I use Google Cloud for services like corporate email, data collection, Google Meet, session recording, presentation, and storing important documents in the cloud.
HR at MRC Logistics India Pvt
Has a simple setup process and good stability
Pros and Cons
- "Google Meet is simple to use regarding configuration and recording sessions."
- "They could integrate artificial intelligence into the applications."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
You can use Google Cloud tools easily, even if you know how Word, Excel, or PowerPoint works. Additionally, Google Meet is simple to use regarding configuration and recording sessions.
What needs improvement?
They could integrate artificial intelligence into the applications.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Google Cloud since 2015.
Buyer's Guide
Google Cloud
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Google Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the product's stability a ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate the product’s scalability an eight out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup process is simple. It takes just five minutes to complete and doesn’t require a much bigger team. You should know the access ID and password to log in.
What about the implementation team?
Anybody can deploy the product.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
They provide user-based licensing plans. Its plan could be less expensive.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Google Cloud a nine out of ten. They should work on the cost. It is not feasible for many organizations to pay 1,500 per user.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Team Lead, Process Improvement & RPA at Fidelity Bank Plc
Excellent solution for tracking and storing files
Pros and Cons
- "The availability of content on the solution is very valuable."
- "The product could be improved by expanding the initial storage space available."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case for this solution is the installation of files for tracking and storage purposes.
What is most valuable?
The availability of content on the solution is very valuable.
What needs improvement?
The product could be improved by expanding the initial storage space available.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution for approximately five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable. About 5000 people are using this solution in our company.
How are customer service and support?
We have had a great experience with customer service and support. They provide excellent service.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used Microsoft Cloud previously, but Microsoft Cloud automatically closes the operating system and only gives a certain amount of space. Additionally, we use Office, so we don't have Office 365. We automatically have cloud space on Microsoft.
How was the initial setup?
Deployment is very straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
We worked with vendors for deployment, which took approximately ten minutes.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing costs could be made more affordable for individuals because we need more client-based customers.
What other advice do I have?
I rate this solution a ten out of ten. The solution is very good, but it can be improved by increasing the initial storage space.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Google Cloud
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Google Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Information Security Officer at TBI Bank
Great for storing data and accessible at any time
Pros and Cons
- "It's available any time you need it."
- "Security features could be improved."
What is our primary use case?
This solution is used for storing my data. It's for my family's personal I work as an information security officer.
What is most valuable?
I like that it's there anytime you need it. There is some security there and you can put 2FA on the folders and share with others if need be.
What needs improvement?
From my point of view, the security features could be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for many years.
What other advice do I have?
I have a monthly subscription for Google storage.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Assistant Vice President at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It's easy to deploy next-generation applications
Pros and Cons
- "It's easy to deploy next-generation applications on Google Cloud. Customers can also use various cloud tools to optimize their operations and generate more insights to do business much smarter."
- "Another issue is the applicability of local language data capturing mechanisms, which are more advanced on cloud service providers, but still there is room to grow. Also, their hybrid version isn't available in all markets worldwide, so I'm hoping that it will be released globally soon"
What is our primary use case?
When you push your networking, storage, and other infrastructure from on-premise to the cloud, you can let go of your on-premise real estate and shift the burden back onto the cloud vendor. Google absorbs the cost of power, cooling, management, etc.
You no longer need to spend on CapEx. Instead, you are spending on consumption, so your CapEx moves into OPEX and then on the utility. That's the generic use case for why somebody would move their workload to the cloud.
How has it helped my organization?
Migrating to the cloud offers multiple benefits for consumers. One is financial. Customers can let go of their data centers and put the overhead and the hassle of management onto the cloud provider.
What is most valuable?
It's easy to deploy next-generation applications on Google Cloud. Customers can also use various cloud tools to optimize their operations and generate more insights to do business much smarter.
What needs improvement?
Cloud vendors can't afford to have data centers all across the world because of the economics of scale and the size of markets. That is one reason that some customers don't get onto the cloud.
Another issue is the applicability of local language data capturing mechanisms, which are more advanced on cloud service providers, but still there is room to grow. Also, their hybrid version isn't available in all markets worldwide, so I'm hoping that it will be released globally soon.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been selling Google Cloud solutions for about a year now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability has never been a question with any of the three major cloud vendors.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Cloud vendors are more scalable than any on-prem solution. There will always be an increasing demand for cloud solutions. It naturally goes up, and a lot of the other products you use will begin producing cloud versions that can only run on public clouds.
How are customer service and support?
All three cloud vendors have excellent support. I would rate them nine or 10 out of 10.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
So we have a reselling on prem solutions and cloud solutions.
How was the initial setup?
I rate Google Cloud eight out of 10 for ease of deployment. The complexity of deployment can vary depending on the use case and business requirements, but if it's an enterprise workload, we are looking at anywhere from four to six months.
One person could be enough to deploy and manage a cloud solution depending on how critical the workload is. It's also contingent on how much responsibility the customer or the cloud vendor takes. For example, if the cloud vendor takes maximum responsibility in a case like a software service, then the customer only has to configure, manage and run the software.
What about the implementation team?
