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July 14, 2020

Google Cloud Extends BigQuery to AWS, Azure

Google Cloud today announced BigQuery Omni, a new offering that allows BigQuery users to analyze data residing in Amazon Web Services and, soon, Microsoft Azure, in addition to data residing in Google Cloud.

BigQuery Omni will provide a single interface that allows customers to “seamlessly connect directly to their data across Google Cloud, AWS and Azure for analysis without having to move or copy datasets,” the company says.

The new offering is powered by Anthos, the company’s solution for extending its cloud-based offerings to on-prem systems and other clouds.

“For our customers, data is no longer one room in the house — it’s the foundation,” says Debanjan Saha, General Manager and Vice President of Engineering, Google Cloud. “However, moving data across different clouds is both cumbersome and expensive. “With BigQuery Omni, customers will get a multi-cloud analytics solution that enables them to gain critical data insights, in one unified experience.”

(Image courtesy Google)

With BigQuery Omni, customers can use standard SQL and familiar BigQuery APIs to analyze data residing in different clouds, Saha wrote in a blog post that accompanied the announcement. “The same BigQuery interface on Google Cloud will let you query the data that you have stored in Google Cloud, AWS and Azure without any cross-cloud movement or copies of data,” he wrote.

BigQuery Omni’s query engine runs the necessary compute on clusters in the same region where your data resides, Saha says. “For example, you can use BigQuery Omni to query Google Analytics 360 Ads data that’s stored in Google Cloud, and also query logs data from your e-commerce platform and applications that are stored in AWS S3,l” he wrote. “Then, using Looker, you can build a dashboard that allows you to visualize your audience behavior and purchases alongside your advertising spend.”

Fear of lock-in has emerged as a barrier to cloud adoption, which is likely a factor in why 80% of organizations surveyed by Gartner store data in multiple cloud platforms. While companies like the flexibility that public clouds provide, they are afraid that it will be prohibitively expensive to move data off clouds or to move data and analytics applications to new platforms.

(Image courtesy Google)

Google cited a 451 Research study that found 85% of customers feel that the capability to run the same database on multiple cloud/datacenter environments is an important consideration when selecting a new data platform.

“As hybrid and multi-cloud adoption has become the norm, enterprises are increasingly looking for data products that provide a consistent experience and lower complexity of using multiple clouds, while enabling the ongoing use of existing infrastructure investments,” Matt Aslett, 451 a research director for data, AI, and analytics at 451 Research, said in a Google press release. “The launch of BigQuery Omni demonstrates Google Cloud’s strategy to help customers operate multi-cloud environments.”

BigQuery Omni is available in private alpha for AWS S3, with Azure support coming soon, Google says. BigQuery Omni supports Avro, CSV, JSON, ORC, and Parquet data formats.

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