What is GCP and how you can use it for your business

Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, Google Meet, and so on are probably not new tools to you. These products are often on your radar, even if you don’t use Google’s toolkit. But are you familiar with the Google Cloud Platform and how it works?

Cloud technologies have increasingly grown in popularity in recent years. That’s understandable since the trend of businesses going online has increased dramatically over the last few years. It started even a lot earlier than the pandemic happened, but we can not also ignore the Covid influence of this tendency. While talking about the migration to the cloud, we always think about the prominent players on top of the cloud technologies, and Google Cloud is definitely among them.

In this blog, we will highlight one of the essential elements in building a business online — Google Cloud Platform (GCP); plunge into some solutions you may not have known, and delve a little deeper into the history to introduce you to the product.

What is GCP?

Google Cloud is a collection of services that can help large, medium-sized, and small businesses go digital. The Google Cloud Platform is also part of the Google Cloud, which provides a place to deploy your own and host your web applications.

It runs on the same infrastructure used for Google’s end-user products and provides modular services for computing, data storage, data analytics, and machine learning. GCP is available in multiple regions and zones globally and is considered one of the leading cloud providers in the industry. It offers a variety of tools, libraries, and services for developing, deploying, and managing applications in the cloud.

GCP is known for its extensive catalog of services, global recognition, and competitive pricing. It has experienced significant growth and profitability and is projected to be worth between $400 billion and $750 billion in the next five years.

GCP’s advantages include its robust infrastructure, scalable and reliable infrastructure, and strong partnerships with companies like NetApp and Radisys Corporation. It also offers a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model and allows users to trial its services. Small and medium-sized businesses can use GCP for free or at a low cost, making it an attractive option for cost-effective data and application management. GCP’s partnership with Google Cloud Platform also provides additional benefits and features for customers.

You need Google Cloud Platform services to create not just a standard website but a web application that will help your customers. For example, you sell furniture and would like to create an application on your site to calculate the size of the closet that would fit your customers. Or, you’re making a sports portal, and you need to give your trainers the ability to calculate their body measurements to see who should get in shape. By creating such an interactive application on your website, you not only create quality and convenient services but also create a good image for your brand.

You can also use the Google Cloud Platform when you need an application with:

• Artificial Intelligence;
• Powerful analytics;
• Massive data center;
• Massive data storage;
• Cost efficiency benefits.

At the same time, the cloud works so that you pay only for the services you use. You don’t pay for the entire system at once. Now, to better understand how the cloud works, let’s dive a little into the history of how this service was created.

“Google is truly a reliable leader in the field of cloud computing. We can meet the needs of our projects using GCP services, all while getting all the necessary tools for tracking. Migrating a portion of our infrastructure from bare metal to the cloud is fast and trouble-free.” – Roman Pozhar Head of DevOps, appflame

Overall, Google Cloud Platform is a comprehensive and popular cloud computing service that enables businesses to build, deploy, and manage applications with ease. With its strong infrastructure, competitive pricing, and strategic partnerships, GCP is well-positioned to meet the needs of enterprises worldwide.

About Google Cloud History

Google launched its Google App Engine in April 2008 as a beta version, providing users with a platform to create and deploy web applications using various common technologies, such as Python, Node.js and PHP. The aim was to provide a hassle-free infrastructure so that developers could easily roll out applications, and scale them as demand grew.

At the time, the platform already had a competitor from Microsoft. The first release of the service also aimed to test the platform, so GCP (at the time, App Engine) was available to over 10,000 developers. They could use 500 MB of storage, 200 million megacycles of CPU, and 10 GB of bandwidth per day.

It’s estimated that the world will store 200 zettabytes (2 billion terabytes) in the cloud by 2025.

Trial runs with the service ended in 2011, at which point Google announced GCP as its official product. Now, companies such as Nintendo, eBay, UPS, The Home Depot, Etsy, PayPal, 20th Century Fox, and Twitter use Google’s cloud services. Currently, there are 187 GCP network edge locations in more than 200 countries and territories that are rapidly growing.

What is Google Cloud Platform used for?

We’ve already answered the question about the Google Cloud Platform and its main features. Now, let’s look through some primary Google Cloud services and go to the use cases.

