>> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE.
Covering Google Cloud Next '19.
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>> Welcome back to the Moscone Center
in San Francisco everybody.
This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage.
This is day two of our coverage
of Google Cloud Next #GoogleNext19.
I'm here with my co-host Stuart Miniman
and I'm Dave Vellante, John Furrier is also here.
Dominic Preuss is here, he's the Director
of Product Management, Storage and Databases at Google.
Dominic, good to see you.
Thanks for coming on. >> Great, thanks to be here.
>> Gosh, 15, 20 years ago there were like three databases
and now there's like, I feel like there's 300.
It's exploding, all this innovation.
You guys made some announcements yesterday,
we're gonna get into, but let's start with,
I mean, data, we were just talking at the open,
is the critical part of any IT transformation,
business value, it's at the heart of it.
Your job is at the heart of it and it's important to Google.
>> Yes.
Yeah, you know, Google has a long history
of building businesses based on data.
We understand the importance of it,
we understand how critical it is.
And so, really, that ethos is carried over
into Google Cloud platform.
We think about it very much as a data platform
and we have a very strong responsibility to our customers
to make sure that we provide the most secure,
the most reliable, the most available
data platform for their data.
And it's a key part of any decision
when a customer chooses a hyper cloud vendor.
>> So summarize your strategy.
You guys had some announcements yesterday
really embracing open source.
There's certainly been a lot of discussion
in the software industry about other cloud service providers
who were sort of bogarting open source
and not giving back, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
How would you characterize Google's strategy
with regard to open source, data storage, data management
and how do you differentiate from
other cloud service providers?
>> Yeah, Google has always been the open cloud.
We have a long history in our commitment to open source.
Whether be Kebernetes, TensorFlow, Angular, Golang.
Pick any one of these that we've
been contributing heavily back to open source.
Google's entire history is built on
the success of open source.
So we believe very strongly that it's
an important part of the success.
We also believe that we can take
a different approach to open source.
We're in a very pivotal point in the open source industry,
as these companies are understanding
and deciding how to monetize in a hyper cloud world.
So we think we can take a fundamentally different approach
and be very collaborative and support
the open source community without taking advantage
or not giving back.
>> So, somebody might say, okay, but Google's
got its own operational databases,
you got analytic databases, relational, non-relational.
I guess Google Spanner kind of fits in between those.
It was an amazing product.
I remember that that first came out,
it was making my eyes bleed reading the white paper on it
but awesome tech.
You certainly own a lot of your own database technology
and do a lot of innovation there.
So, square that circle with regard to partnerships
with open source vendors.
>> Yeah, I think you alluded to a little bit earlier
there are hundreds of database technologies out there today.
And there's really been a proliferation
of new technology, specifically databases,
for very specific use cases.
Whether it be graph or time series, all these other things.
As a hyper cloud vendor, we're gonna try to do
the most common things that people need.
We're gonna do manage MySQL, and PostgreS and SQL Server.
But for other databases that people wanna run
we want to make sure that those solutions
are first class opportunities on the platform.
So we've engaged with seven of the top
and leading open source companies
to make sure that they can provide a managed service
on Google Cloud Platform that is first class.
What that means is that as a GCP customer
I can choose a Google offered service
or a third-party offered service
and I'm gonna have the same, seamless,
frictionless, integrated experience.
So I'm gonna get unified billing, I'm gonna
get one bill at the end of the day.
I'm gonna have unified support, I'm gonna reach out
to Google support and they're going to figure out
what the problem is, without blaming the third-party
or saying that isn't our problem.
We take ownership of the issue and we'll go
and figure out what's happening to make sure
you get an answer.
Then thirdly, a unified experience
so that the GCP customer can manage that experience,
inside a cloud console, just like they would
their Google offered serves.
>> A fully-managed database as a service essentially.
>> Yes, so of the seven vendors, a number
of them are databases.
But also for Kafka, to manage Kafka
or any other solutions that are out there as well.
>> All right, so we could spend the whole time talking
about databases.
I wanna spend a couple minutes talking about
the other piece of your business, which is storage.
>> Dominic: Absolutely.
>> Dave and I have a long history in
what we'd call traditional storage.
And the dialog over the last few years has been
we're actually talking about data
more than the storing of information.
A few years back, I called cloud the silent killer
of the old storage market.
