Google unveils cloud IaaS

'Internal access" to Google workings.

Google yesterday debuted its cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service product Compute Engine, placing it in direct competition with Amazon Web Services and other service providers that help businesses migrate their IT resources to the cloud.

Compute Engine will take advantage of the company’s worldwide data centers and infrastructure, Urs Holzle, senior vice president for technical infrastructure at Google, said at Google's I/O developer conference.

“You now have access to what we have internally at Google,” he said. “It’s up to you to figure out how to make the best use of this service.”

Compute Engine, which will host virtual machines running Linux, follows and complements Google’s App Engine, its Platform-as-a-Service for building applications, Holzle said. 

Google’s entrance into the IaaS market will most likely shake up the cloud services market and stimulate more competition among cloud providers like Google, Amazon and Rackspace.

RightScale manages and delivers applications to cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Eucalyptus Systems and Microsoft, and will now partner with Google as well. 

Business development vp Bailey Caldwell said this was a "major move" by Google.

"What you’re seeing is the emergence of these mega cloud providers that already have extensive infrastructure running at massive scale,” he said.

“Google now can offer an amazing set of capabilities you can launch in Google Cloud and take advantage of Google App Engine, Google Drive, and for [the] enterprise, its SaaS products like Google Docs; and, it will allow a whole generation of startups to create new products."

This article originally appeared at crn.com