Google has decided it wants a bigger slice of the Big Data pie by launching a new service that offers managed hosting to both Spark and Hadoop.

Called Google Cloud Dataproc, the service allows users take advantage of open source data tools for batch processing, querying, streaming, and machine learning, complete with automation tools that allow clusters to be created quickly along with the ability to save money by turning clusters off when they’re not needed.

Google is pitching the service on a number of fronts, although like any good hosted Google product price leads the pack, with the service starting at 1 cent per virtual CPU in each cluster per hour, with preemptible instances available that offer lower compute prices, reducing potential costs further; in a not at all subtle dig at competitors Google also adds that “Instead of rounding your usage up to the nearest hour, Cloud Dataproc charges you only for what you really use with minute-by-minute billing and a low, ten-minute-minimum billing period.”

Speed is said to be another advantage of Cloud Dataproc, with clusters being available to be established, started, stopped and even shut down within 90 seconds, compared to 5 to 30 minutes in an on-premises or IaaS environment.

Naturally the new service also plays nicely with existing Google Cloud products including BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud Logging, and Cloud Monitoring, delivering what Google describes as delivering “more than just a Spark or Hadoop cluster—you have a complete data platform.”

Delivering ease of use, the entire service in managed through Google’s Developer console meaning that there is no need to learn any new tools or APIs to implement Spark and Hadoop clusters on Dataproc.

“Cloud Dataproc gives you anytime access to super-fast, simple yet powerful, managed Spark and Hadoop clusters,” Google Product Manager James Malone said. “Since you only pay for what you use with minute-by-minute billing, you won’t break the bank in the process.”

Cloud wars

Google Cloud Dataproc is yet another part of Google’s good fight in the cloud wars that sees the various players in the space constantly innovate and cut costs to get a bigger slice of the ever-growing Big Data cloud market.

On paper Dataproc looks highly competitive, and it will certainly be a popular addition to the lineup among those who already use Google’s already varied and broad range of cloud products; whether the service will capture market share from other providers though is yet to be seen.