Google Announces General Availability of Cloud Storage Nearline

Data storage and retrieval can be tricky business for large companies, especially when said data is hidden away deep within archives or stored in offline repositories. Google (GOOG) is looking to help organizations gain faster and easier access to their information with the general availability of Google Cloud Storage Nearline, a service designed to provide users with a fast and low-cost alternative to data storage.

Google Cloud Storage Nearline was introduced in March via a beta program, and offered customers the ability to store data for one cent per gigabyte for data at rest. The service boasts data retrieval times of about three seconds and is fully integrated with the rest of Google’s Cloud Storage services, according to the announcement. As of today, Cloud Storage Nearline is available to all customers with an expected 99 percent uptime SLA as well as on-demand I/O, lifecycle management and an increased partner ecosystem.

Straight from the press release, here is a breakdown of some of the new features available in Nearline:

Nearline users will have access to an increased partner ecosystem as well, with Google announcing five new partners including Actifio, Pixitmedia, and Unitrends, among others. Several new global storage vendors have also been added to the program, including Commvault, EMC and Egnyte.