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Cloud clout: Who are the real powers in the cloud?

Tags:
Applications,
SaaS,
Services,
Cloud

Cath Everett ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 18 May 2009 14:39 BST

CLOUD'S BIG FIVE: Google

Search giant Google is one of the early pioneers of cloud computing. Although the company was early to market with its Google Apps online personal productivity applications, which were launched in 2004, at the time it described the offerings as software-as-a-service (SaaS).

The company did not start using the term 'cloud computing' for another couple of years, but is nonetheless considered something of a poster child for the service delivery model. It is at the very least one of the concept's biggest advocates as its advertising-based business model is predicated on it.

How long has Google operated in cloud computing?
The company was set up in 1998, but introduced its first cloud service beyond its online search tool on 1 April, 2004.

What cloud services does it provide and what is the pricing model?
Examples of web-based services delivered using a cloud-computing infrastructure are Search and Gmail, which are both advertising-based and free to users.

Google's SaaS products are known as the Google Apps suite of personal productivity applications. The suite comes in three versions and is used by more than one million customers.

Then there is Standard Edition, which is advertising-based and includes email, calendaring and word processing. There is a 50-user limit for small businesses, after which they must upgrade to Premier Edition, which also includes applications and services such as email security and archiving and telephone support. It costs $50 per user account, per year. Education Edition provides Premier Edition services to not-for-profit and educational establishments for free.

In May 2008, Google launched the development and deployment platform App Engine, which is aimed at developers building consumer applications. It is in limited preview release or beta, but a full business version is due to follow.

What back-end cloud infrastructure does Google have in place?
Google declined to provide details on the number of its datacentres or their locations, but said its cloud services were located around the world and delivered from the same facilities as its online search tool.

What service-level agreements (SLAs) or security controls does Google provide?
Google Apps Premier Edition comes with a 99.9 percent uptime SLA. The company's datacentres comply with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountant's Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) 70 Type 2 standard.

What procedures does Google operate if customers should decide to switch vendors or bring services back in-house?
Google includes proprietary application programming interface level tools in its products to enable customers to pull data from existing systems and to extract it if they wish to migrate elsewhere. It also supports industry standards such as Internet Message Access Protocol (Imap) for email message retrieval and document formats such as OpenOffice and Microsoft Word.

How does it position itself in terms of cloud computing?
Dave Armstrong, Google's director of enterprise for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, says: "Google originated in the cloud. It's where we were born so we have that heritage and carry it through in everything we do. Having started with search, we've got the infrastructure today to solve our users' problems. But the fact that we were born online means that we don't lock people in and we have the business model to underpin our activities and make them sustainable."

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