From A to GCP - a cloud computing from Google

Google is one of the most popular cloud service providers. Google Cloud Platform is a set of cloud computing services and tools that allow for the development of both startups and organizations with years of experience in the business. Thanks to modern and scalable infrastructure, it enables digital transformation. Each of the GCP services has been designed to easily integrate with others, and thus – to accelerate the implementation of solutions, optimize maintenance costs, reduce infrastructure load and improve the process of adoption to the cloud. GCP services are used by major players in various sectors of the world economy. Currently, Google Cloud Platform offers over 170 cloud services, tools and components that can be freely used to expand or design your own infrastructure from scratch.

GCP services support security, process monitoring, error tracking, bottleneck identification and many other. They allow easier application launch regardless of the technology that was originally implemented. They enable the infrastructure to be expanded with new functionalities and existing ones, without the need for major changes on the server-side. They provide storage of files, objects and content in a secure and scalable manner while allowing the creation and use of multiple databases. Google Cloud Platform services also allow for support and development of hybrid and multi-cloud solutions as well as migration between solutions. These are just a few examples of how you can use the solutions provided by Google.

Thanks to the appropriate selection of services and tools from the GCP portfolio, you can fully use the potential of cloud computing, while ensuring relatively low costs of maintaining the environment and optimizing its operation. Confirmation of the effectiveness of using Google Cloud Platform is visible in his position as a leader in cloud solutions in the Gartner report. Market giants such as Spotify, Revolut and Twitter run their businesses based on the Google Cloud.

Spotify uses GCP computing power to manage data deposits and handle huge numbers of queries in real-time. The platform is used by over 200 million users, and 40,000 new songs and recordings are added daily.

Revolut creates based on GCP a scalable, stable and secure infrastructure that supports the automation of implementations and the speed of performing transactions in different currencies. 

Twitter uses GCP’s computing power and the ability to store and process huge data volumes generated by millions of users every day.

You can find more use cases at Google Cloud Customer Stories.

Benefits from choosing GCP:

• Cost optimization. The fee is charged per second for consumption. If you do not use the service – you do not pay. The ability to increase cloud disk space only during periods of heavy traffic allows you to optimize costs.
• High level of security. Thanks to a number of control procedures (including encryption, advanced authorization, access control, etc.), GCP can boast security as one of its business values. All solutions are regularly subjected to security audits and checked for compliance with the latest legal regulations. 
• The flexibility of solutions. Not only in financial terms, which allows you to pay for consumption in seconds but also in business terms. By providing specially designed solutions, it allows you to focus on business development, instead of focusing on such elements as disk space limits, maintaining physical infrastructure, overloading during increased traffic or lack of scalability.
• High availability. Google Cloud Platform ensures the stability of its solutions at a very high level ~99,999%, which means that the designed application or infrastructure can be available 24/7, regardless of the number of users or the amount of data processed, if the architecture is designed and built in accordance with good practices in the field of high availability. 

Check the potential of GCP with Google Cloud Free Tier

Google Cloud Free Tier is a tool providing free Google Cloud resources, regardless of whether you are taking your first steps with GCP or are an experienced architect who wants to experiment with cloud solutions.

Google Cloud Free Tier has been divided into 2 parts:

• 12-month free trial – with a 300 USD for use on any Google Cloud services. To control expenses, it’s a good idea to set up notifications to let you know of actual costs.
• The Always Free package, which includes limited access to free GCP resources for 12 months. You can find the full list of services here.

There are several conditions that you must meet to be able to use the 12-month trial version. These include: setting up a new billing account, previous non-use of services offered by Google Cloud (for billing), no business account. Details can be found here. The trial version expires after 12 months (from the day of setting up the account) or when the credit limit will be used. After the trial period, Google stores your data only for 30 days.

What’s more – free GCP credits apply to all cloud resources, with a few exceptions:

• inability to run 8 cores or virtual CPUs at the same time,
• no possibility to increase computing power,
• inability to add GPU to virtual machine instance.

The given examples may change as soon as the account is upgraded to the business option. 

After the free version has expired, you can still use your account. Each of the GCP services has a pricing model according to which a consumption fee is charged. The exact cost can be estimated using a specially prepared calculator. In addition, there is always the option of upgrading your account or closing it.

To practically use the power of GCP resources, it is worth familiarizing yourself with a series of QuickStarts short tutorials, a series of Cloud Minute video or a repository with code samples in several programming languages. In addition – thanks to the Google Cloud Training you can choose the path and direction in which you want to develop. And thus – gain skills and competences desired in the labor market and confirmed by certificates. 

Cloud computing by Google has a key advantage over on-premise solutions; users incur costs of the platform only during its actual use, having a fully scalable architecture, allowing without any problem to handle even a sudden increase in the number of users or transactions. 

If you have an idea and want to test it in practice using GCP, we’ll be happy to help you. As a GCP Sell Service Partner, we have the necessary knowledge and experience to lift your business up to the clouds!! 

Write to kontakt@lcloud.pl, and we will prepare a technological ground for your concept.