Google has announced that its cloud customers can now transfer their data to another cloud service provider free of charge.
The company said eliminating data transfer fees for switching cloud providers will make it easier for customers to change their cloud provider.
It, however, noted that this does not solve the fundamental issue that prevents many customers from working with their preferred cloud provider in the first place: restrictive and unfair licensing practices.
According to the company, customers using Google Cloud services including BigQuery, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Datastore, Filestore, Spanner, and Persistent Disk are eligible for free transfers out of Google Cloud but must first apply for approval through a form.
They will have 60 days to transfer their data upon approval and if the time frame elapses, they will have to submit a second request.
Supporting cloud ecosystem
Announcing the fee waiver via a statement, Google Cloud GM/VP, Head of Platform, Amit Zavery, said:
- “At Google Cloud, we work to support a thriving cloud ecosystem that is open, secure, and interoperable. When customers’ business needs evolve, the cloud should be flexible enough to accommodate those changes.
- “Starting today, Google Cloud customers who wish to stop using Google Cloud and migrate their data to another cloud provider and/or on-premises can take advantage of free network data transfer to migrate their data out of Google Cloud. This applies to all customers globally.”
- “Making it easier for customers to move from one provider to another does little to improve choice if customers remain locked in with restrictive licenses. Customers should choose a cloud provider because it makes sense for their business, not because their legacy provider has locked them in with overly restrictive contracting terms or punitive licensing practices,” Zavery added.
Google added that the cloud promises to allow businesses and governments to seamlessly scale their technology use. It said the elimination of fees builds on the multiple measures in recent months to provide more value and improve data transfer for large and small organizations running workloads on Google Cloud.
What you should know
According to an IDC survey, 99% of cloud storage users have incurred egress fees (outgoing data transfer fees) averaging 6% of their cloud storage costs.
In a separate poll from Global Market Intelligence, 34% of enterprises said that their use of cloud storage had been affected by egress fees, causing them to repatriate data on-premises or shift to a service provider that doesn’t charge for egress.