Because, you know, I'm not looking at buying
a storage array or building something in the cloud.
I use storage is one of the many services
that I leverage.
Can you just give us some of the latest updates
as to what's new and interesting in your world.
As well as when customers come to Google
where does storage fit in that overall discussion?
>> I think that the amazing opportunity
that we see for for large enterprises right now
is today, a lot of that data that they have
in their company are in silos.
It's not properly documented, they don't necessarily
know where it is or who owns it or the data lineage.
When we pick all that date up across the enterprise
and bring it in to Google Cloud Platform,
what's so great about is regardless
of what storage solution you choose to put your data in
it's in a centralized place.
It's all integrated, then you can really start
to understand what data you have,
how do I do connections across it?
How do I try to drive value by correlating it?
For us, we're trying to make sure
that whatever data comes across, customers
can choose whatever storage solution they want.
Whichever is most appropriate for their workload.
Then once the data's in the platform
we help them take advantage of it.
We are very proud of the fact that when
you bring data into object storage,
we have a single unified API.
There's only one product to use.
If you would have really cold data,
or really fast data, you don't have to wait hours
to get the data, it's all available within milliseconds.
Now we're really excited that we announced today
is a new storage class.
So, in Google Cloud Storage, which is
our object storage product, we're now gonna have
a very cold, archival storage option,
that's going to start at $0.12 per gigabyte, per month.
We think that that's really going to change the game
in terms of customers that are trying to retire
their old tape backup systems or are really looking
for the most cost efficient, long term storage option
for their data.
>> The other thing that we've heard a lot about this week
is that hybrid and multi-cloud environment.
Google laid out a lot of the partnerships.
I think you had VMware up on stage.
You had Cisco up on stage, I see Nutanix is here.
How does that storage, the hybrid multi-cloud,
fit together for your world.
>> I think the way that we view hybrid is
that every customer, at some point, is hybrid.
Like, no one ever picks up all their data on day one
and on day two, it's on the cloud.
It's gonna be a journey of bringing that data across.
So, it's always going to be hybrid for that period of time.
So for us, it's making sure that all
of our storage solutions, we support open standards.
So if you're using an an S3 compliant storage solution
on-premise, you can use Google Cloud Storage
with our S3 compatible API.
If you are doing block, we work with all
the large vendors, whether be NetApp or EMC
or any of the other vendors you're used
to having on-premise, making sure we can support those.
I'm personally very excited about the work
that we've done with NetApp around NetApp cloud buying
for Google Cloud Platform.
If you're a NetApp shop and you've been leveraging
that technology and you're really comfortable
and really like it on-premise, we make it really easy
to bring that data to the cloud and have
the same exact experience.
You get all the the wonderful features
that NetApp offers you on-premise
in a cloud native service where you're paying
on a consumption based service.
So, it really takes, kind of, the decision away
for the customers.
You like NetApp on-premise but you
want cloud native features and pricing?
Great, we'll give you NetApp in the cloud.
It really makes it to be an easy transition.
So, for us it's making sure that we're engaged
and that we have a story with all the storage vendors
that you used to using on-premise today.
>> Let me ask you a question, about go back,
to the very cold, ice cold storage.
You said $0.12 per gigabyte per month,
which is kinda in between your other two major competitors.
What was your thinking on the pricing strategy there?
>> Yeah, basically everything we do is based
on customer demand.
So after talking to a bunch of customers,
understanding the workloads, understanding
the cost structure that they need, we think
that that's the right price to meet all of those needs
and allow us to basically compete for all the deals.
We think that that's a really great price-point
for our customers.
And it really unlocks all those workloads for the cloud.
>> It's dirt cheap, it's easy to store
and then it takes a while to get it back, right,
that's the concept?
>> No, it is not at all.
We are very different than other storage vendors
or other public cloud offerings.
When you drop your data into our system,
basically, the trade up that you're making
is saying, I will give you a cheaper price
in exchange for agreeing to leave the data
in the platform, for a longer time.
So, basically you're making a time-based commitment
to us, at which point we're giving you a cheaper price.
But, what's fundamentally different
about Google Cloud Storage, is that regardless
of which storage class you use, everything
is available within milliseconds.
You don't have to wait hours or any amount of time
to be able to get that data.
It's all available to you.
