The big question is whether enterprises will flock to GCE.
"Larger enterprises have proven willing, on the whole, to adopt cloud computing but will be increasingly cautious with a product that comes from a company that has a pedigree of making (and then ending) experimental products and whose very revenue stream comes from data mining customer data," says Kepes. While there is sure to be a strong separation between Google's cash-cow operations--search--and Compute Engine, enterprises will want to carefully review the license terms before using GCE.
Google will have to convince enterprises that it will both protect their privacy and remain committed to maintaining Compute Engine. While Google has gotten some big wins with other enterprise offerings like Gmail and Docs (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is using Google Apps and GM is reportedly moving to Gmail), there's still the question of getting adequate support when problems arise.
While support may be an issue, management should be less of one. Out of the gate Google has attracted a few key cloud management vendors, including Opscode Chef, Puppet Labs Puppet and RightScale. The integration allows centralized management and provisioning of the Compute Engine VM with the management frameworks and will help speed the deployment of Compute Engine resources. If Compute Engine picks up customers, other cloud management vendors like enStratus will likely add support.
The pricing during the trial period seems comparable with Amazon's EC2. An EC2 medium instance with 3.75 Gbytes of RAM, one virtual core and 410 Gbytes of storage is 16 cents per hour for a Linux image, compared with Google's entry VM, which has one virtual core, 3.75 Gbytes RAM and 420 Gbytes of disk space for 14.5 cents per hour. The data transfer rates are similar, as are storage and IP address charges.
The biggest differentiator between Google Compute Engine and others like Amazon, Microsoft and Rackspace is that the Compute Engine is in a trial phase, while the others are shipping services today. Google tends to take months or years to bring a service out for public use, so I don't expect its competitors to be worried yet. In fact, unless Google can find a way to differentiate itself from the others, Google Compute Engine is destined to be yet another cloud service.
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