Google Cloud Storage Cuts Prices, Integrates With Tech Providers

Google yesterday cut the cost of Google Cloud Storage–a service geared to enabling developers to store and access massive amounts of data on Google’s infrastructure–between 8 percent and 15 percent depending on the service tier. Google also noted that third-party technology providers have begun integrating Google Cloud Storage directly into their offerings.

“Google Cloud Storage lets anyone tap into the storage and network expertise that we’ve spent a decade-plus building to serve our own needs,” explains Navneet Joneja, product manager for Google Cloud Storage. “It’s an enterprise-class offering that serves developers at businesses of all sizes [and] ISVs. We are seeing additional momentum in the enterprise as our partners are using our infrastructure to provide end-to-end solutions for enterprise (including NAS replacement, active archival, backup and recovery).”

Benefits of Google Cloud Storage

“One of the best reasons to use Google Cloud Storage is that it allows you to do things in the cloud that you couldn’t do with on-premise data,” Joneja adds, “For example, you can build applications with very low time-to-market and high scale by leveraging your data through an App Engine application. You can also use other Google products like BigQuery (which enables rapid querying of very large data sets, reducing time to insight from weeks to an hour), the Prediction API (that makes Google’s machine learning tools available to all). Other great ways to use our storage include backup, active archival, augmenting or replacing on-premise storage, sharing, application data storage, storing and serving static content (e.g., media).”

Joneja say the companies integrating Google Cloud Storage into their offerings include Panzura, which helps globally distributed enterprises store, collaborate and backup files in the cloud; StorSimple, which allows you to connect its appliances to Google Cloud Storage for primary storage, data protection and disaster recovery; TwinStrata, whose storage gateway can use Google Cloud Storage for data storage, backup and disaster recovery; Zmanda, which allows you to back up on-premise data to Google Cloud Storage; and Gladinet, which provides a web-based interface for uploading files to Google Cloud Storage and sharing with a team and managing access controls.

Cloud Storage Pricing Changes

The service has four tiers, each based on usage. The price cuts will be retroactive to March 1. The prices have been reduced as follows:

• If you use less than 1 TB, the price has been reduced to $0.120 per gigabyte from $0.130/GB, a reduction of 7.69 percent.
• The next 9 TB of storage now go for $0.105/GB, down from $0.120/GB, a reduction of 12.5 percent.
• The next 90 TB of storage are now $0.095/GB, down from $0.105/GB, a reduction of 9.52 percent.
• The next 400 TB after that now go for $0.085/GB, down from $0.100/GB, a reduction of 15 percent.

Customers who need more than 500 TB of storage should contact Google, according to the company.

Thor Olavsrud is a senior writer for CIO.com. Follow him @ThorOlavsrud.