What is Google Cloud Platform – (GCP)? | Features and Procedure

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Google Cloud Platform (GCP) , is a cloud service offered by Google for data storing, data analytics, networking, machine learning and more that runs on the same infrastructure that google uses for itself use. But before knowing about GCP, you first need to know about cloud computing.

What is Google Cloud Platform?

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Launched in 2008 as an App Engine, a platform for developing and hosting web applications in Google-managed data centers, which was the first cloud computing service from the google company. In 2011 it extends its wings and added more services to the platform.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP), offered by Google, is a pack of cloud computing services like compute, storage, networking, Big Data, G-Suite and many more that executes on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its public user product, such as Google Search, YouTube and Gmail.

Want to get google cloud free VPS? Here is how

Why google cloud?

As they claim “Solving is in our DNA”. This brand has many things that make it different from its competitors.

• Reduce risk with world-class security
• Improve choice with hybrid and multi-cloud
• Stay nimble with flexible platform which makes cost savings at scale
• Spark innovation with AI and data analytics
• Benefit from Google’s ongoing innovation
• Develop with fully integrated open source software
• Scale alongside Google’s global network

Products and Services under Google Cloud Brand

Compute

• App Engine – Platform as a Service to deploy Java, PHP, Node.js, Python, C#, .Net, Ruby and Go applications.
• Compute Engine – Infrastructure as a Service to run Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines.
• Cloud Functions – Functions as a Service to run event-driven code written in Node.js, Python or Go.
• Cloud Run – Compute execution environment based on Knative. Offered as Cloud Run (fully managed) or as Cloud Run for Anthos.

Storage & Databases

• Cloud Storage – Object storage with integrated edge caching to store unstructured data.
• Cloud SQL – Database as a Service based on MySQL and PostgreSQL.
• Cloud Datastore – NoSQL database for web and mobile applications.
• Local SSD: High performance, transient, local block storage.
• Filestore: High performance file storage for Google Cloud users.

Networking

• VPC – Virtual Private Cloud for managing the software defined network of cloud resources.
• Cloud CDN – Content Delivery Network based on Google’s globally distributed edge points of presence.
• Cloud Interconnect – Service to connect a data center with Google Cloud Platform.
• Cloud DNS – Managed, authoritative DNS service running on the same infrastructure as Google.

Big Data

• BigQuery – Scalable, managed enterprise data warehouse for analytics.
• Cloud Dataflow – Managed service based on Apache Beam for stream and batch data processing.
• Cloud Data Studio – Business intelligence tool to visualize data through dashboards and reports.

Cloud AI

• Cloud AutoML – Service to train and deploy custom machine, learning models. As of September 2018, the service is in Beta.
• Cloud TPU – Accelerators used by Google to train machine learning models.
• Cloud Machine Learning Engine – Managed service for training and building machine learning models based on mainstream frameworks.

Management Tools

• Stackdriver – Monitoring, logging, and diagnostics for applications on Google Cloud Platform and AWS.
• Cloud Deployment Manager – Tool to deploy Google Cloud Platform resources defined in templates created in YAML, Python or Jinja2.
• Cloud Console – Web interface to manage Google Cloud Platform resources.

IoT

• Cloud IoT Core – Secure device connection and management service for Internet of Things.
• Edge TPU – Purpose-built ASIC designed to run inference at the edge. As of September 2018, this product is in private beta.
• Cloud IoT Edge – Brings AI to the edge computing layer.

API Platform

• Maps Platform – APIs for maps, routes, and places based on Google Maps.
• Apigee API Platform – Lifecycle management platform to design, secure, deploy, monitor, and scale APIs.
• Developer Portal – Self-service platform for developers to publish and manage APIs.

Want to get google cloud free VPS? Here is how

Top Users of Google Cloud

Twitter: A well-known micro blogging site. With people tweeting more and more every day, the data produced is enormously large. Google Cloud is used for storing and computing purpose.

PayPal: PayPal a well trusted and one of the oldest money transfer site partners with Google Cloud to increase security, build a faster network, and develop services for its customers.

eBay: eBay uses Google Cloud to innovate in image search, improve customer experiences in China, and train translation models.

HSBC: HSBC brings a new level of security, compliance, and governance to its banks using Google Cloud.

Discovery: Almost everyone knows about discovery network. It uses google cloud to store tons of information on it.

Bloomberg : With google cloud., the Bloomberg Terminal provides financial market participants with real-time financial market data for trading and decision making.

20th Century Fox: Data scientists at 20th Century Fox and Google Cloud have developed a Machine Learning software that can analyse movie trailers and predict how likely people are to see those movies in theaters.

Procedure to get Google Cloud

There are two versions provides by google. First is free one and the second is paid ones. Google provide free for newbies to experiment and learn about cloud services. You will get the credit of $300 to spend on Google Cloud Platform over the next 12 months. No auto-charge after free trial ends.

You just need to signup with your gmail account and provide detail about you and your credit card. Don’t worry, they will ask for your card information just to verify that you are not a robot. You won’t be charged unless you manually upgrade to a paid account.

Here is the link to the free trial of google cloud. In paid account, you pay as you use. Google Cloud offers the ‘use now, pay later’ policy. Users have to pay only for the services they use.

Top Alternatives of GCP

Even though, GCP has its own plus points which makes it biggest among its competitors. But google cloud lacks in some points with others. As google is new in this field, it is less accesible around the globe and requires more technical skill to handle. While few of its competitors have done well in this field. Two of its main competitors are:

Amazon Web Service (AWS) : Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon providing on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. It allows users to have at their disposal a virtual cluster of computers, available all the time, through the Internet.

Microsoft Azure : Microsoft Azure, commonly referred to as Azure is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers. Azure uses large-scale virtualization at Microsoft data centers worldwide and it offers more than 600 services.

IBM Cloud : IBM cloud computing is a set of cloud computing services for business offered by the information technology company IBM. IBM offers three hardware platforms for cloud computing. These platforms offer built-in support for virtualization.