Cloud Blog: Simplify your multi-cloud strategy with Cloud Location Finder, now in preview

Source URL: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/googles-cloud-location-finder-unifies-multi-cloud-location-data/
Source: Cloud Blog
Title: Simplify your multi-cloud strategy with Cloud Location Finder, now in preview

Feedly Summary: As cloud environments expand beyond traditional architectures to include multiple clouds, managing your infrastructure effectively becomes more complex. Imagine easily accessing consistent and up-to-date location information across different cloud providers, so your multi-cloud applications are designed and optimized with performance, security, and regulatory compliance in mind.
Today, we are making this a reality with Cloud Location Finder, a new Google Cloud service which provides up-to-date location data across Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Now, you can strategically deploy workloads across different cloud providers with confidence and control.

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Why use Cloud Location Finder?

Unified location data: Cloud Location Finder makes it easy for you to access the latest location information, providing a single source of truth for cloud location data for Google Cloud, AWS, Azure, and OCI.   

Rich location attributes: Data includes public cloud region and zone information, and location metadata like proximity1, territory code, and carbon footprint. 

Up-to-date information: Cloud Location Finder provides 24-hour data freshness for active regions, removing outdated information promptly when locations are turned down. This eliminates inconsistencies from hard-coded lists and ensures your information is current without manual monitoring.   

Programmatically accessible: Especially for organizations with diverse cloud and location requirements, Cloud Location Finder eliminates the need to manually manage and choose new locations. And because it is an API, it is easy to integrate into your applications.

How can Cloud Location Finder help you?
Whether you’re a partner or customer, a Cloud Architect or application developer designing a hybrid setup or a platform admin ensuring governance, Cloud Location Finder offers valuable insights:

Optimize deployments: Easily identify the nearest Google Cloud region or zone to an existing AWS/Azure/OCI deployment, to help you optimize your multi-cloud application for performance and latency.

Meet sustainability goals: As your business grows, choose nearby cloud locations that are also sustainable.

Help ensure compliance: Find a list of regions and zones in a specified territory to help you ensure compliant log storage or data processing across multiple clouds.

Improve reliability: Rely on a consistent source of truth for location data, which can be integrated directly into your applications.   

Getting started
Cloud Location Finder is accessible via REST APIs and gcloud CLI, and available at no cost. You can easily list locations, get specific location details, find nearby locations, and filter these based on criteria such as cloud provider, location type, territory, or carbon footprint.   
Ready to streamline your multi-cloud location strategy? Explore the Cloud Location Finder documentation to learn more and start building with consistent, accurate location data today!

1. Currently, for GCP regions only

AI Summary and Description: Yes

Summary: The introduction of Cloud Location Finder by Google Cloud provides essential capabilities for managing multi-cloud environments by unifying location data across major cloud providers. This innovation is significant for professionals seeking to enhance performance, security, and compliance in cloud infrastructures.

Detailed Description:

The text discusses the launch of Cloud Location Finder, a new service from Google Cloud that simplifies the management of multi-cloud infrastructures. This service provides up-to-date and unified location data across various cloud providers, which is crucial for optimizing application performance, security, and meeting regulatory compliance.

Key Points:
– **Unified Access to Location Data**: Cloud Location Finder offers a single source of truth for cloud location information across Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, which is essential as businesses adopt multi-cloud strategies.

– **Rich Location Attributes**: The service includes detailed metadata such as public cloud regions, zones, proximity, territory codes, and data on carbon footprints, aiding businesses in making informed deployment decisions.

– **Real-time Updates**: The tool ensures 24-hour data freshness, automatically removing outdated information to maintain accuracy, thereby alleviating the need for manual updates or reliance on hard-coded lists.

– **API Accessibility**: It functions via an API, making it easy to integrate into existing applications and workflows, thus eliminating cumbersome manual location management.

– **Practical Benefits**:
– **Performance Optimization**: Helps users identify the closest cloud regions to enhance application performance and reduce latency across multi-cloud applications.
– **Sustainability Initiatives**: Encourages businesses to choose cloud locations based on proximity and sustainability metrics as they scale.
– **Compliance Assurance**: Aids in identifying appropriate regions to fulfill legal and regulatory requirements for data storage and processing.
– **Reliability**: Delivers a consistent and trustworthy source for cloud location data, crucial for system reliability and decision-making.

– **Getting Started**: The Cloud Location Finder is available at no cost, easily accessible through REST APIs and gcloud CLI, empowering businesses to streamline their multi-cloud strategies effectively.

This development highlights the growing importance of tools that enhance operational capabilities in complex cloud environments, making it a noteworthy advancement for security and compliance professionals in the technology sector.