It is more than a decade since cloud computing made its appearance and has since transformed significantly the way enterprises work, thanks to its reliability, scalability and flexibility. Enterprises no more worry about investing in ever-expanding server infrastructure, fear its technological obsolescence or for that matter the security of the data stored in it. But despite the rapid adoption of cloud computing across the world, its efficacy is not fully leveraged.

“For most IT organisations, cloud is still but a glimmer of what it could be or what it should be,” said Urs Holzle, Senior Vice- President, Cloud Infrastructure at Google Cloud.

Between 2005 and 2015, the server cost of those organisations adopting cloud computing fell by 15 per cent but the administrative cost has risen 83 per cent. This, he attributed, to complexities involved in cloud computing. Some enterprises have adopted a multi-cloud strategy while others have a hybrid-cloud (cloud plus on-premise servers).

Need of the hour is a single platform for every environment. At Next 2018, Google’s annual cloud conference, the company launched just that — a Cloud Services Platform. “With Cloud Services Platform, we bring the benefits of the cloud to you, no matter where you deploy your IT infrastructure today or tomorrow,” said Holzle.

The platform includes Istio — an open source common platform that enables faster innovation, offers better security and delivers fully managed hassle-free services thereby bringing down the administrative costs. The company also launched Google Kubernetes Engine On-Prem. Kubernetes, an unique way to manage containerised information, was launched by Google on the Cloud four years ago and now it is offering the same service on premises. This will enable enterprises to modernise their existing applications without having to move into the cloud. That way they can pace their journey into the cloud to their comfort.

Delivering the keynote speech at the conference, Diane Greene, CEO, Google Cloud, said the company’s objective is to take information, organise it and offer it in a super-charged form to its customers. To achieve that the company, she said, was investing heavily in building multiple layers on top of the cloud such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), security and G-Suite.

She added that partners were key to Google Cloud’s growth. She said the company was working with Cisco, Salesforce, SAP and others to widen its base. “We are in for a massive growth,” she added.

Making a brief appearance at the conference, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company was using AI to re-imagine its products, especially the cloud. “We are deeply involved in the cloud for the long run. The best is yet to come,” he added.

The writer attended NEXT 2018 at the invitation of Google

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