Google's low-cost Nearline cloud storage service is now generally available and promises 99 percent uptime, on-demand I/O, lifecycle management and a broadly expanded partner ecosystem. In order to take on other cloud providers such as Amazon.com, Google is now offering the service with 100 free petabytes of storage-equivalent to 100 million gigabytes-for new users for up to six months.

In addition, to help get a headstart and reduce the costs of a migration to Google Cloud Storage Nearline, Google has created the switch and save program.

Google is introducing on-demand I/O to allow you to increase I/O in situations where you need to retrieve data from a Google Cloud Storage Nearline bucket faster than the provisioned 4 MB/s read throughput per TB of data stored. On-demand I/O delivers improved throughput when you need it and you only get charged for what you use. You now can access your data in seconds, while relying on predictable data recovery. During the first three months after launch, on-demand I/O will be offered at no additional charge.

In addition, Cloud Storage Transfer Service (previously referred to as Online Cloud Import) is becoming generally available to all organizations, allowing you to import large amounts of online data from HTTP/HTTPS locations, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), into Google Cloud Storage to reduce your costs.

Finally, Google has added five new companies to its Nearline partner ecosystem. The Actifio, Pixit Media, Unitrends, CloudBerry Filepicker join Veritas/Symantec, NetApp, Iron Mountain and Geminare.