise users, and the product announcements showed that hybrid cloud is an important cloud model for GCP. Companies that are using cloud computing should carefully consider the Google offerings and move beyond the perception that GCP is focused on consumer or cloud-native-only workloads.

Overview In July 2018, Google held the Google Next ‘18 show in San Francisco, CA. The annual show is focused on the Google Cloud, which includes Google Cloud Platform (GCP), G Suite, Google’s cloud productivity suite, Google Maps Platform, Chrome Enterprise, and Android Enterprise. The event itself showed significant momentum for Google Cloud, with nearly 25,000 attendees this year, up significantly from the 2017 event.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Significant momentum for Google Cloud: Google was able to discuss how it is gaining significant momentum across the board for its offerings, including:

o 4 million businesses paying for G Suite and over 80 million students using G Suite for Education.

o 800 million active Google Drive Users.

o 3x growth in core compute hours used in GCP, 4 billion containers launched each week in GCP, and 90% growth in the members using the Gaggle AI service.

o 175% year over year growth in unit sales of managed Chromebook licenses and 20 million updates in Google Maps per week.

o Over $30 billion invested in the past three years in Google Cloud, with the largest private network in the world supporting it.

• A focus on supporting enterprise adoption and hybrid cloud workloads: Google Cloud now focuses on the full lifecycle of helping businesses manage their workloads and data, where the companies must collect, transform, analyze, visualize, and activate the workloads into the cloud. Google Cloud recognizes that businesses will not simply abandon their data centers for public cloud and that hybrid cloud will be an integral part of the future compute model. With this in mind, Google is committed to offering hybrid cloud solutions for its cloud services, a concept it promotes as “bringing the cloud to the customers.”

In addition to enhancing support for hybrid cloud, Google Cloud has ramped up support for enterprise customers. In 2017, Google talked about hiring more enterprise sellers and adding enterprise support and licensing options. In 2018, Google Cloud announced a new partner program, Google Cloud Global Partner Advantage, along with over 3,000 partners at the Next ‘18 show, furthering efforts to build a large partner ecosystem that can support the wide range of enterprise customers’ requirements. Finally, Google announced new offers for helping customers transform their applications for the cloud, as opposed to simply lifting and shifting existing applications into cloud VMs. This includes new container solutions and leveraging partners in supporting Oracle and SAP workloads.

• New serverless/container services and on-premises Kubernetes: Supporting the effort to help customers transform their applications, Google Cloud announced the new Google Cloud Services Platform. The new Cloud Services Platform brings together the Google Cloud services supporting cloud applications, including Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), GCP Marketplace, and Stackdriver monitoring service. In addition to these existing services, Google announced several key new parts of the platform:

o The GKE serverless plug-in enables serverless applications to run in Kubernetes managed containers, creating an easier path for serverless and extending serverless beyond just functions.

o Managed Istio is a service for managed implementations of Istio in Google Cloud that provides connectivity, management, and security for microservices applications.

o GKE On-Prem is a managed on-premises implementation of GKE, allowing for single-plane-of-glass management of Kubernetes across hybrid clouds and the ability to build and deploy application-consistent environments.

A Major Step Forward for Google Cloud These announcements from Google Next ‘18 show a major step forward in the positioning and commitment of Google Cloud. While some in the industry have been dismissive of Google Cloud, framing it as a cloud-native-only, startup- /consumer-focused public cloud, the moves made by Google have shown how serious the company is about becoming a leading enterprise provider.

We saw in 2017 the beginning of Google’s commitment to build up both the products and sales/support infrastructure that enterprise companies expect from their vendors. Although relatively new in the space, Google has rapidly built up its enterprise model and has shown in 2018 that it will continue to grow both its own capabilities and its partner ecosystem.

Of even greater significance is the recognition by Google that customers move to the cloud for a variety of reasons, all of which have their own advantages and roadblocks. By looking at the complete lifecycle for the migration to the cloud, not just the end deployment into cloud services, Google Cloud has positioned itself well to support customers in whatever part of the cloud migration journey they are in. Just as important is the recognition that hybrid cloud is an integral part of the future cloud landscape, likely the final cloud configuration for most organizations, and that Google Cloud needs to support and nurture these hybrid clouds. What sets the Google Cloud apart from other cloud competitors is its viewpoint on hybrid

© 2018 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Brief: Google Cloud Targeting Enterprise Cloud Users with Google Next ‘18 Announcements 3 cloud. Google is promoting what ESG calls the “cloud down” hybrid cloud, where the focus is on the applications built in the cloud and extending them back to the on-premises infrastructure. This is the opposite of most hybrid cloud vendors, which choose an “infrastructure up” hybrid cloud, where the focus is on the on-premises infrastructure and extending that into the public cloud.

The new GKE On-Prem solution is a key “cloud down” solution and the first competitor to Microsoft’s Azure Stack solution we have seen. The GKE On-Prem solution is further differentiated by not being tied to specific hardware/infrastructure, being based on Kubernetes and containers, and its ability to leverage existing VMware vSphere installations.

Finally, the new GKE serverless plug-in cloud may become the most significant announcement of all. In the current implementations, serverless solutions are limited to functions-as-a-service, supporting microservices applications in public clouds. But this configuration limits the ability of serverless to create end-to-end applications and separates it from the growing container and Kubernetes movement. The new GKE serverless plug-in, and the open source Knative technology it is based on, brings serverless and containers together. By bringing serverless onto GKE, Google Cloud combines serverless and containers, running on-premises or in the cloud, on one platform. This ensures that users don’t have to choose serverless or containers and empowers them to focus on making great applications leveraging both models.

The Bigger Truth After Google Next ‘18, Google Cloud has made a clear statement about its position in the public cloud space. Google Cloud is ready to be more than just an equal to the other major hyperscale clouds, with differentiation based on their open source commitment and “cloud down” view for hybrid cloud. The growing acceptance of Kubernetes helps power Google Cloud and gives Google a vehicle to bridge the VM-based users of legacy systems and the cloud-native and serverless applications of modern systems.

What sets Google apart is its willingness to create new technology or services to help customers and users on to the Google Cloud. This is crucial because much of the promotion of cloud services today is about what the cloud can offer and the expectation that users need to move into the cloud. What we have seen from Next ‘18 is Google showing customers why they should move into the public cloud, and why move into Google Cloud specifically. This message could resonate with companies, especially those that are just starting down the cloud migration path. Any enterprise, especially those looking at cloud migration beyond just lift and shift, should closely follow and consider the new offerings from Google Cloud.

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