Google Cloud Platform updated to run Windows applications in the cloud

Google has opened up its arms to Microsoft License Mobility for Google Cloud Platform. Product manager Martin Buhr said that customers had been asking for improved support for Windows-based workloads, and now these wishes are being met. There are several key improvements to Google Compute Engine that help to make Windows on Google a reality.

Microsoft License Mobility is the big news, meaning that Google now supports SQL Server, SharePoint and Exchange Server without the need for extra licenses. The second announcement is the availability of a beta version of Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition on Google Compute Engine which opens up the opportunity to run Windows applications in the cloud.

The third and final announcement is that a Google Cloud Platform-optimized version of Fusion Labs Chrome RDP has been released. What this means is that it is now possible to create remote desktop sessions from Chrome to allow for use of Windows in Google Compute Engine. In a blog post, Buhr said:

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.

This is not the end of the story. Google is also working on adding support for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2, but why should you pick Google Cloud Platform over Azure? Bhur says:

With awesome features like Local SSD (which also supports live migration), and multiple ways to connect your datacenter to the cloud, Google Cloud Platform is the best place to run your Windows workloads.