Google Bolsters Services, Lowers Prices to Woo Business to App Engine Cloud

Google has beefed up its cloud services with new offerings, including App Engine premier accounts, and has lowered its pricing for Google Cloud Storage, among other moves.

With these actions, Google is aggressively making a stand in the cloud computing space and calling on developers and businesses to give Google a try as their cloud platform of choice.

In an Oct. 11 post, Jessie Jiang, a group product manager at Google, said Google is now offering new enterprise-level service and support options for Google App Engine. With Google App Engine Premier Accounts, “for $500 per month, you’ll receive premier support, a 99.95 percent uptime service-level agreement and the ability to create unlimited number of apps on your premier account domain,” Jiang said.

To sign up for a premier App Engine account, email group’s sales team at appengine_premier_requests@google.com.

Jiang also noted that Google Cloud SQL, which Google recently released as a limited preview, can serve as a database in the cloud for users. Google Cloud SQL “powers your App Engine applications with a familiar relational database in a fully managed cloud environment,” he said. “This allows you to focus on developing your applications and services, free from the chores of managing, maintaining and administering relational databases.”

Cloud SQL is available free of charge for now, he added.

Google also announced the graduation of Google Cloud Storage out of Google Code Labs, along with new features as well as the lower price.

Last year, the search giant introduced Google Storage for developers, a service that lets users store data on Google’s infrastructure with high levels of reliability, availability and performance. “You can use it for your online archives, storing and serving static content (e.g. images and video), sharing data with your customers and partners, as well for use with other Google services like App Engine, Prediction API and Big Query,” Jiang said.

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