What Is It?
Google Cloud is the software from Google that allows you to connect with applications online. Programmes like Google Cloud Connect give you all of the benefits you’ve come to expect from Google Docs, but with the added convenience of being able to use Microsoft Office programmes, such as Word and Excel. Google Cloud Print allows you to print documents from anywhere, and Google Cloud storage allows you to store files and access them anywhere, at any time.
What Does This Mean?
You can utilise all of the applications that you are familiar with, and can conveniently share your data and works in progress with friends, family and colleagues, or with yourself when you are away from your desk. On Google Cloud Connect you and those you’ve ‘invited’ to the file can simultaneously edit and update.
What Else Can It Do?
Google Cloud is invaluable for business users, as it enables users to build applications and websites very simply. In one place you can build, store, share and update. With tools such as the App Engine, Compute Engine, BigQuery and SQL there is little need to go elsewhere for your business needs.
What’s New?
Now, Google’s Cloud system has been updated, so that it is bigger, better and faster. You can read faster, write faster, update faster, and simply be more efficient. We all know that time is money, and this software is one that really lives up to that, and offers workable solutions. The storage space is much larger now, too; the RAM has been increased to 16GB, which is four times what it was before. This means that there is less need for ‘clearing out’ your files, less need to save further copies for backup, and much saved time.
How Is It Better?
The way that the software replicates the data has been changed, so that saves are faster, meaning that you are less likely to lose data, and the whole process is sped up. Certain customers, on the Premier package, can also decide if they want to save their data and have their database working from data centers in the US or Europe.
Can I Try It?
Yes. Google has brought in an offer for users to trial the Cloud SQL, so that you can test the software and try it out, with a small amount of memory, and 500MB of storage until June 2013. The news of this update has come shortly after Amazon’s announcement of their two new services. The trial version of Google Cloud is similar to Amazon’s free tier, which has existed for some time.
How Much Does It Cost?
If you want to use the updated Cloud SQL, complete with its 16GB of memory, it costs $46.84 per day, if you want 10GB of storage, with 32 million requests, or $3.08 per hour, with an additional 10c for each million requests. Or simply 24c a month to use up to 1GB of memory.
About the Author: Interested in cloud solutions? The author of this article recommends Procserve the e-procurement platform from Procserve.
Image by keso / Flickr