The Main Services of the Google Cloud Platform

GCP includes several products at once, and the platform’s services depend on the region in which the center is located. The functions of GCP also depend on which area the Google GCP office is running in. Nevertheless, the core GCP services are divided into following categories with some of the relevant products to each of them :

• Compute (Compute Engine, App Engine, Kubernetes Engine, Container Registry, Cloud Functions);
• Storage and database (Cloud Storage, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud Datastore, Cloud SQL);
• Networking (Cloud Virtual Network, Cloud Load Balancing, Cloud CDN, Cloud Interconnect, Cloud DNS);
• Management tools (Monitoring, Logging, Error Reporting, Trace, Debugger, and others) ;
• Big Data (BigQuery, Cloud Dataflow, Cloud Dataproc, Cloud Datalab, Cloud Pub/Sub, Genomics);
• Machine learning (Cloud Machine Learning Platform, Vision API, Speech API, Translate API);
• Developer tools (Cloud SDK, Deployment manager, Cloud source repositories, Cloud endpoints);
• Identity & Security (Cloud IAM, Cloud Resource Manager, Cloud Security Scanner, and others)

Google Cloud for Business: Use Cases

Now let’s break down some of the Google Cloud for small business and large enterprises use cases to understand better how it works in practice.

1. As for large companies with numerous departments, when you have several departments and each move at its own pace, you must properly create a hierarchy in which each department can work at its own pace but under general guidance. GCP helps create and manage policies within a company with little difficulty. When removing projects from the platform, GCP automatically removes project material from everywhere, saving unnecessary costs in the future.
2. For businesses that care about using machine learning or analytics, GCP will be also advantageous. It gives its customers broad access to machine learning data, an advantage that is very significant for large companies. Together with the data GCP provides, companies can use additional key information about their products to improve them. Vertex AI is one of the most well-known services that accelerates ML and builds Generative AI apps. With this service, you can deploy and scale machine learning using game-changing AI for any case.
3. If your organization requires more infrastructure scalability and agility than a traditional data center can provide, the GCP will cover you up. Here you can use, for example, the Compute Engine, a computing tool that allows you to run virtual machines on Google’s infrastructure. With this solution, you can quickly scale, process large volumes of data in seconds and run your business operations smoothly. You can learn more details in our success case with Air.io.
4. If you are an organization desiring to speed up your data processing operations without buying additional services, you can also profit from GCP. Here, the BigQuery service entered the game. Being a serverless multi-cloud data warehouse, Big Query can help you to securely store and calculate your data, facilitate the work of analysts, and allow you to pay only for the processed data, which is convenient for small and large businesses. If you want to discover more about the role of BigQuery in improving your work with data, you are welcome to read the MacPaw success case.

“Google Cloud services are a whole world of tools that allow you to increase the efficiency of working with data and provide convenience at all stages of work. Our team uses many Google features to store our infrastructure, data processing, and A/B testing. It completely closes our need to obtain and analyze data, test hypotheses, and, accordingly, scale our business.” – Rostyslav Vasiukov, Head of Engineering, Headway.

Google Cloud influences are not limited by these advantages for the particular use cases, though. It offers a wide range of benefits and unique features that can help your business scale.

What to expect from Google Cloud Platform in 2024 that can benefit your business

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is constantly evolving, offering new features and updates that can benefit businesses of all sizes. Here’s a rundown of some of the latest offerings that can help you stay ahead of the curve and optimize your cloud operations:

1. Edge Computing Dominance: Google Cloud’s edge computing capabilities, such as GKE Enterprise, are enhanced to bring computational power closer to the data source. This reduces latency and improves overall performance, essential for businesses requiring real-time data processing​​.
2. AI and Machine Learning Integration: Google Cloud continues to integrate AI and ML into its services. Tools like TensorFlow and AI Platform empower businesses to leverage advanced analytics, automate processes, and gain insights from data, making these technologies more accessible and impactful for various business operations​​.
3. Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Strategies: Google Cloud’s GKE Enterprise allows organizations to build and manage applications across different environments seamlessly. This is crucial for businesses adopting a mix of on-premises, private cloud, and public cloud solutions, providing flexibility and scalability​​.
4. Enhanced Security Measures: Security is a top priority, and Google Cloud introduces more robust security measures like BeyondCorp and Confidential Computing. These solutions ensure data protection and compliance with industry regulations, which is vital for businesses concerned about data security​​.

Transform your business fast

Let’s summarize. GCP is one of the largest cloud providers, offering a suite of computing services for data management, artificial intelligence, and machine learning tools. GCP’s services can expand your business and help you scale to new frontiers. It’s not an easy process, but it’s definitely worth the effort.

If you’re curious about the best practices for a successful cloud migration, don’t miss our guide on developing a winning cloud migration strategy.

Learning the GCP platform also has its benefits. You can take advantage of Google certifications for training or contact the Cloudfresh team for training and help with platform integration.

Being a Google Cloud Premier Partner, we have a sophisticated team of certified professionals who can guide you through all stages of your journey with Google Cloud.

Our Google Cloud consultants will help you optimize your IT infrastructure, develop integrations for better system interoperability, and help create completely new structures and processes for your teams. At the same time, our support center will provide you with the best customer experience!