Google has announced the public preview of Application Design Center, a service that combines combines Gemini Cloud Assist chat with a visual, canvas-style interface for app development.

Google says the new service aims to help developers streamline the design, deployment, and evolution of cloud applications, while helping ensure that they are secure, reliable, and aligned with best practices.

The new center comes with APIs and the gcloud command line interface, but the main interface is based on a visual, canvas-style approach to designing and modifying application templates. It also lets developers configure application templates for deployment, view infrastructure as code in-line, and collaborate with teammates on designs. Application deployments are automatically registered in App Hub.

App Hub models applications as interconnected services and workloads, and is now integrated with over 20 Google Cloud products, including Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, and AlloyDB.

Application Design Center's design canvas is where users can add application components to a visual canvas to create an application diagram. As components are added, the service makes suggestions for additional components and possible connections.

The documentation for Application Design Center says an application template is a deployable combination of services and workloads. The components are "Google opinionated building blocks built on best practices using security defaults." A component can be an asset, a high-level resource that helps control other resources; a service in the form of a network or API interface; or a workload; a binary deployment, such as a MIG deployment.

Once the template is created, administrators or developers can create an application instance from it, then either deploy the instance from the Google Cloud console, or by first downloading and deploying Terraform to handle the organization's deployment tools and workflows locally.

The new service makes use of Gemini Cloud Assist, which is currently in preview.

Cloud Assist offers AI-powered assistance to help design, deploy, troubleshoot, and optimize apps. So long as the developer has Gemini Cloud Assist, they can chat to provide a business problem and receive a proposed initial design. Cloud Assist can also set up and connect to other Google Cloud products.

Cloud Assist is free to use while in preview. Once in production, there will be monthly costs for use. The link for pricing information at the moment refers to Gemini Code Assist, which has a free version for individuals, so it may be that there will be a similar free version of Cloud Assist.

More Information

Application Design Center

Cloud Hub

Gemini Cloud Assist

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