#googlecloudworkstations

Google Cloud Workstations

Development environments that are fully managed and designed to satisfy the demands of security-conscious businesses. With a seamless interface with Gemini for Google Cloud, it speeds up developer onboarding and productivity while improving the security of development environments.

Proceed to the console

Use a browser or local IDE to access safe and quick development environments at any time.

Facilitate the provisioning, scaling, management, and security of development environments for administrators.

Use your favorite IDE and create unique container images to personalize development settings.

Use Gemini Code Assist‘s AI-powered support to create apps more quickly.

Advantages

Enhance security of your development environments

Using centrally controlled, yet customizable, security methods based on industry best practices, you may extend your security posture to your IDEs. Prevent source code from being locally stored to lessen exfiltration.

Increase developer productivity with custom tools

With support for numerous well-known IDEs, configurable developer tools, and Gemini Code Assist, developers can increase their productivity with safe and quick work environments that can be accessed through a browser or local IDE.

Simplify onboarding for new and remote developers

Managed cloud-based development environments allow you to onboard your developers more quickly, regardless of their location, while container-defined environments guarantee consistency and replicability.

Important characteristics

Run code in your real environment, inside your VPC

Execute code in your real environment, within your VPC Cloud Workstations may operate within your VPC, enabling you to develop and execute code within your staging environment and private network, eliminating the need to simulate your services. Additionally, you can implement “no source code on local devices” regulations and apply the same security features like Cloud Audit Logs, private ingress/egress, VPC Service Controls (VPC SC), and granular IAM controls that are utilized for production workloads to your development environments.

Multi-IDE support

Any code editor or program that can run in a container is supported by Cloud Workstations. Additionally, IDEs support extensions and can be customized. With our managed IDEs, like Code OSS for Cloud Workstations, or multiple JetBrains IDEs, like IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, Rider, and CLion through JetBrains Gateway, as well as Posit Workbench (with RStudio Pro), you can take advantage of remote development without having to switch your IDE or workflow.

Dev environments ready to go in minutes

Use shared workstation setups to offer uniform development environment definitions that can be readily modified and synced across all developers with a single step, and onboard developers quickly via the Google Cloud console. In only a few minutes, developers can set up and launch a workstation, with the configuration applied automatically to solve issues with “works on my machine” and configuration drift.

Consistent environments across teams

Using standard or custom containers to specify your environment settings, including pre-installed tools, libraries, IDE extensions, preloaded files, and start-up scripts, Cloud Workstations offers a managed experience. By simply updating your container images and establishing a session restriction, you can also guarantee that all developers receive the most recent versions and patches when they begin working. After that, Cloud Workstations will take care of making sure that everyone is updated in accordance with the container image you provided.

Built-in Gemini Code Assist integrations

Gemini Code Assist, which offers developers AI-powered support through chat, code creation, and auto code completion, is compatible with Cloud Workstations. Developers can create apps more quickly and effectively by utilizing these Gemini Code Assist features directly in Cloud Workstations.

Cloud Workstation Pricing

The cost of Cloud Workstations is determined by the amount of disk storage, workstation management, control plane, network traffic, and virtual machines (VMs) you utilize each hour to support your development workstations.

The cost of cloud workstations is explained in this publication. The prices shown on Cloud Platform SKUs in your currency apply if you pay in a currency other than USD.

Overview of prices

Utilizing Cloud Workstations entails paying for:

Persistent disk and compute engine resources, for the same price you pay for compute engine now.

Committed Use Discounts (CUD) are available from Compute Engine for commitments of one or three years.

For some VM types, such N1 or N2, Compute Engine additionally provides a Sustained Use Discount (SUD), which is applied when the VM is operated for more than 25% of the hours in a month. Refer to Sustained use discounts for further details.

According to the pricing given above, each GPU raises the cost of your workstations in addition to the costs mentioned above if you also connect one or more GPUs to them.

A workstation management cost of ($0.05 number of vCPUs) per hour for workstation administration.

A $0.20/hour control plane fee (details). In most situations, you only need one control plane.

Workstation resource and management

Virtual machines power cloud workstations, which are connected to persistent disks. A maintenance fee is also levied for every workstation that is currently in use. A maintenance fee of $0.05 per virtual CPU per hour is charged to workstations. The management cost is metered from the moment a workstation is started until it is shut down.

