Published by Melkis Espinal, Software Engineer
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition of cloud computing states that:
"Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction."
As stated above, cloud computing must contain five equally important traits. These are:
Now that cloud computing has been properly defined, let's focus on how it is a game changer for startups like Loop.
As disclosed by Google, the Google Infrastructure became Carbon Neutral in 2007. In 2017, Google became the first company of their size to match 100% of their global, annual electricity consumption with renewable energy. Most importantly, Google is currently moving towards decarbonizing their electricity supply completely and operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy, globally, by 2030.
Figure 1: Google's energy journey. Source: https://sustainability.google/progress/energy/
Loop is deep-caring at its core, which is why it was formed as a B-Corp. Being mission-driven and giving back to the community is just part of Loop's DNA (and legal foundation). And what best way to give back to the community than by running Loop's IT infrastructure in a cloud computing provider that cares for our planet. Loop has a strong commitment in protecting our environment so that our people are also safe.
This section really applies to all cloud providers. But since Loop uses Google Cloud Platform (GCP), that will be the focus here.
Startups have a limited budget to work with and they must be careful when allocating such resources. Cloud computing is a no-brainer for startups since IT infrastructure costs are significantly low compared to having an on-premise data center.
These are some benefits of using GCP in terms of budget:
For the most part, Loop has adopted the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Serverless Logic architectures in GCP.
With these approaches, the Loop tech team can focus in writing applications rather than in configuring and managing servers, which is very beneficial at this stage and size of the company.
As mentioned in an article in Forbes, Google's network carries as much as 40% of the world's Internet traffic every day. Currently, this makes Google the largest network of its kind. Google's network has 100,000s of kilometers of fiber cables and as of June, 2021, Google has investments in 16 subsea cables.
In addition, as of the writing of this article, Google is available in 200+ countries and territories, has 146 network edge locations, 82 zones, and 27 cloud regions (source).
Figure 2: Google's availability. Source: https://cloud.google.com/
At Loop, leveraging this networking power is a no-brainer. This will allow Loop to provide its customers a top-notch IT infrastructure with super fast response times and high availability at a global scale.
For context, a petabyte is equal to 1,000 terabytes and a terabyte is equal to 1,000 gigabytes.
GCP allows the ingestion, storing, and analysis of petabytes of data. This gives companies peace of mind knowing that scaling will not be a problem if needed. Here are some GCP services with their corresponding superpowers:
Security is a topic that is in every company's mind. Rest assure that the data collected at Loop will be secured in Google Data Centers. Data in most of the services that GCP offers (e.g., Cloud Storage, Cloud BigTable, etc.) are encrypted at rest.
Google also helps companies with best practices, templates, products, and solutions related to Security.
GCP services and data availabilities have an SLA to comply with, which are of enterprise-grade. This makes sure that data and services are accessible even when unpredictable events happen.
I hope that this article has helped you understand a bit more about why did Loop end up with GCP as their cloud computing service provider. GCP allows Loop, in part, to comply with its mission-driven business model. In addition, I hope that it was clear that in terms of availability and security, future Loop customers have nothing to worry about. Thanks for reading!