What is Hyperscale Cloud, and How Automation Can Help Brands Who Make the Shift

Hyperscale cloud computing emerged, like many technologies, based on a need. As certain brands grew, they were forced to develop infrastructures capable of handling hundreds of millions of users, actions, and transactions – with the potential to grow to billions.

A quick look at user counts for the most popular social media sites shows just one type of network where hyperscale computing has been necessary. According to Statista, in fact, Facebook has reached more than 2.2 billion active users in 2018. YouTube isn’t too far behind with over 1.8 billion users per month.

But Hyperscale solutions aren’t just for the largest digital brands. More and more enterprises are switching out their own data centers to move operations and workloads to the cloud.

Just a few to note:

• Evernote migrated 200 million users to Google Cloud Platform
• eBay has exported its catalog of over one billion items to the cloud
• LATAM Airlines is using G-Suite and GCP for data analytics and 3D modeling
• Target has moved to Google Cloud to scale up during peak seasons
• Other notable enterprises that use GCP include Spotify, HSBC, Home Depot and Snapchat

In fact, a cloud security report from Intel Security revealed that 73% of brands plan to move to a fully software-defined data center within the next two years and 94% of brands already run some portion of their business in the cloud.

The transition to cloud infrastructure is happening for a number of reasons:

• 81% of brands fear missing out on cloud advancements.
• Growing enterprise brands are drawn to improved flexibility.
• Enterprise cost-reduction is a major factor with reduced overhead and no capital expenses.
• Provides the ability to rapidly pivot and handle disaster recovery in record time.
• Offers expansive scalability with plenty of room to grow.

Performance, flexibility, reduced cost, and scalability are among the key reasons itopia chose to build Cloud Automatic Stack specifically for Google Cloud.

Google Cloud Platform is the Next Leader in Hyperscale Cloud

itopia’s Cloud Automation Stack (CAS) was created not only to simplify the otherwise complex deployment and management of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) workloads, but also to reduce the cost of those deployments.

That optimization of workflows comes in part thanks to a simplified single-control-panel interface. From within the CAS interface, IT management can manage and monitor growing workloads ranging from remote desktops/apps and graphic workstations to AD-based disaster recovery and virtual servers.

It’s a service that could have been designed for any cloud platform, however GCP was specifically (and exclusively) chosen for a number of reasons:

• Google is catching up fast to AWS and Microsoft. In the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Infrastructure-as-a-Service: AWS leads, Microsoft Azure is #2, and Google is #3.
• Google owns the world’s largest global private network that also runs Google Search, Google Maps and YouTube
• People: Diane Greene is the founder of VMware and is the head of Google Cloud. Greene is an industry pioneer in the enterprise computing space and has stated publicly the ambitious plan to surpass AWS in five years.
• Billions: 7 Google products have a billion users or more, all running on the same Google Cloud infrastructure. Three G Suite applications are actively used on over a billion smartphones. G Suite has more than 3 million paying customers.
• Google Cloud is now the 8th Google product serving over a billion users.
• Big: Google Cloud is now the largest division at Google by employee headcount.
• Growth: Google Cloud had a 2.2x increase in customers in the past year.
• Security: Google has more than 750 security engineers.
• Partnership: 13,000 Google Cloud Partners and growing.

Why CAS and GCP is a Smart Pairing (that frees up IT professionals and budgets)

Brands making the shift to GCP and utilizing itopia’s Cloud Automation Stack (CAS) are reaping the benefits. itopia’s Cloud Automation Stack has helped enterprises reduce costs and boost deployment.

The greatest benefit is in automation. As businesses scale up it is important to keep workloads under control so as not to lose the focus of vital team members. Automation is what makes the management of terabytes of data, countless tasks, and millions of users wholly manageable.

In fact, Research and Markets shows the Worldwide Infrastructure Automation Market is expected to reach $65.48 billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of around 19.9% during the forecast period 2016-2022. That growth is being driven by hyperscale cloud and the need for automation, orchestration, and IT that scales intelligently.

itopia CAS automates over 250 provisioning and management tasks through deep integration with Google Cloud Deployment Manager — all from a single and easy-to-navigate SaaS portal. Just a few of those tasks include:

• Automating provisioning for single or multi-region deployments on GCP
• Automating snapshot scheduling for backup and disaster recovery
• Scheduling server uptime
• Managing folders and file shares
• Implementing AD-based disaster recovery
• Managing security policies, access control lists and individual user permissions.
• Managing virtual machine instances hosted on Google’s cloud infrastructure.
• Creating and managing VPNs for cloud and hybrid use cases.
• Extending on premises Active Directory to GCP

Who Uses itopia’s CAS and Google Cloud Platform

There are endless ways to make itopia and GCP work for your enterprise, from the simple to the complex; like using uptime scheduling functionality to limit runtime to business hours, or eliminating on-premises hardware and colocation costs by migrating remote desktop deployments to GCP.

Here are four solutions provided by CAS and GCP:

• Enterprise workstations: Automate the deployments and management of Windows-based virtual desktops on GCP for any end user.
• Graphic workstations: Automate the deployment and management of Linux-based virtual graphics workstations powered by GPU accelerators on GCP for creative professionals.
• Active Directory: Extend on-premises Active Directory domains to GCP, and launch and manage AD-based VM instances in different GCP regions and zones globally for disaster recovery.
• Windows/Linux Server Automation: Automates the provisioning and management of server-only environments on GCP.

Conclusion

Enterprise operations gearing up to make the switch are always looking for a competitive advantage. CAS and GCP provide more efficiency, scale, and security. With zero capital expense and the industry’s lowest cost of deployment, itopia paired with Google Cloud Platform represents the best option for channel partners and IT professionals in terms of performance, price, and value.