Google Cloud is beating Amazon to the punch with Anthos, a new hybrid cloud offering (GOOGL)

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On Tuesday, Google Cloud announced Anthos, which allows customers to run their applications across Google Cloud, data centers, and even rival clouds like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.
This is Google’s first big hybrid cloud platform — marking its entry into a market that Microsoft has been in for years, and something that Amazon Web Services will start to push into later this year.
Google Cloud also announced integrations with over 30 hardware, software and system integration partners including Cisco, VMware, HPE, Intel, and Lenovo.
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Google Cloud is beating Amazon Web Services to the punch with the release of its new, flagship hybrid cloud offering

Last year, Google Cloud announced Cloud Services Platform, which allows customers to run applications both on Google Cloud and in data centers — an approach known as hybrid cloud.

Now, on Tuesday, Cloud Services Platform has been released to customers under the new name Anthos, with a logo to go with it. Better yet, Google says that Anthos now works not only with Google Cloud and data centers, but also with rivals like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

"The ability for businesses to run on multiple clouds is really a game changer," Urs Hölzle, SVP of Technical Infrastructure at Google, told members of the press earlier this week.

Microsoft has offered hybrid cloud services for years, though it focuses mainly on its Azure cloud Amazon Web Services announced its own hybrid offering, called AWS Outposts, last November, and it’s expected to be generally available later this year.

Anthos is available as a monthly subscription service with a minimum of one-year commitment. The pricing is based on blocks of 100 virtual CPUs, and it’s the same regardless of whether the application is running on-premises or on the cloud. The list price is $10,000 a month.

An ‘acute pain point’

Hölzle said Google Cloud decided to introduce Anthos because customers said that not being able to run their on a combination of multiple clouds and their own servers was an "acute pain point."

Anthos is able to run on multiple environments because of Google Kubernetes Engine, the search giant’s own premium service based on the wildly popular Kubernetes open source cloud platform. Notably, Kubernetes got its start at Google, but has since gone on to become something of a standard in modern software development.

By using Kubernetes under the hood, Anthos can work across any cloud infrastructure, wherever it may be. It’s also a software-based product, so customers don’t need to buy new hardware.

When using Anthos, you’ll manage all of the disparate infrastructure from Google Cloud, but the actual software and data will be running in whatever cloud you choose.

Google Cloud also announced an Anthos-based partnership with over 30 hardware, software and system integration partners including Cisco, VMware, HPE, Intel, and Lenovo, to certify that it’ll work across their products and solutions.

"I’m very excited about this partnership. I do think this is a very strong proposition for all of our customers," said David Goeckeler, EVP and General Manager of networking and security business at Cisco. "…Over the time dimension you’re talking about, we’re going to be in this hybrid world for a long time."

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