There have been some exciting changes to how Rakuten Cloud and Google Cloud bring edge cloud solutions to market, giving enterprises new deployment flexibility. I explored these innovations and what the future holds in a recent conversation with Michelle Rockler, Global Director of Infrastructure for Partners at Google Cloud.
Rockler has been one of our champions inside Google Cloud and is one of the people responsible for driving the deep alignment between Google Cloud and Rakuten Cloud. This has resulted in Rakuten software-defined storage powering Google Distributed Cloud connected servers.
“Many people assume Google Cloud is only about the public cloud, but the reality is that customers have real and growing demands for on-premises solutions—particularly in the public sector, regulated industries, and edge locations like retail and manufacturing. It’s at the edge where we’re seeing new and compelling use cases,” Rockler said.
Rockler pointed to early successes in the retail and manufacturing industries, where there is real demand for GDC to meet various needs, including low-latency large files, freeing up backbone network capacity, or meeting a number of regulatory standards involving data sovereignty or privacy.
There is a growing trend in flexible GDC deployment models. Some customers have servers in place and would like to keep them. These companies are great candidates for deploying Rakuten Cloud-Native Storage from the Google Cloud Marketplace. This allows customers to take a phased approach that leverages current assets and then evolves toward a fully integrated system or service when they’re ready.
This phased journey is a real opportunity for our joint channel partners. “We are 100% focused on partner-led services,” Rockler said. “And what we’re doing here creates a platform for high-value services at the edge. That’s incredibly powerful.”
One of the enablers of these flexible deployment models is the availability of the Rakuten Cloud-Native Storage software in the Google Cloud Marketplace. This enables enterprises or channel partners to purchase and download the software directly to their own servers.
This gives customers not only choice but confidence. “Together, we’ve created something that is pre-integrated and repeatable. That’s huge for our sales teams, for the broader partner ecosystem, and most importantly, for our customers,” Rockler said.
Google Cloud has done a phenomenal job with marketplace enablement, especially with the two-tier delivery model. This allows our partners to package our solutions, add their own services, and offer them directly to customers. That flexibility is a real differentiator.
Customers can now purchase Rakuten Cloud-Native Storage software with a trusted, compliant process. A recent IDC value report showed that customers see 45% faster integrated software solutions and procurement, and 50% faster deployment through the marketplace. These solutions are pre-tested and validated. That enables faster ROI and gives our partners the confidence to scale quickly.
As this conversation made clear, both Google Cloud and Rakuten Cloud are laser-focused on addressing edge cloud workloads. That is evident in our seamlessly integrated software solution and the flexible go-to-market options for enterprises.
Whether it's software-defined storage-as-a-service bundled with value-added services from a partner or downloaded from Google Cloud Marketplace, we’re giving enterprises the flexibility they need to succeed with edge cloud.
It’s a testament to what can happen when technology, partnership, and trust come together. I encourage you to watch the full version of my conversation with Rockler here: https://youtu.be/A8AcoloR_rM
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