Google Discounts, Reservations and Pricing Updates for June 2019

Do your Google requirements make a significant difference to the way you manage your budget? If so, then it's essential to keep track of the latest changes, discounts, and pricing updates in the Google Cloud portfolio.

At the beginning of June 2019, Google revealed some significant information that you may have missed if you haven't been paying close attention to the blog and its forums. Unfortunately, the pricing announcements had nothing to do with reducing the costs for storage and Google Compute. However, Google did announce that it will be extending the committed-use discounts available for customers.

Essentially, committed-use discounts are intended to benefit customers who are willing to bite the bullet and overcome their commitment issues. If you're eager to promise Google that you'll continue to use its services for between one and three years, then you'll get money off your purchase. Usually, the resources included in these deals are Google GPUs, SSDs, and TPU pods.

Although locking yourself into a long-term plan might not sound to appealing at first, you may well be tempted when you discover that you can get discounts of up to 55% on some prices.

The New Google Capacity Reservation System

Along with it's extended discounts for long-term users, Google also revealed that it would be rolling out a capacity reservation system for Compute Engine customers. This means that you'll be able to reserve resources in a specific area of Compute Engine and use them later. With capacity reservations, you know that you have guaranteed access to whatever you need when you need it most.

While the concept of reserving capacity in the cloud might seem a little odd at first, it makes sense the more you think about it. At first glance, it's easy to tell yourself that cloud computing should be able to give you access to all the resources you need whenever you need them as standard. However, when you're struggling with a massive disruption to your bandwidth, things aren't so straightforward.

With a reservation system, you'll know for certain that you have extra resources on-hand that you can access for things like Cyber Monday and Black Friday. On days like that, when your capacity is likely to be overwhelmed, it helps to know that the resources are available and waiting for you.

After all, being on the cloud doesn't always mean that you have unlimited access to all the virtual machines that you need. What's more, if for some reason you decide that you don't need your reservation anymore, you can just cancel it.

Google has also revealed that you can use any existing discounts that you might have as part of your Google cloud allowance to pay for your reservations too. Committed use discounts - like the ones that we just mentioned above and sustained discounts will apply to your reservations automatically.

Coming to Terms with the Latest Price Updates

For those of you still wondering about those committed-use discounts, remember that Google has always been quite flexible with these offerings. Specifically, you don't need to commit to saying you're going to use just one kind of machine for three years. Instead, all you really need to do is tell Google that you're going to use at least a certain amount of memory and CPU cores for a while.

When talking about the updated and extended discounts, the product director of Google, Paul Nash, said that the business is just responding to the requirements of their customers. Google clients have told Google that other commitment models have been too inflexible for them in the past. That's why Google is doing everything it can to be as versatile as possible, while still giving customers the discounts they need.

While Google wants the reassurance that comes with knowing that customers are going to be using their systems for a long period, it doesn't want to restrict you too much. After all, Google is all about the cloud, and one of the biggest benefits of the cloud is its flexibility.

According to Google press releases, the extended committed use discounts are now available to explore within the Google Cloud environment. You can also contact the Google team to find out more about the reservation system for Compute Engine.