Why your business should consider private and direct connections to Google Cloud

Although it entered the market later than Amazon and Microsoft,  Google Cloud has established itself as one of the top 3 mainstream public clouds through its Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings, with a strong presence in Machine Learning, data analytics and AI (Artificial Intelligence).

Google has also become known for an attractive pricing model for its cloud services.

Why businesses choose Google Cloud

Google Cloud Platform offers the same core data storage and virtual machine functionality as the likes of  Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. But Google Cloud Platform's main strengths lie in big data processing tools, AI and machine learning initiatives, storage, and container support.

Google’s PaaS resources enable developers to build and host apps on Google Cloud Platform's infrastructure. While the IaaS component, built around the Google Compute Engine, supports the use of virtual machines and more recent product additions including load balancing, DNS, monitoring tools, and data analysis.

According to Paul Gampe, CTO of Console Connect: “If you look at the underlying technology of Google's cloud and in-house designed chip architecture, it’s a deployment that really lends itself to AI. So, I think you're going to find that enterprises will continue to adopt a hybrid cloud strategy based on the ability for the clouds to provide different types of services and different price points as they seek to differentiate themselves amid mass demand for public cloud services.”

In line with current trends around generative AI, in August Google unveiled a number of artificial intelligence technology updates geared toward bringing more of the technology’s capabilities to large businesses.

Google has made significant efforts to showcase its AI plans, including its own Bard conversational AI offering, after Microsoft caught the company napping in early 2023 with an ambitious AI strategy spearheaded by its partnership with Open AI.

Following the world-changing pandemic of 2020 and the kick-starting of the working from home trend, another sector that was expected to prove lucrative for Google is cloud gaming, which has emerged as a solid alternative to traditional gaming by allowing users to avoid buying expensive and high-end gaming PCs and bypass huge software downloads.

Increasingly high-end games can be streamed directly to devices such as laptops, tablets, consoles and mobiles over a solid internet connection, with cloud-based servers doing all the heavy lifting at the back end. Google wound down its own Stadia game streaming service in early 2023 after failing to gain traction with users.

The company is instead focused on helping game creators and publishers use its global infrastructure to become more agile through a new strategy called Google Cloud for Live Games. 

“Our goal is to continually find new ways to provide the highest-quality, most seamless services to our players so that they can focus on their games. …This collaboration makes it possible to combine Google Cloud’s expertise in deploying Kubernetes at scale with our deep knowledge of game development pipelines and technologies,” said Carl Dionne, Development Director, Online Technology Group, Ubisoft, on the company’s partnership with Google.

For more traditional enterprise use cases, Google has focused on adding more utilities to ease the transition to its Cloud Platform, making the public cloud destination more accessible to businesses of any size looking to decommission some or all of their data centres.

But while Google Cloud Platform is primarily a public cloud provider, Google has also focused significantly on hybrid and multi-cloud workloads through its work on containerisation and integration of Anthos and Kubernetes. This not only ensures Google Cloud plays nicely with AWS and Azure but also helps enterprises avoid vendor lock in, making it a highly attractive proposition.

Google Cloud Platform is currently available in 38 cloud regions across 115 zones, with 187 network edge locations in over 200 countries.

In 2023, Google announced it would be further expanding its Cloud regions to let developers run hosted services closer to where their users are located for a faster, more reliable experience, proposing new regions for Dammam (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), Querétaro (Mexico), Malaysia, Thailand, New Zealand, Greece, Norway, South Africa, Austria and Sweden. The company recently added new regions in Berlin (Germany), Doha (Qatar), Turin (Italy), and Tel Aviv (Israel).

What is Google Cloud interconnect?

There are two main options for extending on-premises networks to Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks in Google Cloud.

In the Google terminology, you can create a Dedicated Interconnect, which requires you to physically meet Google's network in a colocation facility to reach your VPC networks. Alternatively, you can use a service provider like Console Connect to provide what Google terms Partner Interconnect to connect directly to Google.

All flavours of Cloud Interconnect provide access to all Google Cloud products and services from your on-premises network except Google Workspace, with Partner Interconnect providing capacity options starting at 50Mbps and in Console Connect’s case going up to 10G in select data centres.

Advantages of using direct connections to Google Cloud

Partner Interconnect, such as through Console Connect, offers more points of connectivity over both Layer 2 and Layer 3, as well as greater security and reliability - as traffic flows directly between your network and Google’s network avoiding the public internet.

Fewer hops to your destination means better performance of your applications and a better experience for your users, while the simplicity of a direct connection means you can easily maintain your existing security policies across networks.

There are over 900 Console Connect PoPs around the world with SLAs from both Google Cloud and Console Connect, ensuring reliability and performance - with flexible port capacities up to 10G also available in select data centres.

Automatic routing and rerouting of traffic globally ensures high availability in the event of a regional outage or network failure. While enterprises may also see more favourable pricing from direct connections due to reduced egress costs of up to 50%.

Compared to Dedicated Interconnect, you don't need to install and maintain routing equipment in a colocation facility. Software Defined Cloud Interconnect (SDCI) fabrics, such as Console Connect, enable enterprises to interconnect their data centres and other assets such as their Google public cloud on-demand over Layer 2 and Layer 3, globally, rather than being locked into any single ecosystem.

Ultimately this gives digital-centric businesses the freedom to grow quickly in new markets or instantly turn up services across a truly global footprint, fast.

Furthermore, the simplified user experience offers real-time visibility into network performance across the entire public cloud and data centre ecosystem.

This means you can continually adapt and optimise the network connectivity with granular and real-time control over bandwidth to meet changing needs on an intuitive and intelligent network.

How to connect to Google Cloud using Console Connect

Whether your organisation has adopted a fully public, hybrid or multi-cloud approach, the Console Connect platform can provide real-time access to Google Cloud from a large number of enterprise locations across Asia Pacific, the Americas and Europe across multiple connectivity models.

Over Point-to-point Layer 2, you can click and connect between your Access Port and Google Cloud location of choice.

Layer 3 CloudRouter® enables you to dynamically route traffic between devices, office locations, applications and clouds.

Console Connect’s networking experts can also help you set up your own direct physical connection to Google Cloud, which can then be managed via the Console Connect platform.( see map below)

Through the Console Connect platform, users can: 

• Reduce complexity: With a self-service portal and intuitive UI, manage your Google Cloud Interconnect access 24/7 from anywhere in the world.
• Introduce greater flexibility: No more long lead times and restrictive contracts. Connections as and when you need with bandwidth that can be flexed up and down as required to match your Google Cloud workload.
• Increase visibility & monitoring: Easily monitor your Google Cloud Interconnect connection performance. View bandwidth allocation and utilisation in real-time.
• Improve performance: Private connectivity to Google Cloud Interconnect that bypasses the public internet, providing a better security, user experience and improves efficiency and performance.
• Experience services on-demand: A truly automated, multi-cloud business connectivity platform that combines software and network architectures. Fast and secure direct connectivity to Google Cloud Platform as and when you need it.

Maximise the potential of your Google Cloud instance with real-time access to low-latency and secure direct connectivity from Console Connect’s leading MPLS network.