Google has launched a new cloud storage service today
that has the potential to change how many companies, ranging from startups to
enterprises, view online storage. With Google Cloud
Storage Nearline, businesses can store the data they or their
customers don't frequently need to access (think backups, log files or older
photos), for $0.01 per gigabyte at rest. Unlike other cold storage services
like Amazon’s Glacier, where
it can take hours before your data is available again once it has been put
on ice, Google promises to make your data in Nearline available again in
about 3 seconds.
With Nearline, Google wants to blur the line between
standard online storage and cold storage so businesses don't have to delete
their data anymore or move their files to cold storage.
Google is able to offer this competitive price, which is
on par with Amazon’s Glacier, because it is able to host all of its data on a
single system, no matter whether it’s online or “nearline.” This commonality of
systems is pretty unusual. Historically,
storage companies built two different systems, but the hardest and most costly
thing about offline storage is actually moving the data between these two
systems. On the backend then, Nearline uses the same system as the rest
of Google’s storage products, with exactly the same encryption and other
security features. It also shares its APIs with
Google’s standard online storage service.
Google expects that many of its early customers will use
the service primarily to store photos, videos and documents. Many companies pay
a lot to keep these online, just in case a user ever needs them. To reach an even wider market, Google has partnered with
a number of storage companies, including Veritas/Symantec, NetApp, Geminare and
Iron Mountain. While all of these will get Google’s new service in front of a
lot of enterprise customers, the Iron Mountain relationship is interesting
because that company will allow users to send in their hard drives and have
them securely uploaded to Nearline.
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