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My large disappointment with Google's Cloud Platform offering was lack of commitment to parity features. I am sorry but the concept of "Beta release level" is

My large disappointment with Google's Cloud Platform offering was lack of commitment to parity features. I am sorry but the concept of "Beta release level" is a complete misfire/mismatch for what an enterprise needs. For example, you cannot, on one hand, advertise that you have a competitive feature (Google Functions competing with AWS Lambda), but then, on the other hand, turn around and label it beta and basically use that an an excuse for inferior reliability and inferior documentation. How can you basically GA a major piece of platform functionality, call it beta, and then ask any enterprise (that has lower risk tolerance) to use it? Enterprises don't want to invest into beta-labelled features, because they know it's an excuse for bugs and half-baked support. No wonder GCP is struggling for adoption. ("beta release" level is a conversation you have with select trusted partners that are willing to tolerate your early stuff in exchange for early access to value... it is not something that is acceptable to advertise as open enrollment to all)

spicyramen 6y ago
Agree I heard they are changing the release process, they call it private early access now and then they will make it GA directly, no more alpha, beta and GA. But I think your point still is valid. Watching Re-invent today, just helped me realize that many Google Products are playing catch up and once launched Product managers and Eng team move somewhere else as there is no incentive to get promoted, this means your GA product may be understaffed or supported by new staff and at the end dead. Look at Cloud Datalab and the mess they have in ML world (Kaggle, Colab, AI Platform Notebooks, plans for new editor...etc)
howlgarnish 6y ago
I'm confused by your argument. Beta is the stage before GA: if it's GA, it's not Beta by definition. This is all obsolete anyway, since GCP has announced they're moving to two stages: Preview or GA. That's it. https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/google-cloud-gets-simplified-product-launch-stages/ https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/google-cloud-gets...
- astral303 6y ago
  Thank god they've changed that. Preview or GA is much harder line, where you can't hide behind a beta label for cycles on end. You can see the language in that release "give your business the confidence." My point was that features were being advertised as essentially GA that were not actually GA. When evaluating the Google Cloud Platform sans-beta features, I was suddenly looking at a much more barren offering, in comparison to AWS.
  - spicyramen 6y ago
    Yes, thank you for the clarification. We had some problems with VPC-SC in the past. (ML training) and since it was Beta, there was no accountability. Anyways we are a AWS shop :)
raxxorrax 6y ago
That enterprise need reliability in Office land is a myth and MS is pumping out half baked systems just like Google. Flow, Teams, Lists, Planner, Sway, Stream, Forms, Kaizala... Sorry, but these aren't battle tested enterprise apps at all. Could as well pull random apps from the Google store. Whenever something new releases the first reaction already is "not again"...
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  These apps are not why enterprise uses Microsoft though. Heck, in our 90k employees corp we don't use any of those
goatinaboat 6y ago
I am sorry but the concept of "Beta release level" is a complete misfire/mismatch for what an enterprise needs. Anyone who uses GCP knows you type “gcloud beta ...” an awful lot. But enterprise sales are made on the golf course between people who have never and will never use the product themselves.

spicyramen 6y ago

Agree I heard they are changing the release process, they call it private early access now and then they will make it GA directly, no more alpha, beta and GA. But I think your point still is valid. Watching Re-invent today, just helped me realize that many Google Products are playing catch up and once launched Product managers and Eng team move somewhere else as there is no incentive to get promoted, this means your GA product may be understaffed or supported by new staff and at the end dead. Look at Cloud Datalab and the mess they have in ML world (Kaggle, Colab, AI Platform Notebooks, plans for new editor...etc)

howlgarnish 6y ago

I'm confused by your argument. Beta is the stage before GA: if it's GA, it's not Beta by definition. This is all obsolete anyway, since GCP has announced they're moving to two stages: Preview or GA. That's it. https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/google-cloud-gets-simplified-product-launch-stages/ https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/google-cloud-gets...

astral303 6y ago
Thank god they've changed that. Preview or GA is much harder line, where you can't hide behind a beta label for cycles on end. You can see the language in that release "give your business the confidence." My point was that features were being advertised as essentially GA that were not actually GA. When evaluating the Google Cloud Platform sans-beta features, I was suddenly looking at a much more barren offering, in comparison to AWS.
- spicyramen 6y ago
  Yes, thank you for the clarification. We had some problems with VPC-SC in the past. (ML training) and since it was Beta, there was no accountability. Anyways we are a AWS shop :)

raxxorrax 6y ago

That enterprise need reliability in Office land is a myth and MS is pumping out half baked systems just like Google. Flow, Teams, Lists, Planner, Sway, Stream, Forms, Kaizala... Sorry, but these aren't battle tested enterprise apps at all. Could as well pull random apps from the Google store. Whenever something new releases the first reaction already is "not again"...

saiya-jin 6y ago
These apps are not why enterprise uses Microsoft though. Heck, in our 90k employees corp we don't use any of those

goatinaboat 6y ago

I am sorry but the concept of "Beta release level" is a complete misfire/mismatch for what an enterprise needs. Anyone who uses GCP knows you type “gcloud beta ...” an awful lot. But enterprise sales are made on the golf course between people who have never and will never use the product themselves.