Google is constantly unveiling new features for Google Compute Engine, its growing public cloud platform. Although other tech firms have supported the Infrastructure as a Service product, Google has been rather silent about new clients signing up to use the service, VentureBeat reported.
Google Compute Engine does have notable clients on its roster. In its blog posts, Google names CoolaData, Fishlabs, grandcentrix, Mendelics, Ocado and Wowza among its list of users. Brightcove, a publicly-traded firm also decided to have its video encoding service Zencoder run on Google Compute Engine even if it is possible for it to function on Amazon Web Services and other public clouds. However, nearly all of these customers were mentioned in Google blogs in December last year-about the same time that Google Compute Engine was launched. With competition in the space heating up, not making any new customer wins is not the best place for Google to be in, the report said.
This apparent lack of new clients was also noticed by Lydia Leong, an analyst at Gartner that covers IaaS. In an email sent to VentureBeat, Leong said, "They're being quiet for a reason, although Google is being hugely hush-hush on the reason why."
While observers in the industry believe that Google can take on Amazon Web Services, the market leader when it comes to public cloud services, because of its extensive features, low prices and wide scale, it needs to grow quickly. Having well-known firms on board could help the firm hasten its "rate of adoption," the report said.
Meanwhile, other public clouds are snatching big client wins. Microsoft's Windows Azure, for one, said it is utilized by BMW Latin America, Toyota, Herbalife and others. The SoftLayer public cloud of IBM now has 22,000 customers. Rackspace has Domino's Pizza, Under Armour and Fujifilm, among its clients while Virtustream has Intel and Kawasaki among its roster of clients even if it is smaller compared to the three firms first mentioned. The market leader, Amazon Web Services, counts Adobe, Dow Jones and Pfizer, to name a few, among its elite list of customers, the report said.
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