Google App Engine

Overview

Google entered the cloud platform arena with a bang after several years of speculation. In April 2008, they launched Google App Engine and, while the news wasn't unexpected, it did serve notice to the industry that one of the giants of computing was ready to put its vast resources behind a concept who's time had come.

Google App Engine delivers an application development and deployment Platform as a Service (PaaS) with all the characteristics associated with it. The underlying hardware, software, and related foundational components are fully integrated so developers can focus on the application itself. Simplicity, speed, scalability, and pay-per-use are the hallmarks of platform services.

When it initially launched, Google App Engine was geared more towards satisfying the needs of developers who were creating consumer-grade web applications. However, Google worked hard to evolve the platform so it would garner the attention of enterprise developers - those who's applications require a much more scalable environment.

Today, Google App Engine supports applications written in both Python and Java (support for Java was added in April 2009). Since Python is primarily used in the realm of Google search, adding support for the Java platform was critical since it is widely used across the enterprise and by millions of developers.

Google App Engine is free to get started with up to 500MB of storage and five million page views per month. When customers need to go beyond that, they enable billing, but only pay for the storage, CPU, and bandwidth resources used (as measured in gigabytes). Taken all together, Google's platform makes it easy to build and deploy an application that is highly-scalable, reliable, and secure.

Value Proposition

Google App Engine enables developers to build applications in the cloud that run on Google's infrastructure, decreasing the time to build and deploy them, making them easy to maintain, and providing a highly-scalable environment.

Google App Engine is cost-effective, customers pay only for the storage, CPU, and bandwidth resources they use. In April 2009, Google added support for the Java platform, in addition to Python, greatly extending its appeal to enterprise-level developers.

Products & Services

• Google App Engine enables developers to build applications in the cloud that run on Google's infrastructure; they're easy to build, deploy, maintain, and scale. Features include:
  • Dynamic web serving, with full support for common web technologies
  • Persistent storage with queries, sorting and transactions
  • Automatic scaling and load balancing
  • APIs for authenticating users and sending email using Google Accounts
  • Fully-featured local development environment that simulates Google App Engine on your computer
  • Scheduled tasks for triggering events at specified times and regular intervals