So, this is really important, if you
have long-term archival data and then, let's say,
that you got a compliance request or regulatory requests
and you need to analyze all the data
and get to all your data, you're not waiting hours
to get access to that data.
We're actually giving you, within milliseconds,
giving you access to that data, so that you
can get the answers you need.
>> And the quid pro quo is I commit
to storing it there for some period of time,
is that you said?
>> Correct.
So, we have four storage classes.
We have our Standard, our Nearline, our Coldline
and this new Archival.
Each of them has a lower price point,
in exchange for a longer, committed time
the you'll leave the product. >> That's cool.
I think that adds real business value there.
So, obviously, it's not sitting on tape somewhere.
>> We have a number of solutions for how we store the data.
For us, it's indifferent, how we store the data.
It's all about how long you're willing
to tell us it'll be there and that allows us
to plan for those resources long term.
>> That's a great story.
Now, you also have this pay-as-you-go pricing tiers,
can you talk about that a little bit?
>> For which, for Google Cloud Storage?
>> Dave: Yes.
>> Yeah, everything is pay-as-you-go and so basically
you write data to us and there's a charge
for the operations you do and then you charge
for however long you leave the data in the system.
So, if you're using our Standard class,
you're just paying our standard price.
You can either use Regional or Multi-Regional,
depending on the disaster recovery
and the durability and availability requirements
that you have.
Then you're just paying us for that
for however long you leave the data in the system.
Once you delete it, you stop paying.
>> So it must be, I'm not sure what kind
of customer discussions are going on
in terms of storage optionality.
It used to be just, okay, I got block and I got file,
but now you've got all different kind of.
You just mentioned several different tiers of performance.
What's the customer conversation like,
specifically in terms of optionality
and what are they asking you to deliver?
>> I think within the storage space,
there's really three things, there's object, block and file.
So, on the object side, or on the block side
we have our persistence product.
Customers are asking for better price performance,
more performance, more IOPS, more throughput.
We're continuing to deliver a higher-performance,
block device for them and that's going very, very well.
For those that need file, we have our first-party service,
which is Cloud Filestore, which is our manage NFS.
So if you need managed NFS, we can provide that
for you at a really low price point.
We also partner with, you mentioned Elastifile earlier.
We partner with NetApp, we're partnering with EMC.
So all those options are also available for file.
Then on the object side, if you can accept
the object API, it's not POSIX-compliant
it's a very different model.
If your workloads can support that model
then we give you a bunch of options
with the Object Model API.
>> So, data management is another hot topic
and it means a lot of things to a lot of people.
You hear the backup guys talking about data management.
The database guys talk about data management.
What is data management to Google
and what your philosophy and strategy there?
>> I think for us, again, I spend a lot of time
making sure that the solutions are unified
and consistent across.
So, for us, the idea is that if you bring data
into the platform, you're gonna get
a consistent experience.
So you're gonna have consistent backup options
you're gonna have consistent pricing models.
Everything should be very similar across
the various products
So, number one, we're just making sure
that it's not confusing by making everything
very simple and very consistent.
Then over time, we're providing additional features
that help you manage that.
I'm really excited about all the work we're doing
on the security side.
So, you heard Orr's talk about access transparency
and access approvals right.
So basically, we can have a unified way
to know whether or not anyone, either Google
or if a third-party offer, a third-party request
has come in about if we're having to access the data
for any reason.
So we're giving you full transparency
as to what's going on with your data.
And that's across the data platform.
That's not on a per-product basis.
We can basically layer in all
these amazing security features on top of your data.
The way that we view our business is that
we are stewards of your data.
You've given us your data and asked us
to take care of it, right, don't lose it.
Give it back to me when I want it
and let me know when anything's happening to it.
We take that very seriously and we see all
the things we're able to bring to bear
on the security side, to really help us be good stewards
of that data.
>> The other thing you said is I get those access logs
in near real time, which is, again, nuanced
but it's very important.
Dominic, great story, really.
I think clear thinking and you, obviously,
delivered some value for the customers there.
So thanks very much for coming on theCUBE
and sharing that with us.
>> Absolutely, happy to be here.
>> All right, keep it right there everybody,
we'll be back with our next guest right after this.
You're watching theCUBE live
from Google Cloud Next from Moscone.
Dave Vellante, Stu Miniman, John Furrier.
We'll be right back.
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