On Wednesday, Google announced the Beta release of Google Cloud Storage Nearline, a cloud-based storage product that transforms the economics of hot and cold storage. Whereas enterprises currently wrestle with the problem of managing frequently accessed data versus “cold” data, Google Cloud Storage Nearline renders cold data accessible within three seconds. The ability of Google Cloud Storage Nearline to access cold data means that organizations need not have separate infrastructures for managing cold and hot data but can instead leverage Google’s high performance, low cost storage solution to render historical data available within a few seconds. As a result, enterprises can serve up historical emails, audits and compliance findings, log files and data specific to decommissioned products and services with a virtually negligible time lag in comparison to hot data. Google’s product charges 1 cent per GB to store data within a framework that delivers enterprise-grade security, integration with Google Cloud Storage services in addition to the ability to collaborate with vendors such as Veritas/Symantec, Netapp, Iron Mountain and Geminare for services such as backup, encryption, deduplication, data ingestion from physical hard drives and disaster recovery as a service. In the context of the larger cloud storage landscape, Google Cloud Storage Nearline poses a direct threat to Amazon’s Glacier, a solution that is similarly priced at 1 cent per GB with a focus on cold data. Unlike Google Cloud Storage Nearline, however, Amazon Glacier requires several hours for data retrieval in contrast to three seconds. Google Cloud Storage Nearline addresses the data conundrum faced by the world today given the paradox that, whereas material objects such as garbage, newspapers and man-made products in general confront technologies for recycling and transformation, data has managed to demarcate a unique place for itself marked by freedom from outright destruction. The immunity of data to being discarded is, of course, enabled by the ever decreasing price of hardware, but Google’s intervention to render historical data available within a few seconds stands to fundamentally disrupt and transform the economics of cloud storage.
Cloud Computing Today 