An inactivity time limit that automatically shuts down workstations after a predetermined amount of time can be set up to control expenses.

Control plane

Your workstations are managed by the workstation cluster, also known as the control plane, which also offers network connectivity.

In most situations, you only need one control plane. Only when setting up workstations in various locations or connecting to various VPCs are multiple control planes necessary.

Regardless of whether the cluster’s workstations are in use or not, workstation clusters are subject to an hourly control plane fee of $0.20 per.

These are the hourly rates for all workstation computing and management for the supported machine types. The prices shown on Cloud Platform SKUs in your currency apply if you pay in a currency other than USD.

Teams are continuously challenged to provide creative solutions while maintaining the highest security standards in the difficult field of federal software development. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the intricacy of maintaining consistent development environments, scaling teams, and managing infrastructure. Devin Dickerson, Principal Analyst at Forrester, highlighted the findings of a commissioned TEI study on the effects of Google Cloud Workstations on the software development lifecycle in a recent webinar hosted by Forrester. The study focused on how these workstations can improve security, consistency, and agility while lowering expenses and risks.

The Numbers: A Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) Study

According to a TEI study that Forrester Consulting commissioned for Google Cloud in April 2024, cloud workstations have a big influence on development teams:

Executive Synopsis

Complex onboarding procedures, erratic workflow settings, and local code storage policies are common obstacles faced by organizations trying to grow their development teams. These issues hinder productivity and jeopardize business security. As a result, businesses are looking for a solution that gives developers a reliable and safe toolkit without requiring expensive on-premises resources.

Google Cloud Workstations give developers access to a safe, supervised development environment that streamlines onboarding and boosts workflow efficiency. Administrators and platform teams make preset workstations available to developers via browser or local IDE, allowing them to perform customisation as needed. To help developers solve code problems and create apps more quickly, Google Cloud Workstations come with a built-in interface with Gemini Code Assist, an AI-powered collaborator.

Forrester Consulting was hired by Google to carry out a Total Economic Impact (TEI) research to investigate the possible return on investment (ROI) that businesses could achieve through the use of Google Cloud Workstations. One This study aims to give readers a methodology for assessing the possible financial impact that cloud workstations may have on their companies.

Productivity gains for developers of 30%: Bottlenecks are removed via AI-powered solutions like Gemini Code Assist, pre-configured environments, and simplified onboarding.

Three-year 293% ROI: Cost savings and increased productivity make the investment in cloud workstations pay for itself quickly.

Department of Defense Experience

The industry expert described a concerning event that occurred while he was in the Navy: a contract developer lost his laptop while on the road, which may have exposed private data and put national security at risk. This warning story emphasizes how important it is to have safe cloud-based solutions, such as Google Cloud Workstations. Workstations reduce the possibility of lost or stolen devices and safeguard sensitive data by centralizing development environments and doing away with the requirement for local code storage. They also improve security and operational efficiency by streamlining onboarding procedures and guaranteeing that new developers have immediate access to safe, standardized environments.

Streamlining Government IT Modernization with Google Cloud Workstations

Google Cloud Workstations provide a powerful solution made especially to ease the difficulties government organizations encounter when developing software today:

Simplified Cloud-Native Development: Reduce the overhead of maintaining several development environments by managing and integrating complicated toolchains, dependencies, and cloud-native architectures with ease.

Decreased Platform Team Overhead: Simplify the processes for infrastructure provisioning, developer onboarding and offboarding, and maintenance to free up important resources for critical projects.

Standardized development environments reduce the infamous “works on my machine” issue and promote smooth teamwork by guaranteeing uniformity and repeatability across teams.

Enhanced Security & Compliance: Use FedRAMP to meet and surpass the strict federal security and compliance requirements. Comprehensive data protection is achieved by centralized administration, high authorization, and integrated security controls.

The Way Forward

Now FedRAMP High Authorized, Google Cloud Workstations are more than just a technical advancement they are a calculated investment in the creativity, security, and productivity of teams. Government agencies may save money, simplify processes, and free up developers to concentrate on what they do best creating innovative solutions that benefit the country by adopting this cloud-native solution.