Google’s Cloud Networking Product Manager Morgan Dollard

Borrowing a page from the Amazon.com Inc. book of running cloud conferences, Google Inc. is kicking off its annual infrastructure-as-a-service summit in San Fransisco with a slew of new features that address the needs of both developers and enterprises. The bulk of the additions focus on making it easier to create and scale applications on the search giant’s platform.

A developer edge

The main highlight is Container Engine, a hosted implementation of the Kubernetes project that Google released to the community back in July designed specifically to power Dockerized applications. The service is being positioned as a more focused alternative to Amazon’s general-purpose BeanStalk development service for running containers, promising to take the hassle out of setting up the scaffolding to support composite projects consisting of multiple instances.

Besides leveling the playing field against the retail giant on another key front, Container Engine also marks a major step forward in Google’s quest to lower the learning curve for new users of its cloud platform, a key requirement for retaining developers. To that end, the search giant is also adding more deployment options through Managed VMs, another new offering that brings the automation features of its platform-as-a-service offering to regular instances. That provides access to a choice of processing and memory options not available in the regular sandbox version.

Originally unveiled earlier this year, Managed VMs is now rolling out into public beta with an impressive array of added features besides the extra configurability, including support for Docker and management such as load balancing and auto-scaling. And for users that only want the elasticity without the development tool, Google is releasing the latter feature as an independent offering.

Addressing the enterprise

The ability to resize instances as needed can be incredibly useful for developers working on fast-paced projects with rapidly evolving requirements, and just as handy for organizations trying to address traffic spikes. But the enterprise is much more than a secondary priority for Google.

The search giant has left little room for doubt that it’s serious about targeting that market directly after introduction of no fewer than three new options for companies to hook their data centers up to its platform. Under the umbrella of Google Cloud Interconnect, the firm is offering corporate customers the choice of connecting to one of its over 70 “points of presence” directly through a private line, go through a carrier or – starting next month – use a secure VPN.

In the post announcing the new updates, Google cloud veep Brian Stevens – who defected from Red Hat Inc. barely two months ago – promises that the second day of the event will see even more networking updates. Stay tuned for the latest news and analysis as the summit unfolds and be sure to check SiliconANGLE’s YouTube Channel to hear the real scoops from the insiders on the show floor.

View the entire playlist from theCUBE’s coverage of Day 1 of the Google Cloud Platform Live event below:

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