GCP - Basic Information

👉 Overview

👀 What ?

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services offered by Google. GCP provides a variety of services including computing power, data storage, data analytics, and machine learning, among others. These services run on the same infrastructure that Google uses for its end-user products, such as Google Search, YouTube, and Google Drive.

🧐 Why ?

GCP is critical in today's digital age as it allows businesses to leverage Google's advanced infrastructure to build, deploy, and scale applications quickly and efficiently. It offers scalable solutions for businesses of all sizes, from startups to multinational corporations. Using GCP, businesses can avoid the upfront cost and complexity of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure, and instead focus on their core business.

⛏️ How ?

To take advantage of GCP, you need to create a Google Cloud account. Once your account is set up, you can start building and deploying applications using Google Cloud Console or Google Cloud SDK. GCP offers a wide range of services, from Compute Engine for running virtual machines, to Cloud Storage for storing and retrieving data, to BigQuery for analyzing big data. You can choose the ones that best fit your needs and pay only for what you use.

⏳ When ?

GCP was launched by Google in April 2008. Since then, it has been continuously evolving and expanding, adding new services and features to meet the needs of different industries and use cases.

⚙️ Technical Explanations

GCP utilizes a technology called virtualization, which allows the creation of a virtual version of something, such as a hardware platform, operating system, a storage device or network resources. This enables GCP to run 'virtual machines' on the same physical machine, maximizing the use of hardware resources. GCP also leverages containerization technologies like Kubernetes for efficient deployment and scaling of applications. In terms of data storage, GCP provides both SQL (Cloud SQL) and NoSQL (Datastore, Firestore) offerings. For big data analytics, GCP offers services like BigQuery, Dataflow, and Pub/Sub. GCP also has robust AI and machine learning capabilities with services like AutoML and AI Platform.