谷歌拟推秘密云计划

就在亚马逊、微软和IBM斥资建立覆盖全球的云计算数据中心之际，该领域的另一个重要参与者谷歌公司却鲜有动作。原来，这家搜索巨头正在执行一项秘密的追赶计划。

过去几个月，亚马逊、微软和IBM轮番在中国、印度、德国、英国、韩国等地设立了新的云计算数据中心。但还有一家公共云服务供应商却奇怪地保持沉默——它就是谷歌。

之所以说谷歌按兵不动很奇怪，是因为一家云服务供应商如果想向客户特别是企业客户提供云服务，地理位置是十分重要的。在运行中，电脑服务器和存储设备离用户越远，延迟时间就越长。因此在这个问题上，慢绝对不是一件好事。

不过，接近谷歌的两名消息人士表示，谷歌正在考虑一个有趣的计划。

谷歌的云服务在全球只有四个地区性数据中心，相比之下，微软Azure有20个，亚马逊AWS有11个，而且明年还将建成5个数据中心。不过谷歌在全球各地还建有70个数据高速缓存站，用来储存视频、音频和热门网页的缓存文件，这些高速缓存站的位置离目标用户较近，可以起到加速作用。

这些终端是谷歌所称的“对等互联与内容分发网络”的重要组成部分。我们的两个消息源都表示，这个目前还在讨论中的理念，旨在给予这些高速缓存站额外的计算能力，从而使它们扮演微型数据中心的角色。

这两名消息人士都要求匿名，因为他们所在的两家公司都是谷歌的合作伙伴。一位谷歌发言人表示，她不会为这些传闻和推测发表评论。

一名消息人士指出，谷歌计算引擎团队（GCE，基本上就是谷歌的云部门）正在与公司内部的基础架构部门合作，看看是否能让这些地区性终端系统具备一定的计算能力。

但这也可能会有一定的问题。首先，谷歌设计出的可能是一个分层式系统，大量工作还要在谷歌自己的大型数据中心里完成。谷歌数据中心运行着几十万个（甚至可能几百万个）服务器，它的计算能力要超过内容分发网络（CDN）的小型终端节点。但是相比在GCE自己的数据中心里运行，这种做法会在计算能力上面临更多的限制。

该消息人士表示：“用户可能会面临性能上限的限制，而且在这些小型终端点上运行的成本也更贵。”

这个方案也完全不符合公共云用户的预期——此处所说的公共云用户，指的就是租用了谷歌、亚马逊、微软等企业提供的计算、存储和带宽服务的用户。他们一般认为，自己只要需要的话，就应该可以添加近乎无限的计算和存储能力。所以这个方案可以利用两种定价模式，建立起两套基础架构。

显然，谷歌需要尽快着手在全球覆盖上有所动作。目前公共云基础架构领域的领头羊是亚马逊，据高德纳公司去年预测，亚马逊的计算能力，超过了排在它后面的14家云计算竞争对手的总和的10倍。而微软则重点把精力放在了企业客户上。

为了加速流入和流出云端的流量速度，谷歌近日与CDN市场的领头羊阿卡迈公司建立了合作伙伴关系，以将谷歌自己的CDN网络直接与阿卡迈CDN网络进行互联。今年9月，谷歌还与Cloudflare、Fastly、Level 3 Communications和Highwinds四家CDN服务供应商签订了类似协议。但这些协议只是整个蓝图的一小部分。

谷歌拥有极强的技术实力，去年谷歌向云计算市场投出了一颗大炸弹，宣布下调存储和计算等一系列核心服务的价格，此举也打了亚马逊一个措手不及，因为亚马逊历来不习惯让其他公司主打价格牌。然而谷歌在向企业用户销售云服务方面却并不是一帆风顺，因为很多企业用户并不确定，作为一家在线搜索和广告巨头的谷歌会不会真正关心云服务。（当然，谷歌自己总是宣称自己非常重视云服务。）

为了扭转客户的这种认知，谷歌最近任命VMware公司前CEO黛安•葛琳负责公司云计算部门。她的到来使谷歌云服务对客户来说增添了一定的可靠性。当然，谷歌的另一个产品——谷歌应用引擎出现的问题，可能会不利于吸引潜在商业用户。但要强调的是，亚马逊AWS和微软Azure服务也都出现过一些小问题。

Battery Ventures风险投资公司科技研究员、前Netflix公司云计算专家亚德里安•科克罗夫特表示，他没有听说过谷歌有这样的计划，但他认为，考虑到谷歌的确需要大面积的地缘覆盖和快速的性能，这个计划也是合情合理的。

