The costs associated with data transfer and abandonment of a service cloud they are called “exit costs” or “migration costs”. Those responsible for the platform Google Cloud have communicated a historic “change of direction”, with the aim of promoting the creation of a open cloud ecosystem, secure and interoperable. The Mountain View company’s service eliminates data transfer fees when changing providers, facilitating communication data migration of users to other suppliers, including direct competitors.
Google Cloud breaks down the vendor lock-in: things
The expression “vendor lock-in” refers to the situation in which a customer becomes highly dependent on a specific provider of products or services and experiences difficulty in switching or moving to another provider without facing high costs or significant complexity. The concept is relevant in various sectors, cloud computing understood, and if not appropriately evaluated it can cause problems for any company that decides to review, update and evolve its infrastructure.
Eliminating exit costs from Google Cloud may seem counterproductive for the company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In reality, it’s exactly the opposite: professionals and companies are more inclined to enter into contracts with provider cloud which do not set limits and which actually favor the circularity of data, with the possibility of easily moving it from one platform to another.
Google Cloud therefore chooses to ensure customers greater flexibility, a feature truly appreciated by all those whose business requires it evolutionary changes.
How migration from Google Cloud to other services works
Starting today, Google Cloud customers who wish to stop using the services mean migrate their data to another cloud provider and/or on-premises, can benefit from free data transfer. Google’s globally promoted initiative is detailed on this support page – just click the button Request data transfer to start the procedure.
Google adds, however, that the removal of data transfer fees ahead of change of cloud provider it’s just a first step in the right direction. Observe that some suppliers leverage their status of monopoly on-premises to create monopolies on the cloud, using restrictive licenses which “imprison” customers, their data and damage free competition.
Someone license conditions, Google reminds us, invest the supplier with overly extensive “powers” that can penalize users’ business. Suffice it to say that some restrictions establish which cloud providers each customer can interface with, provide for the application of tariffs 5 times higher when users decide to use the cloud services of certain competitors; there are sometimes limitations in terms of interoperability for indispensable software when connected with competing cloud infrastructures. These and other restrictions have no technical basis and may result in 300% increase in costs.
Pressure is mounting on rivals like AWS and Microsoft Azure
The Europen platform Cubbit, which among other things allows you to create immutable backups on the cloud, does not foresee exit costs from birth. The expression zero egress fee is important refers to the absence of costs associated with transferring or sending data from a cloud platform or service to a destination external to the cloud system itself.
The egress fee can influence decisions about application architecture and data management, especially when considering the possibility of move large amounts of data between cloud services or towards local infrastructures. Users should therefore pay attention to the details of the cloud provider’s pricing policies to understand how and when they will apply egress fee so as to carry out careful planning.
With its move, Google Cloud puts pressure on competitors such as AWS ed Azurewhich charge exit costs, and tries to steal market share by trying to attract new customers looking for “greater freedom” and lower costs.
In the highly competitive world of cloud computing, which is gradually becoming more and more open, building customer loyalty is a very complex task. By making transfers free, Google could put pressure on rivals to follow its example and avoid losing business opportunities. On the other hand, under the leadership of Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud’s activities have become more profitable and the company aims to climb the ranking with AWS in first place, followed by Azure. Google Cloud ranks third in the cloud market.
The opening image is taken from the Google blog.