This document provides a conceptual overview of Application-centric Google Cloud, its core products, andhow they work together to streamline the entire application managementlifecycle.

As cloud applications become increasingly complex, managing their underlyinginfrastructure can pose a significant challenge. Additionally, theseapplications often consist of numerous components spread across multipleGoogle Cloud projects. This distribution can hinder developers and operatorsfrom maintaining a clear and unified view, thereby complicating tasks such asmonitoring, troubleshooting, and cost management.

To address this challenge, Google Cloud offers an integrated,application-centric experience for deploying, managing, and operatingapplication components. You can shift your focus from your individualinfrastructure resources to the application as a whole, enabling applicationmanagement in a way that aligns with business functionality and day-to-dayoperations.

Key concepts for application management

At the core of the application-centric experience is the concept of anApp Hub application. An application acts as a logical grouping ofcomponents, including services and workloads, which collectively provide aspecific business functionality.

To enable application management, you define an application management boundary, which isthe collection of projects whose underlying Google Cloud resourcesApp Hub can discover and register in applications. This boundary forresource discovery is established by designating a Google Cloud project to actas the management project.

For detailed definitions of all Application-centric Google Cloud key concepts, seeKey concepts.

Data handling in resource organization

The management project stores not just high-level application attributes butthe entire application model, including the following:

• App Hub data: The complete logical model of yourapplications, including the definitions of and relationships betweenapplications, services, and workloads. This model also includes metadatalike application owners, criticality, and environment.
• Application Design Center data: Elements such as applicationtemplates, catalogs, and spaces that are used to design and deploy newapplications.

If the management project is deleted, all of this application model data ispermanently lost. The underlying infrastructure resources, such as yourGoogle Kubernetes Engine clusters or load balancers, will continue to exist, buttheir logical grouping and relationships within App Hub will be lost.

When you set up a management project, APIs for application management areautomatically enabled. These include APIs for App Hub,Application Design Center, Google Cloud Observability, and their associated API dependencies.For more information about these automatically enabled APIs, seeEnable APIs on the management project.

The following diagram shows an example of how resources can be organized forapplication management. In this case, two folders (Business Unit 1 andBusiness Unit 2) are attached to their own management projects, definingseparate application management boundaries. Each folder represents a business unit withits resources registered as services and workloads in applications. The firstfolder (Business Unit 1) also includes a sub-folder(Business Sub-unit 1), which represents a separate business sub-unit, andvarious independent projects with their own resources. All the folders areconfigured for application management and hence have their own distinctmanagement projects.

Benefits of application-centric management

Organizing Google Cloud resources and registering them in applications asservices and workloads offers an alternative to tracking individual resourcesacross various projects or products. This approach lets you do the following:

• Manage consistent application designs, deployments, and updates usingapplication templates.
• Gain a comprehensive view of your application's health, performance, andcost.
• Streamline operations by managing related components as a single unit.
• Improve governance by assigning ownership and applying policies at theapplication level.
• Accelerate troubleshooting with a clear understanding of resourcedependencies.

The application management lifecycle

Managing your applications in Google Cloud follows a logical lifecycle. Youfirst define and organize your applications, then you operate and optimize them,with AI assistance available at every stage.

The following diagram illustrates the key products and features that let youmanage applications in Google Cloud.

The numbers in the diagram reference the following descriptions:

1. Resources: Applications in App Hub represent groupings ofGoogle Cloud resources, which are registered as services and workloads. Youdefine which resources App Hub can manage by configuring anapplication management boundary with a management project. For example, you candefine the boundary at the folder level by configuring anapp-enabled folder. The management project from your boundarystores App Hub and Application Design Center data and enables thenecessary APIs for application management. For more information about theseconcepts, seeKey concepts andData handling in resource organization.

2. Application design and deployment:

   • Application Design Center: Design and deploy new applicationsusing prebuilt or custom templates that you can update. Deploying anapplication creates new Google Cloud resources and registers thoseresources and your application to App Hub. For moreinformation, see theApplication Design Center overview.
   • App Hub: Organize existing resources within yourapplication management boundary into applications to gain a unified viewof your services and workloads. For more information, see theApp Hub overview.

   Whether you use Application Design Center to build a new applicationor App Hub to organize your existing resources, the result isa defined application that is cataloged in App Hub and servesas the basis for unified operations.

3. Application-centric observability: Monitor applications and optimizeusage withGoogle Cloud Observability products and features:

   • Monitor application health and performance with metrics, logs, andtraces.
   • Set up alerts based on metrics and logs.
   • Analyze costs and resource usage in Cost Explorer.

4. Application insights: Use Cloud Hub to get a centralized viewof operational data and insights for your applications and their components,including alerts, incidents, and maintenance activities, to manage yourapplications proactively. For more information, see theCloud Hub overview.

5. Application assistance: Get AI-powered support fromGemini Cloud Assist with tasks such as designingapplications in Application Design Center, investigating issues, andoptimizing your resources. For more information, see theGemini Cloud Assist overview.

What's next

• Learn more about App Hub
• Choose your application setup model
• Learn more about Application Design Center
• Learn more about Cloud Hub
• Prepare for application management