Google Unleashes Its Own Data Storage Service

With Google’s recent upgrades to cloud computing and Big Data analytics services, it appears the technology conglomerate is making a new push in the Internet of Things competition. In fact, Google has been at this game for a while. It’s only just now, however, that the firm said it wants to make its own Big Data tools available to other businesses.

Reports released Thursday (May 7) said that Google has launched Google Cloud Bigtable, a service that lets firms store vast amounts of data online. It’s a platform the company said has a flurry of possibilities across an array of markets. Financial firms, for example, can store trading data to analyze for emerging trends. Telecommunications, advertising, energy and biomedical companies have a lot to gain from the data storage tool, too.

But the service isn’t exactly new. According to reports, Google has been using Cloud Bigtable for several years. It’s the entity that runs Google Search, Google Analytics and Gmail. For other company clients, the service is now running in beta phase, but several firms have already customized Bigtable for their needs. For example, reports said financial services firm SunGard established a financial audit-trail system on the platform.

Cloud Bigtable can be accessed through open source data processing platform Hadoop as well as Google Cloud Dataflow and Google BigQuery. According to Google, its data storage service is faster than rivals, and the company will manage backup, data encryption and other data monitoring services.

Last month, Google revealed new updates to Google Cloud Dataflow to focus on real-time data analysis. Together, Cloud Dataflow and Cloud Bigtable signal Google’s embrace of Big Data and businesses’ ability to handle this flow of information.

“We really believe that streaming is the way the world is going,” Google Cloud Platform director of project management Tom Kershaw said in the announcement of Cloud Dataflow updates. “Instead of looking at data from two months or two years ago, the data you really care about is happening right now.”