eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Google is using its Next ’17 conference in San Francisco this week to showcase the enterprise readiness of its cloud service offerings.
As part of the effort, the company this week announced that its Google Cloud Platform (GCP) technology has been officially certified to run SAP HANA database and other mission critical SAP applications. The certification assures enterprises of the availability of specific performance enhancements on GCP for running SAP applications including HANA.
The certification marks the beginning of a new and closer engineering partnership between Google and SAP, said Nan Boden, head of global technology partners with Google Cloud in a blog.
Google already is the first cloud vendor to make the express edition of SAP HANA available to developers via an on-demand model so developers can build and launch custom SAP applications quickly, Boden said. Google is now working to integrate SAP’s cloud platform technologies with its own G Suite cloud application software suite so enterprise users have easier access to apps in both environments from any device at any time.
These integrations will enable users to do things like link email conversations, search for contacts and create new tasks across both environments, directly from Gmail.
The new relationship with SAP is one of several initiatives that Google announced at Next ’17 this week to broaden support for its cloud platform.
The most significant, is the creation of a new Engineering Support option for enterprise cloud customers. The role based subscription model, according to Google, will give enterprises a predictable, customizable and flexible support experience, Google said in a blog.
With Engineering Support for instance, Google will charge a flat fee per user per month so organizations know exactly how much they will spend on support each month. The subscription option will match an engineer looking for support on a particular issue with support staff at Google in the same role.
The new subscription model allows organizations to make revise their support choices as their needs changes. It will allow them to mix and match different levels of support as projects move from the concept stage to development and production. Google’s long-term goal is to replace its current tier-based support options with Engineering Support, the company noted.
Google this week also announced new relationships with cloud services companies Pivotal and Rackspace as part of its effort to upgrade support for cloud customers.
Starting late this year, Rackspace will join Google in offering managed support services for Google cloud platform customers. Rackspace has begun building out a Google cloud focused practice and Google will lend a hand to the process via tools and resources.
“Our goal is to make GCP the best choice for Rackspace customers looking to move to cloud by creating a high level of integration and experience,” Google directors Dave Rensin and Benjamin Smith said in the blog.
Rackspace will begin taking on customers for managed Google cloud support initially under a beta program to be launched in the coming months, the two directors said.
Meanwhile, Pivotal will work with Google under a so-called Customer Reliability Engineering initiative designed to ensure that enterprises running applications on mixed cloud environments—Google’s and that of another like Pivotal—are properly supported.