Google Cloud Reviews

We are using GoogleCloud for hosting a SaaS platform.  

The most valuable feature of the product is that it has a very powerful command line.  

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.  

I have experience with Google Cloud for about two years now.  

It is extremely stable. I have no negative feedback and no complaints.  

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.  

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.  

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.  

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.  

We largely use the solution for hosting and for the database it offers.

Both the hosting and the database are the most valuable features on this product.

The analytics could be improved. I need to be able to give them to the client. It is there, but you have to go to Google Cloud to see it. I want it added as a service so I can add it to the client-side and make it easily sharable with my clients.

The management side for the database needs some work. Currently, you do everything from the app. It would be nice to have an interface where you can go in and maintain data and deal with records and do something online. Also the ability to migrate the database should be a bit easier. You can't just copy a database and make another duplicate. You have to do all that bit manually.

I've only been using the solution for a total of three months at this point.

So far, after three months, I can say it's very stable. I haven't had issues with bugs or glitches. It hasn't crashed at all.

This is a solution that's so easy to expand when you need to. It's the best I've ever seen. It's much better than Azure.

Everything in the few months we've used the solution has been great so we haven't had a need to contact technical support. I can't speak to how they are because I have never directly had to deal with them.

I've used Azure as well. I've used that for a while and now I've moved to Google Cloud. Then, for a client, I'm also going to use AWS.

We switched from Azure because the setup is too complex, and, on the scalability side, you have to set it up yourself and I found it didn't actually work well. You have to constantly monitor your server and then add a new VM. There's a lot more effort required which is unnecessary if you have a solution that cuts the workload down. Google simplifies things on many levels, and it does the scaling for you.

The initial setup isn't complex per se. It's simple once you understand it, but it takes some time to figure it out. Once you do, it's very simple afterwards. In our case, it took us two weeks to get everything fully operational.

We don't require any maintenance. We just need to make sure we keep our data clean.

I handled the implementation myself. I didn't require any consultants or integrators to assist me.

The licensing for Google Cloud seems to be quite cheap and they're actually quite reasonable in comparison to Azure, which, as it turns out, is quite expensive. Even though Azure has a data center in South Africa it's still quite costly. There's no scaling, so if you go with the VM, you pay 2500 Rand. When you add another VM, it's another 2500 Rand even though you don't use the whole thing. With Google, you can go up as incrementally as you need to, even if it's just 30 Rand.

With Google, there's no licensing. Everything is included, just been based on the usage.

We're just a customer. We don't have any special connection to the company in any way.

Obviously, with Google, everything is the latest version. Google updates everything for you, so there isn't usually a time when we're on an "old version" of the solution.

We use the solution on a daily basis.

I would recommend Google Cloud. At the moment it's in third place, according to the standards. Right now it's ranked AWS, then Azure, then Google. Even though it's technically third, it's much better to use and it's a much better environment.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is for storage and document sharing.

For example, if I have a customer and they want to share a document, I can access it through Google.

Ubiquiti is what is most valuable. They have basically mimicked Microsoft, giving you the equivalent of Office 365 type of services that are available.

It's robust, and it has a wide reach in terms of office applications including storage.

It's easy to access in a public cloud environment.

Every once in a while I have trouble accessing it, but I don't know if that's a function of the Cloud, the way the Cloud is set up, or it's just something on my browser. 

Stability could be improved in terms of the Cloud in general administration. It's frustrating when companies have to deal with Cloud Administration. 

Change configuration management is an issue. I can envision customer companies that are Cloud-enabled where their biggest problem is having to keep up with the changes and managing it.

The API is constantly evolving. IP addresses are constantly changing and it's hard to keep up with all of those changes.

Typically it is being administered through IT organizations, although they have no visibility.

If you engage in a security solution through a cloud provider, you have no view, it's all faith, trust, and hope.

How do you reconcile the two, to provide the visibility, do it seamlessly, and make it easy to use?

If they could include a popup section where all of the new updates are. That would be helpful. I don't have the experience or intelligence to know what it is that they are showing, or where I can get that I might need, which would make a feature like this important.

It would like it if upon starting the browser, it tells you that it is out of date and asks if you would like to update. That would lead customers to take the optimal path as opposed to having to figure it out themselves.

There are issues with stability. There may be capacity issues at the time but it's hard to guess what the root cause is. There is no visibility.  You don't have the visibility unless you really know upfront what your problem is. Otherwise, you are left hanging.

It's scalable, but I don't plan to increase my usage. Personally, I avoid a public cloud offering system from a security perspective unless it's something a customer requires to access documents.

Prior to the public cloud, I used another solution more like a public hosting-type of service. It didn't give you the scale and the means of payment that you have with the Cloud. As an example, look at Lotus Notes, 1980 technology. There is no comparison, Google is far superior. People see the ease, simplicity, and again the Ubiquiti of the service attached to it.

The initial setup is simple. You go in there and you register. It starts with your email address and then you are done.

We provide private networks, what we call VPNs. It is the older, traditional VPN type service for our customers, which gives them security and performance metrics that you can't get from the internet.

We have a gen engine that has that interface into the cloud providers including Google.

We don't by services from Google, we are not even doing infrastructures, or platform as a service or software as a service.

We are not using this solution in my organization. We have our own internal storage for security reasons, and predominantly, we use it in-house. We call it orange, it's flex storage. It's our intranet.

We either use in-house or have exclusive arrangements with companies.

The concept of the cloud is great, you have the scale, you have the financial model, metered pay as you go, those are great, but what's worse is that it's a black box.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I am in the process of migrating from on-premises to the cloud.

We use it for IT infrastructure deployment and management.

