Google Bulks Up Cloud Networking Capabilities

Google ramped up its networking capabilities Monday with new partnerships and services designed to help business customers access its cloud platform faster and more securely.

The networking upgrades from the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant are in support of two technical goals: reducing latency by leveraging the company's expansive global network and enabling businesses to run mission-critical workloads in the cloud by adding enterprise-grade encryption.

Morgan Dollard, Google's cloud networking product management lead, revealed the new features in a blog post encouraging users to explore how to make "Google’s network an extension of your own."

[Related: Google Reveals Its 10 'Need-To-Know' Technology Partners]

The first of Monday's revelations was general availability of Cloud DNS, which Google said will lower costs for large organizations operating DNS infrastructure at scale.

Google execs unveiled the managed DNS service at an event last March, telling developers and administrators they could use the feature to manage network infrastructure and DNS services through an integrated console.

Google also on Monday expanded its load-balancing service for Web traffic into 12 more of its data centers around the world, bringing workloads in Google's cloud closer to actual users and thereby reducing latency, according to Dollard's blog post.

The third of Monday's revelations was the beta launch of Cloud VPN.

The new Virtual Private Network lets users connect their existing networks to Google's IaaS platform, Compute Engine -- or connect two different Compute Engine VPN gateways -- via an IPsec connection that authenticates and encrypts all IP packets.

Complimenting the new VPN capability, Google extended its reach into private networks by introducing 11 more Carrier Interconnect technology partners -- service providers who offer their customers enterprise-grade connections to Google's network edge for higher-availability and lower-latency cloud access.

"Google’s network, built out over the past 15 years, is a key enabler behind the services relied upon every day by our customers and our users -- from Search to Maps, YouTube to Cloud Platform," Dollard said.

The new networking services will help Google connect organizations and customers regardless of their location, said Nicky Parseghian, director of engineering at SADA systems, a Google partner based in Los Angeles.

"Any organization can now easily take on an idea and release it to every consumer without having to spend months architecting a complex network system," Parseghian told CRN via email. "We can leverage Google's global infrastructure and release applications that are not just available but optimized to specific markets."

Parseghian also told CRN that by adding load-balancing end points in conjunction with the full release of Cloud DNS, Google is giving partners better options for deploying latency-dependent applications.

PUBLISHED APRIL 13, 2015