Google tips open source cloud tools so customers can be free

Three new tools illustrate Google's strategic approach to its cloud platform customers and echo an old proverb: Set them free, so they can return and stay. The latest thrust of Google's strategy to establish greater relevance in the multi-cloud landscape may seem counterintuitive: luring more companies to its public cloud by building more offramps to other platforms. Updates to Google's cloud platform last week tripled down on portability, with workflow capabilities hitched to an open source technology, open source cloud tools for confidential computing and an open-sourced container runtime. Of that trio, the one with the most potential for immediate impact is Cloud Composer, a managed Apache Airflow service now in beta for workflow creation and management. This fills an important gap on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which lacked tools to connect its various analytics services, while its two main competitors, AWS and Microsoft Azure, have had workflow tools for years. Google can pitch Cloud Composer as a tool that provides freedom from lock-in, which should be particularly attractive, as the open source community has been a driving force behind analytics and big data, said Mike Leone, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass.