Sources have told GigaOM that Google will likely be launching a cloud services platform next week at Google I/O to compete with Amazon's EC2 and Microsoft's Azure services. Sure, Google already has cloud services with its App Engine and Google Cloud Storage, but this would be a more comprehensive enterprise-level offering known in the industry as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).
Cloud computing comes in three flavors, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). They each provide increasing levels of rented virtual resources. With IaaS, users simply rent use of servers provided by one or more cloud providers. PaaS users rent servers as well as the system software to use in them. SaaS users also rent application software and databases along with the servers and system software.
So now that we know the different types of cloud computing, we can see that Google is making a play for an IaaS model to rent out virtual servers and storage space for corporate markets, ultimately targeting one of Microsoft's biggest strengths… their enterprise developer community. By partnering with third-party companies such as Rightscale and Opscode, Google has focused on making it easier to write, deploy and manage applications in order to lure enterprise developers to its platform.
We'll find out more at Google I/O next week!
source: gigaom
