Why is AWS partnering with GCP?
On last Sunday, Google Cloud published a blog post about their new collaboration with AWS. From the blog post:
“Today, we announced a significant collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to offer a managed, private and secure, on-demand, solution for cross-cloud connectivity. This solution is designed to enable customers to easily build enterprise-grade applications that span both Google Cloud and AWS environments. This collaboration is particularly timely, as the adoption of multicloud applications is rapidly accelerating, driven in part by the rise of AI. A Forbes survey highlighted that 82% of respondents anticipate that the arrival of AI services will increase the demand for multicloud networking due to the scarcity of specialized accelerator resources and the availability of diverse AI agents across different vendors. The surge in multicloud adoption is a strategic imperative for organizations looking to build agentic AI applications, optimize workloads, access best-of-breed services, meet data residency requirements, and ensure the necessary resiliency for modern hybrid and multicloud applications.”
Remember, cross-cloud interconnect was first “generally available” since May, 2023. This is how Google explains their cross-cloud interconnect product:
Cross-Cloud Interconnect is a product that helps you establish high-bandwidth dedicated connectivity between Google Cloud and another cloud service provider.
When you buy Cross-Cloud Interconnect, Google provisions a dedicated physical connection between the Google network and that of another cloud service provider.
So, how is this partnership with AWS any different from what was already available? Google helpfully explained the key differences in their documentation:
While the explicit purpose of extending Cross-Cloud Interconnect is to improve networking performance and simplify multi-cloud architectures, there may be some strategic impetus for such an extended collaboration between GCP and AWS which I will explore behind the paywall.
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