Google Inc. has unveiled a new commercial support product for companies using its cloud services.

Called simply “Engineering Support,” the new product, as the name quite clearly suggests, provides Google engineer support to Google Cloud Platform clients on a role-based subscription model.

Google is pitching the new service as providing a number of advantages over its previous offering, in particular, that it provides predictability to Cloud Platform clients, in that it offers flat fees per user per month with no variable percentage-of-platform-spend charges; customizability, in that Cloud Platform clients are able to configure their support entitlements to match their exact needs; and flexibility in allowing clients to change their level of support from month-to-month should their business needs change.

“With this new model, you pay for only the roles your team needs and can decide what time-frame of support responses best suits the lifecycle stages of your applications and who in your organization needs to interact with support,” Google Cloud’s Dave Resin and Benjamin Smith wrote in a blog post. The product was announced Wednesday at Google’s Cloud Next conference for developers (pictured) in San Francisco.

Google’s decision to provide a more flexible support program comes at a time where Google is attempting to make its cloud offering more appealing as it continues to trail behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure in the cloud services market.

While much of Google’s focus at the Cloud Next conference was about customer acquisition, providing more flexible support, along with catering to niche services partially or not supported by its rivals, is one way for Google to win new business.

The price of Engineering Support starts at $100 per user per month for responses within four to eight business hours, $250 per user per month for responses within an hour, and $1,500 per user per month for 15-minute response time 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The new service will eventually replace Google’s existing silver, gold and platinum support tiers.

Photo: Robert Hof