Google Cloud Introduces Commitment-Free Flex Agreements
Google Cloud recently introduced Flex Agreements, a new type of licensing that allows customers to migrate workloads without any commitment.
Depending on the workloads migrated to Google Cloud and their monthly spending, users will also have access to free storage, cloud credits, discounts, and professional services like Spanner, BigQuery, and AutoML.
Google announced three new pricing tiers for Flex Agreements: Standard, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus. Each plan is designed to “give customers more choice and flexibility to optimize their cloud spend.”
The most basic tier offers affordable and easy-to-use managed services that include auto-scaling. The Enterprise plan is aimed at customers that need highly scalable and reliable cloud services. With more storage and networking services, advanced security, disaster recovery, and regulatory compliance support, the Enterprise Plus plan is suitable for clients in highly regulated industries like the public sector.
Customers previously needed to sign a multi-year contract to enjoy incentives. But in the post-pandemic economic downturn, many businesses struggle to predict the amount of cloud resources they’ll need in a future filled with uncertainty.
“To help, we’re developing new ways for customers to consume and pay for Google Cloud services,” reads the company’s official blog post. “We’re doing this by removing barriers to entry, aligning cost to consumption and providing contractual and product flexibility.”
In the new wave of deals designed to attract more customers during the economic slowdown, the company also introduced longer trials on Cloud products.
Past attempts to increase interest in Google Cloud include the Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) program that provides access to services at discounted prices to customers who commit to using a minimum level of resources for a certain period. In 2022, Google rolled out Flexible CUD, a scheme that provides flat-rate discounts across different virtual machine families and regions.