Google rolls out by-the-minute cloud billing, introduces a new NoSQL database

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

Google, attempting to build its reputation as an enterprise and developer-focused cloud computing provider, today said its cloud platform is open for anyone to signup for, and can be used with a new by-the-minute billing scheme. Google Compute Engine (GCE) is a pure-play infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering that includes both virtual machine and storage pay-as-you-go resources. The service has been in limited beta – first available through invite-only, and then more recently only with a Gold Support package, which cost $400 per month. Today, GCE is open for shop in an “open preview,” meaning anyone can sign up to use it though. (Check out Google’s cloud platform blog.)

In addition to the GCE news, Google also launched a cloud database for non-relational database, new security measures for its cloud, and support for a new language on its Google App Engine platform as a service (PaaS). “Over the last 14 years we have been developing some of the best infrastructure in the world to power Google’s global-scale services,” wrote Urs Hölzle, Google’s senior vice president for technical infrastructure at Google, and one of its chief cloud builders…

“With Google Cloud Platform, our goal is to open that infrastructure and make it available to any business or developer anywhere.” In addition to the open signup now available for GCE, the service also comes with a variety of new features, the most notably the unique billing schema. GCE charges customers based on one-minute increments, with a minimum of 10 minutes. Most other cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and Microsoft, charge for compute resources by the hour…

Read more from the source @ http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/051513-google-cloud-billing-269813.htmlGoogle rolls out by-the-minute cloud billing, introduces a new NoSQL database