Originally announced via Business Wire on August 1, 2019. Source: businesswire.com. Original post: bestdevops.com.
Elastic Brings Managed Elasticsearch to GCP Tokyo
Elastic N.V. (NYSE: ESTC), the company behind Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack, announced in August 2019 that Elasticsearch Service on Elastic Cloud became available in a fifth Google Cloud Platform (GCP) region: Asia Pacific (Tokyo). This made Tokyo the first GCP region for Elastic in Asia Pacific, complementing four other GCP regions the company already operated globally at the time of the announcement.
The expansion was driven by growing demand from Japanese enterprises and SMBs modernising their IT infrastructure — moving workloads off on-premises, traditional data centres and onto public cloud platforms.
“Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has a growing presence in Japan and we’re excited to partner with Google. This new GCP Tokyo region for Elasticsearch Service will give Japan customers a SaaS-first solution for their search, logging, APM, business analytics, infrastructure monitoring, security use cases and more.”
— Tom Kawasaki, Elastic Japan Country Manager
What Is Elasticsearch Service on Elastic Cloud?
Elasticsearch Service on Elastic Cloud is the official hosted Elasticsearch and Kibana offering, built and supported by Elastic themselves. As a fully managed service, it abstracts away cluster administration so teams can focus on their data and applications rather than operational overhead.
Key capabilities included at the time of this announcement:
- Elastic APM — Application performance monitoring integrated directly into the stack
- Elastic SIEM — Security information and event management for threat detection and response
- Elastic Maps — Geospatial visualisation within Kibana
- Canvas — Custom, live infographic-style presentations of data
- Machine learning — Anomaly detection and forecasting built into the platform
- Same-day version and security patch availability
- Zero-downtime upgrades
- Pre-configured hardware templates optimised for common use cases
- Direct support from Elastic
All of these features were made available immediately in the new Asia Pacific (Tokyo) region, consistent with Elastic’s other regional deployments.
Why the Tokyo Region Matters for Asia Pacific Customers
Running Elasticsearch clusters in-region reduces network latency for end users and applications hosted in Japan and nearby Asia Pacific markets. It also helps organisations meet data residency and compliance requirements that may mandate data remain within specific geographic boundaries.
Industries with particularly strong demand for low-latency search, real-time analytics, and log management — such as gaming, e-commerce, and financial services — stand to benefit directly from regional availability.
“As a GCP partner as well as an Elastic partner, we’re extremely excited to start using the Elasticsearch Service on the GCP Tokyo region. The gaming industry and other industries in Japan will greatly appreciate this announcement.”
— Yusuke Hasegawa, President and CEO, grasys Inc.
Deepening the Elastic–Google Cloud Partnership
The Tokyo launch was part of a broader, multi-year strategic partnership between Elastic and Google Cloud. At the time of the announcement, several additional integration milestones were either completed or in progress:
Next GCP Region: Sydney, Australia
Elastic announced that the next planned GCP region would be in Sydney, Australia, further expanding Asia Pacific coverage.
Native GCP Console Integration
Elasticsearch Service was being positioned as a Managed Partner Service (MPS) within the main GCP Console — the same interface where native Google services are provisioned. The planned integration would allow lifecycle operations such as creating, scaling, configuring, and reconfiguring Elasticsearch clusters using familiar GCP-style workflows, without leaving the GCP Console.
Integrated Billing Through GCP Marketplace
GCP customers were set to be able to provision Elasticsearch Service through the GCP Marketplace and have that spend count fully towards their existing Google Cloud committed spend. This simplifies procurement significantly for enterprises with pre-negotiated GCP contracts.
“Google Cloud and Elastic are both committed to the open source community and are excited to announce the expanded availability of Elastic Cloud in GCP’s Tokyo region, and unified billing, coming soon. This brings simplicity and speeds up the time to value realization for joint customers.”
— Masato Takahashi, Director, Partnerships, Google Cloud Japan
“New regions like Tokyo and Sydney, seamless access to the Elasticsearch Service through the Google Cloud Platform Console, and billing through Google Cloud, which is targeted for release this August, are all examples of our mutual investments to create a great user experience in the cloud.”
— Craig Griffin, Vice President of Business Development, Elastic
Getting Started with Elasticsearch Service on GCP Tokyo
The following guidance was provided at the time of the announcement:
- Existing Elasticsearch Service users: Log in to Elastic Cloud and select the Asia Pacific (Tokyo) GCP region when creating a new deployment.
- Migrating self-managed workloads: Elastic’s documentation and migration webinars provide guidance on moving from self-hosted Elasticsearch to the managed service.
- New users: A 14-day free trial was available, requiring only an email address to get started.
About Elastic
Elastic is a search company and the creator of the Elastic Stack — comprising Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash. Elastic builds both self-managed and SaaS offerings designed to make data usable in real time and at scale across search, logging, security, and analytics use cases.
Elastic and associated marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Elastic N.V. and its subsidiaries. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.