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.

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.

I have been using Google Cloud for almost three years.

The stability is good.

Google Cloud is a scalable product.

The support is bad, and you have to purchase it separately. There is no free support available.

I am currently working with both Google Cloud and AWS. I am in the process of also trying to implement IBM Cloud.

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.

We have two or three people in the organization who set up the machines.

The support costs extra, even when it comes to email.

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.

I primarily use the solution for a couple of small development environments.

The solution is just simple and easy for me to configure. It's very easy to work with and navigate through. The user experience is very good. Overall, it's very easy to use.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The solution has been good overall. I can't recall having any features missing.

The solution could be less expensive.

It may be helpful to go through some training in order to get comfortable with the product.

The user interface could be a bit better. I've done a few deployments following the tutorial, and afterward, I'm not quite sure what exactly I've done. I just follow the instructions and just finish the command prompt and then it looks like it's working - but why, and how? I'm not quite sure. I want to understand fundamentally what I've done. If there were more documentation and training, it would be very helpful in explaining the underlying processes. 

I've been using the solution for three or four years at this point. 

My usage is quite limited, and therefore, I haven't experienced many problems at the moment. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches. It's reliable.

It's my understanding that the solution can scale, however, I haven't explored this aspect yet.

Mainly, it's just me on the solution. There isn't much of a team surrounding it. I do have a couple of other teams outsourcing ideas, however.

I haven't needed to reach out to technical support. I can't speak to how knowledgeable or responsive they are to inquiries.

The initial setup is very simple and straightforward. It's not complex at all. A company shouldn't have any issues with the initial setup.

The deployment was very fast and only maybe took an hour.

The pricing is okay, however, it could always be cheaper, which is always better.

There isn't too much difference in price when comparing it to what else is on the market.

I'm a Google partner.

Overall, the solution has been pretty good and I don't really have any complaints to discuss.

In general, on a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at a nine.

We use Google Suite of products for enterprise and we build our technology products for warehouse management systems, and transportation management systems.

We use Google Cloud for our enterprise. It is used for pretty much everything from emails to storage and to communicate everything.

Google Cloud is very light. 

It is easy to use and has a very familiar interface.

I have used Microsoft and I have used Google. I feel equally comfortable with both, but Google is lighter and it's easy to work with on your mobile devices.

Google has a lot of features that are really good. I am happy with the features that Google offers.

As far as internal communications, Microsoft is much better because of the way it is structured. I feel more comfortable with Microsoft. 

I feel that the Google product is incomplete with regard to internal communications. It is an area that needs some improvement.

The user experience could be better. Microsoft user experience is better.

The compatibility of different devices could be better because it looks different on different devices, It's not the same.

I have been with the company for seven or eight months and it has been used for a long time before that. They have been using it from the start.

I am satisfied with the stability of Google Cloud.

Google Cloud is very scalable. Many companies use Google Cloud because of its scalability.

We have more than 30,000 users in our organization who are using Google Cloud.

I have not had any issues with the technical support in the eight months I have been using Google Cloud.

The initial setup is easy. It's quite straightforward.

I am not familiar with the pricing, but I would guess that it is probably cheaper than Microsoft Suite. There are a lot of startups that use Google Cloud.

We are a Google house, and we don't use any of the Microsoft products.

Google is fantastic and I think that people should go for it. I would recommend using Google Cloud.

I would rate Google Cloud a seven out of ten.

I use Google Cloud for security purposes when sending files or any important document to others.

Google Cloud is user friendly and reliable. The most valuable feature is the security of Google Cloud.

Google Cloud would benefit from more detailed practical hands-on training especially in your mother tongue, not just English.

I have been working with Google Cloud for the past four to five months.

I am satisfied with the stability of Google Cloud.

It is easy to scale Google Cloud.

To maintain Google Cloud you have to maintain the servers as well. Sending files to a particular person, the server to server connection is mandatory. If a server is down then the file will come written back or stopped there.

Deployment of Google Cloud is straightforward and quick and does not take much time.

Pricing is high compared to other solutions. 

Comparing it to AWS Cloud, I thought Google Cloud has a better structure of cloud computing.

AWS is also a bit tricky. Google Cloud provides many different options on how to do tasks, such as sending a file. I also looked at how Google Cloud will be unstructured and structured to the different kinds of Cloud structures when sent to a particular receiver.

Prior to using Google Cloud, I was unaware of how it exactly worked. They provide you with all the information you need, including how it works, how it is structured, and how the tasks are done.

I have already recommended Google Cloud to others because they will know how their files are transferred, how their security is maintained, and what exactly the servers do in the background.

I would rate Google Cloud an 8 out of 10.

We build solutions based on the Google platform. We don't create solutions for ourselves. We create them for our customers.

We are using it specifically for our machine learning and data analytics. We are building our data solutions by using Google Cloud services. We are building the analytics dashboards and coming out with predictive analytics for education.

It is stable. It is easy to learn and very straightforward.

They need to improve the costing for predictive analytics, which is mainly related to the tools that come with AI. They also need to improve the BigQuery cost optimization and the visualization.

Their support could be faster.

I have been using this solution for the last one year.

It is stable.

It is auto-scalable. We have around 30 to 40 associates on this.

At the moment, we have around three customers who are using this particular product.

Their tech support is not so great. It takes more than 48 hours to get a response from the Google team. Their support could be faster.

It is a cloud-based solution, so there is no installation.

It has a monthly subscription. The customers pay based on the usage.

We are getting into a partnership with Google very soon. Almost our whole organization will be a Google partner. We recommend Google for every educational institution.

I would rate Google Cloud a nine out of 10.