What Is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing uses hardware and software components in an off-premises location to deliver a service to a network. Users can access files and applications from any device that can access the internet.

Some features and capabilities include:

• Cloud providers can pull the computing resources to provide services to multiple customers with the help of a multi-tenant model
• Cloud computing proves an on-demand self-service, which helps administrators monitor performance
• Servers are maintained easily, and there is nearly zero downtime
• Users can access cloud data and upload it on the cloud from any device with a solid internet connection
• Cloud environments can be modified according to the user’s requirements and are easily accessible
• Clouds are highly secure, making data breaches more unlikely
• Migrating to the cloud eliminates the need to buy on-premises infrastructure
• It offers pay-as-you-go pricing, meaning you only pay for the resources you use

Why Use Google Cloud Platform?

GCP is famous for many reasons, including:

1. Competitive Pricing

• Pricing is a significant factor that makes Google Cloud stand out among the other cloud providers.
• Google Cloud offers a monthly pricing plan.
• Google Cloud pricing provides committed use discounts
  • In this plan, if you commit to purchasing a specific amount of vCPUs and memory for one or three years, you can get a discount of up to 57 per cent

2. Speed

• Google Cloud provides its Google Cloud and Google App customers network speeds of up to 10Tbs
• The network has connections throughout the world in the United States, Europe, main cities in Japan, major hubs in Asia and much more.
• The low-latency network processes data in less time, leading to high customer satisfaction

3. Big Data

• Google has many innovative tools for cloud warehousing, like BigQuery, and real-time data processing tools, like Google Cloud Dataflow.
• BigQuery is a data warehouse that enables massive data processing at high speeds.
• Google has also launched new machine learning and Artificial Intelligence tools.

What Is Google Cloud Platform?

Google Cloud Platform is a set of cloud computing services that Google offers, which runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses for its end-user products, such as YouTube, Gmail, and more. Google Cloud Platform offers a variety of services, including:

• Compute
• Network
• Machine learning and AI
• Big data processing

Google Cloud Platform Components

Several components and services are essential features of the Google Cloud Platform; let’s dive into each individually and learn more about what they provide.

1. Compute

The compute service enables computing and hosting of the cloud. The various services under this are as follows:

• App Engine
• Compute Engine
• Kubernetes Engine
• Cloud Functions
• Cloud Run

2. Storage and Database

The storage and database service enables the application to store media files, backups, or other file-like objects. The services include:

• Cloud Storage
• Cloud SQL
• Cloud Bigtable
• Cloud Spanner
• Cloud Datastore

3. Networking

The networking service enables us to load-balance traffic across resources, create DNS records, and much more. Some of the services include:

• VPC
• Cloud Load Balancing
• Cloud Armor
• Cloud CDN
• Cloud Interconnect
• Cloud DNS
• Network Service Tiers

4. Big Data

The big data service enables us to process and query big data in the cloud.  A few of the included services are the following::

• BigQuery
• Cloud Dataproc
• Cloud Datalab
• Cloud Data Studio

5. Developer Tools

The developer tools service includes tools that enable software and application development.

• Artefact Registry (beta)
• Cloud SDK
• Cloud Code
• CloudBuild
• Cloud Scheduler
• Cloud Tasks

6. Identity and Security

This service deals with security and authentication:

• Cloud Identity
• Cloud IAM
• Cloud Data Loss Prevention API
• Security Key Enforcement

7. Internet of Things(IoT)

You can leverage GCP to create IoT environments with the following tools:

• Cloud IoT Core
• Edge TPU
• Cloud IoT

8. Cloud AI

Cloud AI comprises services related to machine learning, which also encompasses:

• Cloud AutoML
• Cloud Natural Language
• Cloud Speech-to-Text
• Cloud Text-to-Speech
• Cloud Translation API
• Cloud Vision API
• Cloud Video Intelligence

9. Management Tools

This domain includes services related to management and monitoring.  The benefits under this are as follows:

• Cloud Deployment Manager
• Cloud Console
• Cloud Shell
• Cloud APIs

10. API Platform

The few services under this are as follows:

• Maps Platform
• Developer Portal
• API Analytics
• Apigee Sense
• Cloud Endpoints