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Google Workspace is not the only way Google is making money and helping us lead more digital lives - besides the consumer offerings, there is also GCP. What is it and why is it important?
Origins
Origins
GCP is a cloud-based hosting service that lets developers do ever more sophisticated things. It started in 2008 as a way to run programs written in Python, then added storage space, and quickly exploded to include most major programming languages and steadily cover more and more aspects of computing.
Even if you have never developed, you will guess that it takes an entire team just to have a functioning web server on which to run your applications. A host of applications and services need to be constantly updated to keep pace with cyber threats; performance needs to be monitored; new capacity deployed. All of that is taken care of in the Cloud (this part is not specific to Google's Cloud - Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure do just the same things), for just a tiny fee...
That tiny fee comes with grown up level securities for companies, from startups to big corporations: Having all components of systems updated to the newest security standards is that important and is hard to get right yourself - companies usually outsource it anyway. Google is working hard at "making infrastructure boring". The same goes for scalability: It is important that your application does not crash because some hard drive is full. It is also important that the system you built for your client does not stop because their holiday sale is drawing more crowds than expected. GCP takes care of all of that.
Even the building blocks are for hire
Even the building blocks are for hire
There is one more key ingredient to GCP: Google offers the tools they develop for their own products to developers. That means developers can easily build plugins and extensions, but they can also access data Google Maps for example. This is why Uber did not need to create maps of cities when they launched - they just paid Google to provide them. Developers can use other tools too: The individual components that power machine learning and AI can be used in customers' applications, enabling using AI without reinventing the wheel.
GCP at PwC
GCP at PwC
PwC is a GCP customer and creating ever more applications on GCP. As Google Workspace matures, demand for web applications that tightly integrate with Google Workspace is rising. New technologies such as AppSheet will make it even easier to get into app development.
My perspective is that we will see a renaissance of app development, fueled by stronger tools and a global developer community. Removing roadblocks for that community will pay itself many times over in the near future.
An obvious drawing to close this post. Google is smart.
#strategy #GCPPublished 2018-07-31 by Holger Matthies.Modified 2018-07-31 by Holger Matthies.
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