In a post on the Google Enterprise Blog, Google has announced support plans for its cloud platform solutions App Engine, Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL and BigQuery. Google says, they understand that Google Groups or StackOverflow does not always provide the right answers, and sometimes the support by phone is required. That’s right, Google!

Support plans for the Google Cloud Platform

Google divides its support in four categories: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum, with the following services:

• Bronze
  Price: free
  Service: Access to the online documentation and forums, contact regarding questions about billing.
• Silver
  Price: $150 per month
  Service: All benefits of Bronze. Plus: E-mail support regarding product features, best practices, and error messages.
• Gold
  Price: from $400 per month
  Service: All benefits of Silver. Plus: 24×7 telephone support and consulting for application development and best practices and architecture support for a particular use case.
• Platinum
  Price: Upon request.
  Service: All benefits of Gold. Plus: Very individual support. Direct access to a Technical Account Manager.

Comment

Google seems more and more to understand that the “old world” would be supported not only by boards and communities. In particular, enterprises expect a high quality and personal support. That Google also wants to make bigger steps into the business environment, I already had experienced personally. Following a request form to a Google Apps problem a few minutes later I received a call from a German Google employee who helped me out. That was a positive wow factor and a key experience. As a very early Google Apps user, I was used to times, where support pages were running on error pages and a telephone contact even to the United States was not possible.

Nevertheless, today Google is not on a par with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Windows Azure and is likely to be found at number three. Indeed Google, in addition to the two mentioned plus Salesforce, belongs to the current cloud players in the market, however, the portfolio of Google’s cloud platform compared to AWS and Azure is very thin. With App Engine, Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, BigQuery, the Prediction API, and the Translation API at least seven encapsulated services are available, but which not nearly provide the scope of AWS. In addition, you should know that the Google Compute Engine is still in a closed beta and therefore not in active competition.

For Google I still see a problem of acceptance in terms of credibility and above all, the trust. In the core Google is and remains a search engine, which is financed by advertising. Therefore Google is not without a reason named as data kraken, what underpins numerous actions and decisions by Google’s executives even further. At this point Google must be much more open and show what happens to the data that companies but also ordinary users give in trust to Google.