Item: Google App Engine
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google App Engine is used in the IT department to host the organization's website, manage the scaling as well as ongoing maintenance and updates, and to build the web application in PHP and Python, serverless, without the inhouse management of the website's underlying infrastructure and platform.

Pros and Cons

Google App Engine APIs to build and deploy the web app was straightforward and very easy.
Since Google App Engine is fully managed and serverless, the web app auto scales up and down based on the workload.

Google App Engine is expensive in the long run and cost adds up pretty quickly.
Since it is fully managed and serverless, you have no access to underlying infrastructure and OS that may be needed for some fine tuned and complex web apps.

Return on Investment

Google App Engine had positive impact on ROI by reducing the time it takes to create, deploy and maintain web applications.
Positive impact on ROI and positive impact on business by reducing CapEx needed for running the business website.

Alternatives Considered

AWS Lambda, Heroku Platform, IBM Cloud Foundry, OpenShift and Azure App Service

Azure App Service is in par with Google App Engine although you may want to use Azure App Service if you are integrating with other Microsoft IT components, for example SQL Server. Google App Engine is great when in long run, you will be using Google cloud components, for example Google Pub/Sub, Google BigQuery. Redhat OpenShift, Pivotal Cloud Foundry and IBM Cloud Foundry are open sources solutions and are great when you need more control over your underlying middleware stack, whether fully managed or managed.

Support Rating

Good amount of documentation available for Google App Engine and in general there is large developer community around Google App Engine and other products it interacts with. Lastly, Google support is great in general. No issues so far with them.

Key Insights

Do you think Google App Engine delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Google App Engine's feature set?

Did Google App Engine live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Google App Engine go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Google App Engine again?

Other Software Used

OpenShift, Oracle Java SE, Oracle Java Cloud

Likelihood to Recommend

It is a great 'startup' web application platform where you are looking at building a not to complex website that is fully managed without much internal IT staff. It is less appropriate when the web application is complex and you expect large database query sizes/index or workloads that needs a lot of compute, memory and network resources since it is expensive, being fully management and serverless.

Serverless Web app platform that includes auto scaling for simpler web apps

Overall Satisfaction with Google App Engine