Google LLC wants to give enterprises flexibility to deploy workloads across multiple infrastructure-as-a-service platforms, and easily migrate between them when needed, as part of an “open cloud” strategy detailed today by Google Cloud Chief Executive Thomas Kurian.

The search giant has been working on this strategy for a few quarters. This year, it introduced BigQuery Omni, a service that enables Google Cloud customers to analyze data stored in competing public clouds such as Amazon Web Services. Google also provides Anthos, for hybrid cloud application development, and Cloud Monitoring for cross-platform tracking of workload health.

The ultimate goal of the company’s open cloud approach is to give companies more choice in what technology infrastructure they use. “Our open cloud philosophy is grounded in the belief that customers need autonomy and control over their infrastructure,” Kurian explained in a blog post today. “Giving customers options to build, migrate and deploy their applications across multiple environments both in the cloud and on-premises allows them to avoid vendor lock-in and innovate across environments faster.” 

Kurian also listed a third benefit of the open cloud approach: the ability to meet “data survivability requirements” more effectively. When it comes to mission-critical workloads hosted in the cloud, the executive detailed, many companies need to be prepared for a scenario where their cloud provider is forced to suspend or terminate access to its platform because of regulatory or regional policy reasons. In such situations, having the flexibility to migrate a workload quickly to a different platform can help avoid business disruptions.

Products such as BigQuery Omni and Anthos are just one pillar of the open cloud strategy detailed by Kurian. He pointed to open-source technology as another. Google created several of the foundational technologies underpinning the hybrid cloud, most notably Kubernetes, and contributes to a large number of other projects. 

“We don’t think it’s possible to fully address survivability requirements with a proprietary solution,” Kurian explained. “Instead, solutions based on open source tools and open standards are the route to addressing customer and policymaker concerns. More importantly, open source gives customers the flexibility to deploy — and, if necessary, migrate — critical workloads across or off public cloud platforms.”

Google’s strategy includes a focus on making popular open-source technologies available on its cloud platform. Last year, for instance, it inked partnerships with MongoDB Inc. and a half-dozen other prominent players in the open-source ecosystem to bring managed versions of their products to Google Cloud.

Shopify Inc. is another company helping to boost the open-source ecosystem around Google Cloud. Today, Google announced that the e-commerce giant has released the code for Voucher, an internally developed tool for verifying the security of software containers used in software development. Voucher leverages Google Cloud’s Binary Authorization feature to verify that containers meet a company’s security requirements before allowing them to be deployed. 

“Google Cloud will continue to build towards an open cloud and work with partners and policymakers to support our customers, open-source communities, and society at large,” Kurian wrote. 

Image: Google