We are the ones who migrate the workloads, so we're doing the implementation, but there is always. If it's a massive workload, we might bring in third-party integrators who specialize in a particular application workload.
What was our ROI?
You get an ROI from moving workloads from on-prem to cloud, but the real return comes when your customers start taking advantage of the cloud solution's full features. The return doesn't justify the cost unless you modernize the applications.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Cost can start from less than a dollar and go up. Monthly and yearly base billing is there, but ultimately it depends on customer usage, There could be additional costs. It depends on the requirements. If a customer has some needs that aren't available on the public cloud, they'll have to procure those licenses separately.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
The decision to use Google Cloud had nothing to do with its technical capabilities. We were looking at which cloud vendor had the least reach in our market, so we chose that vendor. It's hard to speak generally about the advantages and disadvantages of the different cloud platforms divorced from context.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Google Cloud 10 out of 10. People have limited knowledge of cloud solutions. My advice is that for those considering migration to the cloud is to evaluate the on-prem and cloud alternatives as much as possible because you can make wrong decisions if your perspective is limited.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
HR manager at The Sunway Manor
High performance, easy access, but integration could be better
Pros and Cons
- "Google Cloud's most valuable features are its performance and ease of access."
- "Google Cloud could improve the integration with other solutions."
What is our primary use case?
We are using Google Cloud for storing our data.
What is most valuable?
Google Cloud's most valuable features are its performance and ease of access.
What needs improvement?
Google Cloud could improve the integration with other solutions.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Google Cloud for more than one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Google Cloud is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
If there was better integration then it would be able to be scaled more.
How are customer service and support?
I have not contacted support.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution to others.
I rate Google Cloud a seven out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
CTO at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
Priced-well, easy to set up, and you can easily use it through a web browser
Pros and Cons
- "You can just connect and start using it through a browser within a few minutes."
- "Monitoring and usage reporting could be improved."
What is our primary use case?
I am in the process of migrating from on-premises to the cloud.
We use it for IT infrastructure deployment and management.
What is most valuable?
The best part of Google Cloud is that it is cheaper than the competitors.
It is easy to set up, monitor, and manage.
You can just connect and start using it through a browser within a few minutes.
What needs improvement?
Monitoring and usage reporting could be improved. For example, they don't provide the CPU primary memory usage report. They do provide a CPU usage report, but not the memory. This is something that is critical for people interested in monitoring because if you are burdening the machine then you want the option of providing more RAM.
There is no graph or monitoring in the console; if it is there then I haven't found it, so it is something that takes extra time to figure out.
Google does not provide free support and at the least, email support should be available. I am not asking for free chat or telephone support, but given that we are paying to use the machine, email support should be included.
The alerts are somewhat cryptic and do not say much about what is going on.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Google Cloud for almost three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Google Cloud is a scalable product.
How are customer service and technical support?
The support is bad, and you have to purchase it separately. There is no free support available.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I am currently working with both Google Cloud and AWS. I am in the process of also trying to implement IBM Cloud.
How was the initial setup?
It is easy to set up and up the time for provisioning depends on the type of machine that you want to set up. It will not take longer than 15 or 20 minutes if you know how to do it.
What about the implementation team?
We have two or three people in the organization who set up the machines.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The support costs extra, even when it comes to email.
What other advice do I have?
This is a good product, but I wouldn't immediately recommend it because there are a lot of options available. People have to choose based on their requirements and location. There is not much different, so people have to look at particular requirements, cost, and support.
I agree that cost is a factor but support should also be considered because it is needed from time to time, and Google does not provide free support. Given that we are paying for the machine, we should have to pay for costly support in addition to that.
This is a good product but I would like better monitoring, alerting, and reporting.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Google
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Product Manager - SaaS at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
A cloud service that will please more technically-minded users which is making strides with ease-of-use
Pros and Cons
- "This platform is popular with technical users because of the abilities for customization and fine-tuning performance."
- "The ease-of-use could be improved for less technical users."
What is our primary use case?
We are using GoogleCloud for hosting a SaaS platform.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of the product is that it has a very powerful command line.
What needs improvement?
It is difficult to say what should be improved because, obviously, they have made some major improvements in the organization of how you do things — such as the way you set up a server. Google has made a lot of effort to try and catch up to the competition in the area of ease-of-use because that would have been my one complaint: that you have got to be quite technical to understand some of the ways that things are done. Azure and Heroku are number one in ease-of-use and they make it very easy. Google has done a lot of work to alleviate that objection and to catch up with Heroku and Azure. But the people that have the most to say about the ease-of-use would be the guys using it. For the developers we have, they like the power and the control that Google gives them.
So I can not actually answer what exactly has to improve for developers to be more satisfied at this point because they seem quite satisfied with it already. I do not get any complaints from the guys. They are the ones using it every day and I do not use it on a daily basis so I really can not comment in that sense.
I could say that it can be easier to use for people that do not have the same level of technical skills, but even that has improved a lot with their upgrade to the user documentation.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have experience with Google Cloud for about two years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is extremely stable. I have no negative feedback and no complaints.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Google Cloud is very scalable. The use of Docker and Kubernetes has really made it extremely scalable. Google's implementation of Kubernetes is excellent.
