On June 20, 2017 Google announced the availability of its Google Cloud Platform (GCP) region in Sydney. Per the company, this is their first GCP region in Australia and the fourth in Asia Pacific. This announcement comes in close heels of the company’s recently launched region in Singapore and an upcoming launch in Mumbai, India.
Important to note that the company announced its intent to launch 11 new regions across the globe in 2017. As on date, four of these have already been launched, leaving seven new GCP regions to be launched within this year. Worthy to point out, by the end of 2017, the company will have a total of 17 regions across the globe – assuming all launches go as planned. Below is a quick glimpse of the currently available (and upcoming) GCP regions.
Over the last 12 months, we at Greyhound Research have carried out thousands of global end-user enquiries on various aspects of Cloud Computing. These enquiries have ranged from assessing Cloud vendors, controlling costs, automating manual tasks, ensuring data security & compliance, identifying potential workloads among others. Amidst a range of topics, one trend particularly stood out…
…While Public Cloud is witnessing strong adoption globally across organisations of all types, critical concerns exist. For both business and technology leaders, concerns include Security/Compliance, Cost, Cloud Sprawl  & Management, Data Migration among others. Hence, organisations are aggressively looking to partner with vendors offering comprehensive suite of managed services.
Below are 6 key reasons why Greyhound Research believes this announcement matters to the Cloud ecosystem in Australia and the Asia Pacific Japan region at large.
#GreyhoundStandpoint 1
With Google Cloud Platform going live in Sydney, Greyhound Research expects the competition to intensify between key Public Cloud vendors including AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer among others. Having said that, we are of the belief that local Data Centre providers will be most affected by this.
#GreyhoundStandpoint 2
At Greyhound Research, we believe the new GCP region in Sydney will reduce latency and hence improve query performance among other benefits like data residency. However, the fact that services like Datastore, BigQuery & App Engine are currently not on offer from the Sydney region may well prove to be a dampener for developers for whom local availability of these services is critical.
#GreyhoundStandpoint 3
In addition to CIOs, CMOs, CHROs, CLDOs and other business leaders have recently emerged as the new breed of IT Decision Makers. At Greyhound Research we are of the belief that while companies like Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, Ramco & Cornerstone among others have top of mind recall with business leaders, Cloud vendors like Google, AWS, Microsoft and IBM still need to work extensively on building inroads and gaining their mindshare.
#GreyhoundStandpoint 4
Greyhound Research believes developers and customers are looking forward to an AI-First era in the Cloud. Google’s efforts and investments (by way of acquisitions) in the field of AI have given it a head-start. Additionally, the company’s move to form strategic partnerships with the likes of SAP will help propel (in theory) the use of its capabilities on Cloud and AI. This, we believe, can potentially give Google an advantage in enterprise deals.
#GreyhoundStandpoint 5
At Greyhound Research we are of the firm belief that Google’s absence in China will be a concern for customers looking for pan-regional support across APJ. When compared to other key Cloud competitors, Google stands on a relatively weaker foot owing to lack of partners in China.
#GreyhoundStandpoint 6
Per a recent Greyhound Research study titled, Global Cloud Adoption Index 2017, 73% organisations in Australia are either already implementing or planning to implement Hybrid Cloud. The same finding is confirmed from our ongoing advisory sessions with both traditional IT Decision Makers (CIOs) and new-age IT Decision Makers (CDOs, CMOs, CHROs, CLDOs and other business leaders).
At Greyhound Research, we believe for Google to make rapid and significant inroads in large organisations in Australia, it must onboard and skill local / regional partners (both System Integrators and Independent Software Vendors) that utilise Google’s Public Cloud as part of broader Hybrid Cloud projects. Also, Google can potentially use these partner relationships to engage with the new breed of IT Decision Makers.
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Analysts:
Sanchit Vir Gogia: Sanchit is the Chief Analyst, Founder & CEO of Greyhound Research, a Global Technology & Innovation Research, Advisory & Consulting Firm. To read more about him, click here.
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