科克罗夫特通过电子邮件对《财富》表示，如果谷歌云团队真的想到了如何将这些CDN节点转变成一个个迷你数据中心，那么这意味着他们听取了企业客户的要求。

科克罗夫特表示：“从技术的角度看，这还意味着他们找出了如何将云服务进行压缩和包装，用于小型区域性部署的办法。”在这方面，微软和另一家公共云服务公司Ocean已经走在了前面，而且科克罗夫特认为，随着时间的推移，亚马逊的AWS也将在这方面做得越来越好。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

审校：任文科

Over the past few months, while Amazon, Microsoft and IBM took turns unveiling new cloud computing data centers in China, India, Germany, the U.K., South Korea, and elsewhere, one public cloud provider remained eerily silent: Google.

This is odd because, when it comes to delivering cloud services to customers—especially business customers—location matters. The further away the computer servers and storage are, the longer the lag time, or latency, in operations. And slow is definitely no good in this context.

But two sources close to Googlesaid the company is considering an interesting plan.

Google’s cloud services operate out of four data center regions worldwide compared with 20 for Microsoft Azure and 11 for Amazon Web Services (AWS) with five more due in the next year. But Google also has 70 data caching stations around the world that store copies (or caches) of video, audio and popular web pages close to their likely audiences to speed their delivery.

Those endpoints are key pieces of what Google calls its “peering and content delivery network.” The idea, which both sources said is under discussion, calls for these Google outposts to be outfitted with additional computing capacity so they would become sort of mini data centers.

Both sources requested anonymity because their companies work with Google. A Google spokeswoman would not comment on what she called rumor and speculation.

One source noted that the Google Compute Engine (GCE) team—basically the cloud group—is working with the company’s broader internal infrastructure groups to see if it can put small pods or clusters of computing power into these regional endpoints.

There could be wrinkles. For one thing this could end up being a tiered system, with big jobs running on Google’s own massive data centers which run hundreds of thousands (millions?) of servers that could outstrip the capabilities of the smaller end-point nodes of the CDN. If they were to do that, there’s more limited capacity than for the stuff running in GCE’s own data centers, he said.

“Users might be given a cap and it would be more expensive to run” in these smaller clusters, the source said.

That scenario flies in the face of the expectation of public cloud users—customers who rent out computing, storage and bandwidth run by Google, Amazon, Microsoft etc.—who think they can add nearly unlimited computing and storage capacity as needed. So this scenario could set up a two sets of infrastructure with two pricing models.

But it is clear Google needs to do something about global coverage soon. Amazonis the leader in public cloud infrastructure, running what Gartner last year estimated to be 10 times more computing capacity than the next 14 cloud competitors combined. Microsoft MSFT -2.19% is making a play especially with business customers.

To help speed traffic flow into and out of its cloud, Google and Akamai [Fortune-stock symbol=”AKAM”], the CDN market leader recently announced a partnership to directly link to Google’s own CDN interconnect with Akamai’s CDN. In September it announced a similar deal with four other CDN providers: Cloudflare, Fastly, Level 3 Communications and Highwinds. But those deals are just a piece of the overall puzzle.

Google has great technical smarts, and entered the fray with a bang last year with a series of price cuts on key storage and computing services in a move that seemed to flummox Amazon, which is not used to other companies driving the price agenda. But it has struggled to sell its cloud to business users, many of whom are not totally sure that Google, the online search and ad giant, really cares about cloud services. (For the record, it always said it does.)

To counter that perception, Google recently put former VMwareCEO Diane Greene in charge of its cloud unit. She brings added credibility to the push with business customers. (Of course, this week’s snafu with Google App Engine, anohter of Google’s cloud offerings, probably won’t help its case with prospective business users, but then again AWS and Azure have also had hiccups.)

Adrian Cockcroft, technology fellow at Battery Ventures, and former cloud guru at Netflix NFLX -3.25% , said he has not heard about this Google plan but he that it would make sense given businesses needs for lots of geographical coverage and fast performance.

If the Google cloud team has figured out how to convert those CDN nodes into far-flung mini-data center pods, it means they have listened to what enterprise customers have requested, Cockcroft told Fortune via email.

“From a technology point of view, it also means they have figured out how to scale down and package their cloud for small regional deployments,” Cockcroft said. That is something Microsoft and Digital Ocean, another public cloud company, have already done and something he thinks AWS will get better with over time.