At this stage mainly we have developers and dev-ops using the product and it is a team of about 25 guys. We could expand that at any time.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is somewhat more complicated than competing products. I was not directly involved in that capacity so I can not provide details. But also complexity sometimes leads to opportunity as far as customizing performance. The people who are working with the product directly like the ability to fine-tune more than they want simplicity.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Initially, I was just doing research. I was keeping an open mind and looking at all of the possibilities. I do not think it is quite right to call it "evaluate" when you just do a feasibility study. We did take a closer look at a few solutions like Azure, Heroku, and Google Cloud. We dabbled a little bit with some of them. We eliminated Azure because we were concerned about the support for Mongo DB which is part of our technology stack. Obviously Azure has changed a lot since.
We trimmed that group to Heroku and Google Cloud which are technically both platforms of high-quality. Heroku is easier to deal with. Using Google Cloud, you have to build a bit of experience with the product because it is not easy if you do not understand how to do things. Heroku makes it a lot easier for you.
The reason we went with Google Cloud had to do with two things. Number one was cost, and number two is that Google supported everything we use. We had to control the costs initially, so Heroku was pretty much out the door almost immediately. It was a competitive product but it was too expensive. An end-user would not know where a platform is hosted, and they would not care. For an end-user, they go on your website or on your SaaS platform and there is no difference in the experience whether you are hosted with Google or Heroku or AWS. It makes no sense for them to worry about that. But the cost ends up being an important component of the decision for the service company.
I think the point is that it is very difficult for companies these days to decide between Heroku, Azure and Google Cloud. They all have data centers in the right places in the UK. There is very little that differentiates any of them. Heroku obviously stands out because they are a very stable platform and they do all the hard work for you. If you do not have the expertise to go with a less expensive more labor-intensive solution, then you would go with Heroku and pay more.
We have a development center in Manila with very experienced guys and they love Google Cloud. It gives them everything they need and everything that is required for a big, fast platform — like the ability to use clustering. I think all of the solutions support Java and ATC (Advanced Analytics Technology). But we have not had any issues since we started on Google Cloud, so we are happy with the direction we have taken.
What other advice do I have?
The lesson I learned from adopting Google Cloud is that you should do more training before you commit to it.
On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Google Cloud as an eight-out-of-ten. You can not have a perfect platform. There is always room for improvement and something to add.
That rating is really because of the feedback I get from the team. I get good feedback from the guys. But it is not really fair of me to give any product a ten if I am not more intimate with it in daily use. I could just as well give it a one if I were totally ignorant of the product, but that would not mean anything.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Google
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Security engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
It helps us to deploy applications in productions within a few days
Pros and Cons
- "The tool's most valuable feature is encryption. Google Cloud has reduced our operational costs and increased efficiency. For example, deploying production applications traditionally took about a month, but with Google Cloud, it now takes only a day or two. This also extends to monitoring, allowing us to identify and address issues faster than on-premises solutions."
- "Google Cloud should improve its security. The main challenge we've encountered is related to security. As a member of the security team, I've noticed some limitations in the security features. For example, the rules and signatures need to be more refined to detect and process attacks accurately."
What is most valuable?
Many companies initially consider top providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure, but most choose Google Cloud because of its offered solutions, pricing and local support.
Google Cloud has reduced our operational costs and increased efficiency. For example, deploying production applications traditionally took about a month, but with Google Cloud, it now takes only a day or two. This also extends to monitoring, allowing us to identify and address issues faster than on-premises solutions.
What needs improvement?
CloudArmor accuracy should be improved. Rules and signatures need to be more refined to detect and process attacks, accuracy of rate-limiting should be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with the product for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution can be scaled horizontally and vertically. I rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.
How was the initial setup?
I rate the solution's deployment ease an eight out of ten.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Compared to the other considering the setup and pricing, I rate it at eight out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Google
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Last updated: Jun 3, 2024
Flag as inappropriateBuyer's Guide
Download our free Google Cloud Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Updated: November 2024
Popular Comparisons
Microsoft Azure
Amazon AWS
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)
Alibaba Cloud
SAP S4HANA on AWS
DigitalOcean
SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud
Equinix Metal
Google Compute Engine
Modal Labs
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Google Cloud Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Quick Links
Learn More: Questions:
- Which IaaS platform would you choose for an SMB: Google Cloud services, Amazon AWS, or Microsoft Azure?
- Do you recommend getting a skill badge or a certification for Google Cloud?
- In your opinion, will Google Cloud overtake Amazon AWS?
- Compared to similar solutions, is the price of Google Cloud services low or high?
- What is the biggest difference between Google BigQuery and Oracle Database as Service?
- Which Commercial and Open Source Software Do You Recommend for Private Clouds?
- When evaluating Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?
- Gartner's Magic Quadrant for IaaS maintains Amazon Web Service at the top of the Leaders quadrant. Do you agree?
- Pros/cons of Rackspace vs. other leading vendors?
- Which virtualization platform would you recommend to a healthcare company with 1000-5000 employees?