The big news this week: Google announced its first cloud storage offering, Google Storage for Developers. We’re very happy to see another large vendor join the space, especially a giant like Google. At the same time, there’s reason to be cautious here.
First, the exciting points. Google’s entry could be great for Nasuni customers because it could further drive down the cost of cloud storage. It’s no coincidence that Amazon also made a big announcement this week with its Reduced Redundancy Storage option, a new pricing model that lowers the floor to 10 cents per GB and down. We will have much more to say about the protection-related implications of that announcement next week – there’s way more to the story than cost – but for now, this new tier is a sign of good things to come.
Nasuni already levels the cost of storing data in the cloud, in part because we get rid of transmission fees, but our customers still pay for the amount of storage they consume. So, the more the price per GB drops, the less our customers will pay. Given its size and infrastructure, it’s conceivable that Google could eventually compete with Amazon. Price war, anyone?
As for the specifics, we were very happy to see that Google chose a nice, simple API – especially given earlier rumors that they were going to adopt something more complex. Here at Nasuni we can actually work with any API – in fact, we’ve helped cloud providers improve their own APIs in the past – but we’d prefer to see everyone go the route of Amazon and Google, working off a common API, and then putting custom features on top of that. The service will offer multiple authentication methods, easy access controls, read-after-write data consistency, a web-based interface for storage management, and more.
At this point, though, the Google cloud isn’t a direct competitor to Amazon S3 and, to some extent, it’s not worth getting too excited about, as a number of questions remain. It is still in invite-only beta mode, and will likely remain that way for a while. Can Google handle long term support and management? Will it provide simple and effective invoicing, billing, and other business-critical options? Are people going to accept an extended beta period when it’s their data out there in the cloud?
These are key questions. We’re also eager to see, on a simpler level, whether the Google cloud will perform as well as some of the proven providers out there.
Still, since this is Google, and the tech world goes wild every time the company announces something new, you should expect to see a number of third-party storage players touting the fact that they support Google’s cloud. You will not see Nasuni join in that chorus. Not yet.
Yes, we could add support today. We can bring new clouds on in a matter of hours. But we don’t rush to bring in new partners, because we are very, very careful about what we offer our customers. If you see that we support a cloud, this means that we have extensively tested and vetted that provider. It means that you can trust your data with that cloud, and that you’ll get the performance you deserve.
We have a very high quality standard, and we run a range of tests on performance, reliability, availability, and uptime for a month or more before we consider bringing a new cloud online. In some cases, we go back to these providers and tell them where they’re falling behind, then help them improve.
All that said, we should be announcing a new cloud soon. Stay tuned and ping us with any thoughts or comments at feedback@nasuni.com.