Google Cuts Cloud Storage Price 20%, Revs Compute Engine

By samdizzy

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is countering Amazon’s cloud partner and customer conference, called AWS re:Invent, before it event starts. Indeed, the search giant cut Google Storage Prices 20 percent and made a range of enhancements to its cloud platforms — including Google App Engine and Compute Engine. Moreover, Google bolstered its data center presence in Europe.

For channel partners, Google’s moves are both a blessing and a burden.

On the upside: Many cloud integrators and consulting firms leverage Google and/or Amazon cloud services for customer systems or business management systems. CentraStage, for instance, has built an MSP management platform that runs in Amazon’s cloud. Similarly, several Top 100 Cloud Services Providers are testing Google Storage and Google Compute Engine for customer use, Talkin’ Cloud has learned.

Each time Google or Amazon cut cloud pricing or bolster support, partners that plug into the services either gain scalability or better pricing of their own.

On the potential downside: Thousands of VARs and MSPs have yet to test the Google and Amazon services. Morever, many of those VARs and MSPs are leveraging third-party storage and IaaS services, which will face more and more pricing pressure from Google and Amazon.

Either way, the showdown between Google and Amazon seems to be intensifying. Google’s latest cloud moves come as Amazon later this week prepares to host about 5,500 partners and customers at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.

Jessie Jiang, a Google product management director, described the storage price cuts and enhancements in a blog post, stating: 

“To give you more flexibility in your storage options and prices, we’re reducing the price of standard Google Cloud Storage by over 20% and introducing a limited preview of Durable Reduced Availability (DRA) storage. DRA storage lowers prices by trading off some data availability while maintaining the same latency performance and durability as standard Google Cloud Storage. DRA can be used for things like batch compute jobs that can easily be rescheduled or for data back-up where quick access to your data is important. DRA achieves cost savings by keeping fewer redundant replicas of data. Unlike other reduced redundancy cloud storage offerings, DRA is implemented in a manner that maintains data durability so you don’t have to worry about losing your data in the cloud.”

Meanwhile, Google has expanded its Europe datacenter initiatives, allowing customers to run Google App Engine, Google Cloud Storage and Google Cloud SQL on European soil — a key requirement for compliance-focused companies. Google Compute Engine will also run “soon” in the company’s European datacenters.

Finally, the Google Compute Engine beta has been expanded to support 36 new types of instances, with price cuts of about 5 percent for certain instances. 

Will Amazon return fire? CEO Jeff Bezos could provide answers this week during AWS re:Invent.