Surprise: Google Cloud Platform Now Supports Microsoft Server Application Software Licenses

Many of us doubt whether Google is really serious about their enteprise services business. Today’s announcement from their Cloud Platform team will put your doubts to rest. Since Google’s Cloud Platform customers requested them to offer a way to run Windows-based workloads, Google announced three improvements related to Windows on Google platform.

• Google now offers Microsoft License Mobility on their cloud platform. This allows customers to move their existing Microsoft server application software licenses, such as SQL Server, SharePoint and Exchange Server, from on-premises to Google Cloud Platform without any additional Microsoft software licensing fees.
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition is now available to all Google Cloud Platform customers in beta on Google Compute Engine. And with features like Local SSD (which also supports live migration), and multiple ways to connect your datacenter to the cloud, Google Cloud Platform can run Windows workloads with ease. And they are working on support for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2.
• A version of the the popular Chrome RDP app from Fusion Labs optimized for Google Cloud Platform is now available for free to our customers for use with Windows in Google Compute Engine. This enables customers using the Chrome browser to create remote desktop sessions to their Windows instances in Google Compute Engine without the need for additional software by simply clicking on the RDP button in the Google Developer Console. In addition, because Google Developers Console stores and passes the login for the Windows credentials to the RDP app, customers are able to leave the complexity of managing unique user IDs and passwords for each Windows instance to Google.

You can learn more about Microsoft License Mobility for Google Cloud Platform here.

Read more about this announcement here.