San Francisco — Have you ever wished to be a salesperson? — And that too for the search titan Google? Google, like other Silicon Valley companies feeling the heat of economic doldrums on Wednesday revealed a new strategy designed for better marketing of their products, which empowers companies to sell their own versions of Google Apps to businesses — effectively offering bundles of products like Gmail, Google Docs, and much more.
Google supplies Google Apps at a cheaper rate to Resellers, Resellers then sells the product at a normal rate plus a stronger after sales support, resulting to more satisfied customers. These includes things like localized customer service, hardware installation, file migration, and special hosting for things that fall outside of Google’s built-in Sites service.
The program presents a new way for technology service providers to generate money from Google’s products — and for Google to grow the size of its sales-force.
Primarily, Google will deliver Google Apps to resellers at a 20% discounted rate, will provide training to resellers, and moreover it will maintain to host the product, while resellers will control their customer relationships, including billing. Of course, Google Apps can be purchased from the search giant directly, so why bother with a middleman? The plan behind the strategy is for resellers to package Google Apps within a larger product or to offer some additional services that complement Apps.
Google has been testing the reseller program in pilot mode with 50 companies since last summer. And from today onwards it will be open to anyone, and will be available everywhere in the world.
Paul Slakey, Google’s director of enterprise channels, says it is hard to know exactly how popular this initiative will be, but he would not be surprised if more businesses eventually buy Apps from resellers than from Google itself.
“We are not going to be getting the luxury, especially in this environment right now, to hire a huge sales-force, but we know we have a hot product,” he says.
As an added bonus, resellers in the U.S. get a 20 percent discount on the $50 per user, per year price tag.
But the search giant nevertheless has to establish its strength in supporting a partner network that could bring enterprises much needed assurances.
“This is a natural evolution of where Google Apps is,” says Stephen Cho, director of Google Apps channels. In the two years since Google launched its productivity applications, Cho continues, Google has made progress with enterprise features and SLAs and gotten more than 1 million businesses aboard.
In a briefing with CNET News Rishi Chandra, Senior Product Manager for Google Apps said “there is great opportunity to take something like [Google Apps] and roll it out with support. We are never going to roll out a big services group.”
Well, what’s in it for Google? The new reseller program would expand their distribution and marketing reach and possibly increase the sales coming from Google Apps. Resellers, in turn gets the opportunity to earn some extra bucks, get accredited by Google as an authorized reseller as well as market Google Apps in combination with their own IT products and services.
Google’s U.S. partners consist of SADA Systems, Excel Micro, Horizon Info Services, Cloud Sherpas, and others, including providers from 25 countries. The company is also expecting to sign up Capgemini, which is already a partner in another Google program. “There are other recognizable names we are having advanced discussions with,” Google’s Cho says.
To become part of the reseller program, you can logon here .